MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

We have been busy bees lately. Starting to clean out the house, pack up, plan our Asia trip, spend last minute time with friends, complete our to-do list of activities and make sure things are organized for our arrival at home. Our friend Cat's parents were visiting from Scotland and we had a great al fresco dinner and shared some nice New Zealand wine. We went to the Willowbank wildlife reserve and Blaine saw kiwis for the first time in their nocturnal setting (we got very lucky and 2 of them were awake and fighting with their beaks!). Look how big Andra has gotten (Megs and Sam's baby)!!! She is rolling over, smiling heaps and drooling everywhere! We officially have 3 more weeks of work left because the week of New Year's we will be in Sydney!!!!

Petra's last week in Christchurch!

Petra and Tim are moving to Wellington, on the North Island, for Tim's job in forestry. So Petra has been staying with us for the last week while Tim has already made the move north. It has been so much fun! We worked our last shift together in CCU last night. Blaine had to go to the west coast for work, so it has been like a slumber party! We went out for another friend Anouska's going away party and had a good time with a bunch of hospital staff.

It will be so so sad to say goodbye to Petra.

Crazy to think that Blaine and I only have 5 1/2 weeks of work left!!!

Lake Sumner Cont'd

The can I am holding is Off bug spray because we have something in NZ called sandflies and they loooove Blaine. Very neat experience. Smelled just like Yellowstone for those of you who have visited there.

Our Hut, Blaine being a 'poser'

Lake Sumner II

More pictures to follow. Last weekend Blaine and I went away just the 2 of us and drove on a 4x4 track up to Lake Sumner, slept in the hut and hiked to some hot springs. It was a much needed break to get out into the woods, away from the city noise and busyness. We ended up being in the hut with a French couple who were our age, living in NZ temporarily like us. The hot springs we hiked to were in the middle of a waterfall and the view from sitting in the pool was of the valley, Hurinui River and snow-capped mountains. It was one of those pinch-yourself-is-this-real moments.

Holcim Wine Tour

We had a lovely weekend last weekend on Blaine's company's wine tour through Waipara Valley. We invited a few friends along since there were extra seats. Pictured from left to right: Me, Jonny, Una, Cat, Rebecca, Esther and Blaine. We had a grand time: stopped at 3 wineries for tastings, ate a BBQ lunch at Waipara Hotel and ended with a game of pool at a local pub before heading home. I am so glad it is turning to spring weather and we have more fun activities to do. Sheryl Crow and John Mellancamp are putting on a big concert in December in Waipara Valley at Mudhouse Winery which we are hoping to attend. We are trying to cram as much fun in before we have to leave this place!

Well Folks, We're Coming Home

It is truly official...Blaine and I have both put our 8 week notices in (we are such nice guys we give 4x the required amount!) and we are starting the process for shifting back to the US of A! But don't get your hopes up so fast--you won't see our shining faces back for Christmas--we are going on a 2 month journey through the jungles of Southeast Asia! March will be our ETA for Stateside. Throw a dart at a map and that's where we might be living when we get home b/c Blaine's job is up in the air.
As you can see from the picture above...we are trying to squeeze every last drop of fun out of this place before we leave. We were dice for Halloween (don't know why I had to explain) but Halloween is new to New Zealand and when we walked in the party I don't think anyone knew why we were dice. They still think that dress up for Halloween has to be scary...so everyone else was goblins, witches, and ghosts (just coincidence that the singular from of dice is die?). Oh well...leave it up to us to teach this place about American holidays such as Thanksgiving, Halloween, 4th of July, etc. What are they going to do here without us???!!!

the broomes and tottys unite.

we had a great time with ben and meri around the south island! more pictures to come!

Ben and Meri are coming!!!

(sorry this is such a little photo...I am doing this at work)

We are so excited to have my brother and his wife on their way to New Zealand!

Great news--Meri passed her daunting CRNA board exams!!!!

Now they will be able to relax and have fun with us!

We are going to do the South Island in a counter-clockwise direction...and it should be fun to do some hikes, biking, camping and who knows what else with them.

We can't wait.

And this is the perfect time of year to come because Spring is springing...and the weather is warming up and the tourists are not swarming in yet.

Watch this space for pictures to come of our adventures...

Here is a list of all the people that have visited us while we've lived here over the past 2 years:

Mom (our 1st visitor!)

Mr. Blaine, Mrs. Janie and Grandmother T (she was our oldest visitor!)

Melissa S. Galbraith and Michelle Bloch (our blondest visitors)

Matt Broome (our only cousin visitor)

Laurel Blissett and Kellye B. Summerhill (our brunettest visitors)

Bryan and Wendy Frady (our most humorous vistors)

and now

Ben and Meri!

