Day 7:
One more day until Shane arrives...whoop whoop!
Katie and I did some laundry. They have washing machines in NZ. That's cool. A few have a dryer, but NO ONE ever uses them. Katie even got in trouble for trying to "sneak" and use one...haha!! Love it. This is the dryer in NZ...the lovely NZ sun and air :)....
All day Katie was craving beer and pizza....SOOOO, Georgie and Mark took me, Katie, Mark's cousins Guy & Troy, and Mark's friend Cooper (who also came over from the states) to this AMAZING pizza place in downtown Auckland. Delicious!
Katie was satisfied :)
There is one street in downtown Auckland that goes "all out" in the Christmas decorating department. Every night during Christmas time, tons of people walk up and down this street and take in the awesome decorations. It was really neat to see the differences in the decorations there and here at home....
Carolers....
A lot of the houses had these really cool long hanging lights...I hadn't seen these before....
Spider and web....unique idea.....
Santa's clothes hangin out to dry....cute :)
Sailboats....definitely not a typical Christmas decoration here :) By the way, Auckland is known as the "City of Sails" because there are so many sailboats everywhere....
Day 8:
Shane arrives!!! YAY!!!!
What a fantastic husband....he let me leave an ENTIRE week earlier so I could come over and be with Georgie. I had childcare set up for the first few days after I left (since Shane was still working) and then on that Thursday his AMAZING mother flew down to watch the girls and then make the lovely road-trip up to Habersham with Shane and the girls since she and HayHay were going to be keeping them while Shane joined me in NZ for a week. There are NO words to describe our gratitude to them :) Keeping these two firecrackers for an entire week is NO easy task. They deserve metals. Big ones. THANK YOU so much :)
Anywhoo.....Shane made the LONG trip alone (which he was actually super pumped about...which shows HOW much he was needing a vacation...cause you know the brotha is a people person :). His goal was to not talk to anyone for his entire 2 day journey (ha! yeah, right...) Well, as you probably guessed, Shane made a friend before he even got close to leaving the U.S. He struck up a conversation with this girl at the L.A. baggage claim. Ends up...she was a student at Montevallo and was flying to New Zealand to see her boyfriend and his fam for Christmas. She had met him two years ago when she was on an International Training Project with Campus Outreach in Christchurch, NZ (what?...small world). She and Shane knew a ton of the same people. It's just nuts. She was so terrified about flying all the way over there by herself so, of course, Shane became her traveling buddy/parent :). Shocking, I know. So his goal of being the "silent" traveler went out the window....fast :) I got to meet her at the airport. She was super sweet and grateful for Shane :)
Shane and his new buddy....
So this is crazy...Dave (2nd from the right) was another student we had the privilege of meeting in 2002 when we spent the summer down in the South Island of NZ. Several years ago Dave came over to the states and stayed with us for a bit. He is awesome. We love how all our Kiwi friends come to America to visit us. Usually several times. I will say, however, that Dave takes the trophy for the most filthy (literally....like I had to make him bathe) of all our Kiwi friends. I love Kiwis...they are SO layed-back and SO fun...but Dav-o definitely earned his "filthy Dave" nickname. Anyways....the story...so we told Dave we were coming to NZ and would be in Auckland and that we hoped we would get to see him while we were there. Unfortunately, he was just going to be flying through Auckland as he headed home for Christmas. He would only be in Auckland airport for like an hour....well, it just so happened to be the exact same time that Shane arrived from Fiji! So it worked out perfectly to be able to visit with him for a bit....it was SO fabulous to see good ol' Filthy himself....I must say though that he had cleaned himself up beautifully since his Mobile, AL visit :) Haha! we love ya, Dave!! SO great to see you!
After we picked Shane up we headed to Burger Fuel (Shane was just a BIT starving....yes, I know, shocking :). This place had awesome burgers as well as amazing sweet potato fries that were to die for...but the coolest thing they had was these little burger holder thingys....I mean, pure genius. It held your burg in perfect unison and none of the goodies dripped out....definitely pure genius.
Shane, Georgie and Katie on the beach at Takapuma (sp?) with "tuty tuty" in the back ground.... it was an absolutely gorgeous day....
Tuty Tuty....
Pretty...
I COULD not believe we were actually both in NZ again....wow
Santa and Rudolf grilling some dogs...ya know...the typical Christmas dinner :)
Shane and I went out by ourselves that night and walked along the beach (with volcanoes in the background...what!?!) and went our to dinner. It didn't get dark over there until like 9pm so we had plenty of light for the amazing sights....
SO thankful the hubby is here with me :)
Amazing sunset....
