Friday, Sep 21, 2018
Happy Anniversary!
16 years of marriage and almost 20 years together. Feels like yesterday we began dating…I guess thats a good thing. This year I woke to coffee and breakfast in bed and a no fuss day to celebrate our anniversary and the best gift to receive is the lifetime of adventures together.
We had a schedule of activities for the day but spent most of the day at the Auckland Zoo. Kicked off the visit with giraffes and zebras, meerkats and lovebirds. As well as Shelby’s favourite the ostrich and Max’s fav the tiger. Red pandas and elephants, baboons, cheetah, wallaby, emu, tasmanian devils and New Zealand birds. Kim took the day off from work and joined us on our outing. She also drove today which was a relaxing treat, not that my husband’s driving isn’t great its more the fact of having to be alert and reminding him of which side of the road to be on.
Max checkin out the Baboons
Wondering if the crocodile was alive since you could hardly even see it breath.
Quick stop at Westmere Roast for lunch and then back home to see Bodie and Jesse get home from school. There was some talk of ice cream when the kids came home so after a quick game of Blockus (that Justin won) every one went off to Takapuna for ice cream and a visit to the park. I decided to hold down the fort and catch up on some correspondence.
Finished the night off with an amazing lamb roast cooked by Derek and a game of Five Crowns (a card game).
Saturday, Sep 22, 2018
We spent a couple hours in the morning at Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life Aquarium, it was the brainchild of New Zealand marine archaeologist and diver Kelly Tarlton. Built in disused sewage storage tanks. Bodie and Jesse joined us at the aquarium where we saw sting rays, king and gentoo penguins aswell as various sharks while on a conveyor belt slowly moving through the viewing areas.
King Penguins at Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life Aquarium.
We caught up with Kim and Derek, tried to find some rental bikes to doodle around with but no luck so we hit a number of parks for the kids to burn off some energy. Eventually treated the adults to a beer on the harbour while the kids played at Silo Park. Justin, in his unique ”Janglish” ordered his beer and asked for an “Ashashi” a Japanese beer called Asahi, we all laughed and laughed and laughed some more along with Justin over his mispronunciation and the waitress’s simple correction of his order, it may have been one of those “had to have been there moments” but for us we’ve used “ashashi” a few times since that day. Then back to the house where Derek picked up some fish and chips for dinner. An early night for our crew as we had a 3:30am wake up to catch our flight to Australia.
The kids relaxing after our day out.
Last night in NZ. Fish & Chip dinner with family.
Good bye New Zealand! For an originally unplanned stopover it was a treat to catch up with the Lamb family and have the cousins meet and play together. Max was very sad that we were leaving and very much wanted to stay as he and Bodie hit it off. But we were promised that we’d be seeing the cousins on our continent some time in the near future.