Pretty good for 2 years and 10,000 miles away!

SNOW DAY!!

We had a fun Saturday snow skiing with friends at Mt. Hutt. It is about 1 1/2 hours drive from our house (better than the 24 hours to Colorado from MS). They had received 40 cm of fresh powder over the last few days, so it was great skiing but hard work! Blaine and I will admit that we took a few tumbles. I only had one beginner skiier knock me down as he got off the lift for his 1st time! The feeling of dread begins when you are on the lift and the person next to you tells his friend "o.k. now let me explain to you how to get off this lift...you hold your poles in one hand..."! I knew I was doomed and even with a headstart he still managed to put his skiis on top of mine. Oh well.

It was one of those days that made us feel like we never want to leave New Zealand.

Feeding lambs!

O.K. there is a disclaimer with this video...Graeme named his first few lambs that were born, not me. These were two of the runts who need special colostrum fed to them throughout the day. They are too cute and they follow Graeme b/c they think he is their Mama (he makes baa-baa noises and they follow behind him as he leads them to their pen). I told him he was like Noah. The littlest lamb has gimp legs but they think he will live.

(this picture is taken from a few weeks ago)

Right now I am lying in bed with my electric blanket on high watching big white snowflakes the size of your nose falling and thinking several things:

1. Wow I am glad I don't have to go to work today
2. I bet this ain't happening in Mississippi
3. I love wireless internet
4. Thank God for electricity
5. Snow makes everything so quiet
6. It sure feels like Christmas

P.S. Ben and Meri...pack your ski clothes.

Winter blues--we are both over all the cold weather and looking forward to summer! We did get a warm day and went on a walk to Taylor's Mistake (photo above). Blaine has gotten his first ski day in with his work crew on Sunday. I have been in Adelaide, Australia for the past week at a cardiology conference which was fun. I didn't get to see as much of the city as I wanted to but we had a fun group of doctors and nurses to hang out with. The only bad part of the trip was losing my wallet in the Sydney airport. But thank the Lord I found it! Well, some honest, kind soul turned it in (as it must have fallen out of my bag on the inter-terminal shuttle bus). So, the New South Wales Police could stop their full-time search and rescue for my wallet!!! Now we get to wait on the replacement credit cards...sorry for the trouble Citibank!

ANDRA IS HERE!!!

Megs & Sam (our good friends in NZ) had their precious daughter, Andra Rose on Saturday. She weighed 8.4 lbs. Notice her booties? She is a State fan already!!! Welcome to the world, Andra!

This is what I arrived home to in New Zealand after 3 weeks in the hot Mississippi summer. I started unpacking and before putting away my swimsuit I decided to get Blaine to take a picture of my 4th of July experience! Wow, my body was in shock from the dramatic change of environment.
It was a great trip home full of laying on the beach, catching up with friends, celebrating the wedding of Jim and Melissa Shelton Galbraith, hanging with the fam, etc. There is just never enough time to see everyone and do everything.
I had one day off before heading back to work and I will admit the jet lag caused me to be a below-par employee. Blaine read in a magazine that it should take the body 5 days to recover from jet lag but I am on day 8 and still feeling it.
Last night we met some friends to watch the Rugby Tri-Nations tournament where the NZ All Blacks played the S. African Springboks. Unfortunately NZ lost but it was a really good game.
Exciting news: My brother, Ben, and his wife Meri are coming to visit us for 2 weeks at the end of September!!!! We are so pumped!

the birthday boy!!

27 and counting...

sorry I've missed it but I promise to be there next year

party hard.

Ainslee Anne Everett

9lbs 12 oz

that is all the info I have so far

because she is only 4 hours old!

Congratulations Courtney and Jamie

Ada Grace will be such a good big sister

Wendy and Bryan arrive...and leave.

We have had a wonderful time with our friends Bryan and Wendy who came all the way from N.Carolina to visit us and tour New Zealand! We spent last weekend with them on the West Coast and hiked on Franz Joseph glacier. We stayed in a tiny beach town named Okarito. Bryan is a marvelous chef so Blaine requested for him to make spaghetti and meatballs which he has fixed for us before. We enjoyed many incredible meals with them (eating seemed to be the theme of the 2 weeks!) Thai, Indian, green-lipped mussels, lamb chops, fish n' chips, etc.

Wendy just graduated nursing school and won the achievement award from the instructors, so of course we had to celebrate her success! She gets the pleasure of studying for the NCLEX now!!! We miss you two already!!!

Ketchup

• Ketchup is the most widely used condiment in the United States. Ketchup can be found in 97% of all kitchens--a showing matched only by salt, pepper, and sugar.


