Trip with Mom & Dad: Day 3 - Driving to Queenstown

Sunday, December 29

Today we went to church and introduced Mom & Dad to the ward. It was fun and we all had a really good time. Once we got home, we packed up, had some lunch and dropped off Ike at the Downes' to get babysat while we are vacationing in the rest of New Zealand and Australia.  I'm going to miss my little baby!

It rained a lot as we started driving, but about halfway through the road trip we did see some patches of blue sky and enjoyed intermittent sunlight. Hooray!

Unfortunately, Mt. Cook was immersed in cloud cover so we didn't get to stop and see it, but we did stop at Lake Tekapo and the Church of the Good Shepherd, which is apparently a really famous (and super tiny) little chapel where a lot of weddings are held.  

Picture from the car as we were driving. I thought the clouds looked really neat but you could also see some blue sky amidst the storm clouds.

Trip with Mom & Dad: Day 2 - Christchurch

Saturday, December 28

More rain today...

It looked like it was going to stop for a while around 10:00 am so we hurried over to Willowbank Wildlife Reserve to try and catch the break in weather.  No such luck.  It rained almost the entire time we were there, but most of it was a very light drizzle that you almost didn't notice.  The nice thing about going in the rain though was we basically had the entire park to ourselves.

We got much better pictures than the last time we were here because I remembered my camera. Yeah!!!

It was raining pretty good as we entered the wildlife reserve.  There is an aquaduct looking thing behind him that was just pouring water.

Anyone want a Wallaby?  Also, has anyone noticed how much colder my mom looks than everyone else (sweatshirt + jacket)? Hahaha

Lunch time!!!  We decided to buy some animal food this time, and boy did it pay off.  Some of the best/funniest moments of the day came from feeding the animals.

You can't read the sign under my Dad's arm, but it basically says that it's breeding season and the male swan will bite you if you get to close. So of course rather than feeding the swans through the feeder on the left, Dad tried to feed them directly and got bit. Hahaha!

Once we fed these cute little duck chicks (two different families of them), they followed us around begging for more. Just like Ike :)

Me & Brian working on feeding some barnyard animals

Brian and Dad had so much fun feeding these goofy looking pigs. FYI, you will see this breed in the Hobbit!

Luckily Mom figured out how to take videos on her camera because I couldn't figure it out on mine. Have a laugh with us while Dad tossed food into the pigs mouth (it was too fat to get out of its bedding).

After we were done with the barnyard animals, we started hearing this crazy screeching from behind the trees. It continued for about 10 minutes and just got louder and louder.  Finally Brian found a little path we could cut through to see where the noise was coming from and it turned out to be some primates! Mom caught a little of it on video before her battery ran out. Enjoy the sound!

We went into the Kiwi bird enclosure and saw three of the four that were on display.  It's a nocturnal type of enclosure so we couldn't take pictures, but they were so cute digging around looking for food. We also checked out some of the other New Zealand animals such as the Kea and eels below.

I think this guy has had enough of the rain... 

This guy wanted some food!

The rain basically got worse through the afternoon, so we just hung out at the house, did a little laundry and got packed for tomorrow. Saturday evening, we went to our good friends Aaron & Silvia Downes home for dinner.  They made some great Kiwi food for my parents and we had a fantastic evening of food and conversation.  What a great day!!!

Trip with Mom & Dad: Day 1 - Christchurch

My Mom & Dad have arrived!!! It was so exciting to see them get off the plane this morning.

If you look hard enough, you will see mom & dad coming out of the exit in the back 

We started out our sightseeing at Hagley Park & the Christchurch botanic gardens.  Sadly, we have a rainy forecast for the weekend, so we took a little shelter under this ginormous tree.

Mom & Dad trying to figure out how to use their camera...haha!

I'm not sure if it's because of the rain or they just turn it on at specific times, but I haven't seen this fountain going full force before.  It looked really cool!

Before the water turned on - and me with my best Averie pose 

And after!

We also hit up the rose garden...we got some great pics of the rainy roses, but I'll post those at the bottom so you don't have to look at them all if you don't want to. My mom and I got picture happy :)

Other sightseeing today included the Canterbury Museum.  We didn't take any pictures in there, but Mom & Dad learned about the extinct Moa bird and about the Maori tribe.  We also saw a neat exhibit on the quest to reach the South Pole.  You can refer to one of our first blog posts for pictures of what is in this museum.

We also drove around the CBD (central business district) and looked at how little progress has been made in the city center for rebuilding Christchurch.  We stopped at the restart mall (see previous blog post for pics) and drove by the Christchurch cathedral.

We also drove out to the Christchurch pier in New Brighton...this time we took pictures.

Is anyone surprised that Mom was cold???

It's really hard to see, but just to my right there is a ferris wheel that was actually running.  I think there was a little fair going on for the holidays. Kind of sad it was bad weather and no one was riding it.

Here is Brian's obligatory photo for the day.  I told him he had to be in at least one picture per location during the trip.  So here he is!

And here are our flower photos...

We took pictures of these Dahlias for Aunt Linda!

For once I have to agree with Brian that the rain was a good thing. It definitely made these roses look amazing in picture - although the orange roses are not nearly as vibrant as they were in person.

Mom really loved these hydrangeas in bloom so we got her into the middle of them.  Look how happy she is!

Arthur's Pass & Greymouth

A few weeks ago, December 7th to be exact, we took a day trip to the West Coast via Arthur's pass. This is the shortest route to the west coast from Christchurch.

Arthur's Pass

The weather forecast for the weekend was absolutely sunny and beautiful so a road trip seemed appropriate.  Little did we know that outside of Canterbury, there were storms all over the west coast and most of the drive was overcast and rainy.  Oh well! It was still a beautiful drive and we got to see some extra waterfalls because of the rain.

Beautiful view of the Sourthern Alps as we went through the pass

I really liked the pink heather growing along the road so I made Brian take a picture of it.  Too bad he got bit by sand flies and was itching like crazy for the next two weeks!

Greymouth

We finally made it to Greymouth where we bought some green stone and walked around the small downtown area.  We also went out to the harbor and took some pics in the wind.  It was crazy!

Brian was really in to his west side signs in these pictures...lol!

From this view, the right side of the pier is the ocean and the left side is the river that enters into it.  Pretty interesting!

Castle Rocks

On the way home, we stopped to look at some really cool rock formations called Castle Rocks.  I could've sworn we were in Northern England or Scotland by the looks of it.