• H.L. Heinz is the king of Ketchup, claiming 56.7% of the ketchup market in 1994.


• Children under the age of 13 consume 50% more ketchup than people in other age groups.


• Ice cream makers Baskin Robbins tried Ketchup Ice Cream. They refer to it as the only vegetable flavored ice cream they ever made. After making several gallons of the stuff, they soon realized it would not sell...


• That Ketchup is great for restoring the glow to copper pots and pans? The acid in the ketchup recipe helps to remove the tarnish and bring out the shine.

You now have your fill of random facts about ketchup, Blaine's favourite condiment. He even puts ketchup on macaroni and cheese! Yuck. Luckily we don't have to import this item...but if I don't have a spare in the cabinet at all times then you'd think the world was ending.

For those of you who know how much I love peanut butter.... People here in New Zealand don't understand. They eat Marmite, not peanut butter. So I have to import my favorite condiment/staple into this forsaken country. The next post will be about Blaine's favorite condiment...can anyone guess it??!!

what a wonderful link...

http://www.peanutbutterlovers.com/

I have been sick with a sinus infection (vacation is apparently bad for you), so I have had time to sort through all 500 photos from our Australia trip and only give you the best to view!!
Beware: you could possibly get an overload of kangaroos and koala bears!!!! Don't say I didn't warn you.
The wedding was 2 friends of ours...Katy and Andy, who used to live by us at our old apartment. It was held at a winery outside of Melbourne with an outdoor ceremony and sit down dinner reception. We left Melbourne for a few days to do the Great Ocean Road where many of Australia's famous surfing beaches are and this is where we saw kangaroos and koala bears in the wild! We then spent 4 days in Sydney and had relaxing days on the beach, out on ferry rides and at the Featherdale wildlife park. We even met a couple from Georgia in Sydney and had breakfast at (you got it!) McDonald's! Blaine and I were walking on the sidewalk when we heard one of the strongest Southern accents ever! You can't just walk away, so we had to introduce ourselves and find out exactly where they were from! After leaving them Blaine talked like a hick for a good half an hour...so impressionable!

Here's the link:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0EZsWLlq4ZMXiA&notag=1

Hello All! It has been awhile since we posted. We hiked one of the Great Walks over Easter weekend, what an amazing way to spend an Easter! We were home for 2 days after the hike and flew to Australia for some friends' wedding in Melbourne and then visited Sydney as well. So, it is hard getting back into the swing of things after having such a long break! We wanted to share photos from the Routeburn hike b/c it is some of the most amazing scenery we've ever seen and we had so much fun with our camera. There are quite a lot of photos, so you might have to skim over them if you don't have much time...but I promise you won't be disappointed in what an amazing place this was! We will post pics from Australia hopefully later in the week.
Here is the link:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0EZsWLlq4ZMXdw&notag=1

Conkers, anyone?

Yesterday I had one of the most fun days in my research job (which says a lot about my job). One of my co-workers from North England brought a bag of chestnuts with holes drilled through them for us to play a game called Conkers. You tie a shoestring through the chestnut and then take turns trying to hit your opponents chestnut which they hold dangling in the air. There is not much strategy and not a lot of rules but it is a very addictive game. The goal is to crack your opponent's conker and send it flying off the string. There are definitely different techniques of how to catapult your conker towards the 'enemy' and it takes a good deal of hand-to-eye coordination (which I have very little of). Duncan (the guy who taught us the game) wants me to be the 'pin-up model' for Conkers (just like Anna Kournikova is for tennis) and introduce America to the game.

So here is the rules of Conkers and the history behind the game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers

Quiz:

1. If your chestnut which is a 'twoer' beats another chestnut which is a 'twoer' what is your chestnut called?

2. What is the other name for a chestnut in America?

3. Who was the first lady to win the World Conker Championship?

Congrats, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Wesley Jackson!!!

Summer Fun!

Mississippi Girls--Kellye and Laurel visit us!!!
This is a cricket bowler (pitcher), batter and umpire
It was Sam's birthday!!! We had a fun 7 hours celebrating at the cricket game

We have had such a great summer in Christchurch...great weather and lots of activities. Kellye (Chi-O friend) and her friend Laurel (who I've known through Kellye) came to visit NZ for 2 weeks and travelled around the South Island for a week and visited Auckland. I taught them how to drive on the left side of the road for a total of 1 1/2 hours before unleashing them to drive on their own! They did well but I do admit I felt very nervous for them and the people they would be with on the road. There are just so many different traffic rules, lots of round-abouts (even 2 lane round-abouts), the blinker is on the opposite side, etc. They had a good time and for the most part good weather. We loved showing them around Christchurch and having Southern accents in our house!!!!

I went to my first cricket game (Blaine's second game) on Sam's birthday last Saturday. It was a One Day test match and got rained out after 7 hours (would have lasted around 9)!!! I do like sports for the most part but 7 hours of any type of athletics is too much!! New Zealand ended up being declared the winner over England so that was the good news!

We have several trips planned for March. We hike the Routeburn Track (one of the Great Walks of NZ) over Easter weekend then the next weekend go to Austalia (Melbourne/Sydney/Great Ocean Road) for a wedding/vacation! We are very excited about our adventures upcoming!

Today one of our very best friends, Wesley Jackson married Audrey Gole!!! We were so sad to have missed it! They are off to Cabo for their honeymoon! Yea!

Inside Cave Stream

sorry I am just now posting pics of the inside of the cave we went exploring like a month ago. they are pretty self-explanatory!

Don't we look so hard-core?

Weekend in Wellington

Cable Car and Sea/City View

Parliament Building

Cool 'floating' ball in Civic Square

Rare 'Stich Bird' we sighted in the Karori Bird Sanctuary

We had a great time in Wellington this past weekend to celebrate my birthday! We caught a flight up after work on Friday afternoon (only a 45 minute flight) and stayed at a hotel downtown. Saturday morning we took a cable car up to an overlook and walked back down to the city through the botanical gardens and city cemetery (Blaine loves cemeteries...I know it's weird). We had lunch on Lambton Quay (pronounced 'key') and toured the Parliament to learn more about NZ government. In the afternoon, after a nap of course, we took a bus out to the Karori Bird Sanctuary just 10 minutes from the city. It was such a great experience, we felt like we were going too late in the day but it ended up being the best time for bird activity. We saw many rare birds that are only on off shore islands and native to New Zealand. Blaine and I enjoyed the challenge of photographing these birds with our zoom lens; it gave us a much greater respect for wildlife photographers. We had a lovely dinner at a tiny Italian restaurant. Sunday we had brunch at Mother's Kitchen and headed to the Te Papa Museum (another thing Blaine likes is museums...not as weird as cemeteries). This is a world-recognized museum of New Zealand history and culture...very well done, interactive and diverse. We pretty much spent all day there, with a break to have lunch with my friend Emilie (my French friend who used to work in CCU with me) and her husband and 2 kids at a nearby French bistro then toured their home with a seaview. All in all it was a very enjoyable weekend!

Castle Hill/Cave Stream

It has really been awhile since we posted last. We have been busy at work and have only taken 1 weekend trip since we've been back. These are a few of the photos from our weekend away...only a day trip to Arthur's Pass to go to Cave Stream. Hard to explain but you dress in warm clothes (wetsuit optional) and put a headlamp on your head...you wade into the icey river and spelunk your way against the current through the cave. There are waterfalls you climb up, gorgeous rock formations, beautiful calm pools, and side hallways to explore...really different and neat. The water was crystal clear and very tempting to drink! At the end (well actually the beginning of the cave) there is a big waterfall and you climb up metal rungs (man-made, ha) and shimmy under a rock overhang holding onto a chain to get out. Out into the bright sunshine after being in a pitch black dark cave for an hour!
Afterwards we drove about 1 mile and went to Castle Hill...a hill with lots of random, enormous boulders. I think we were 4 of the only people not going to rock climb/go bouldering (which is actually a sport).
I will post some more pictures...we didn't take our camera in the cave so I will have to get Jonny or Cat's pictures of inside.

Back to Work


Kate faking a phone call…she changed out of her nursing hat and clunky white shoes for this photo.

Me slaving away after 5pm (overtime)…and no that isn’t the gamecast of the LSU vs. Ohio State game on the screen.

I don't know why everyone has a problem with me liking Doritos.


After 3 weeks off and copious (clap…clap) amounts of fried food, fast food, rich southern cooking, grease, wild game, and Doritos, we finally had to come back to do our jobs before things fell apart. After all, neither of our jobs can handle us being away too long. So, now that we are back into a routine lifestyle; we would like to thank everyone for the adventure we like to call, “A Holiday with Family and Friends”. We got to see almost everyone on our list, and the rest we got to talk to over the phone. Thank y’all for making time available for us and sitting through multiple repetitive stories about how “different” the Kiwi way of life is. Christmas and New Year’s felt like it was supposed to feel with decorations, cold weather, and entirely too much shopping; and, not too much has changed since we have been gone – others may argue this. So, thanks.

We thought we would post a picture or two of us working, because no one believes that we do work based on blog photos. So, one post of our workplace should suffice, and now the rest of the pictures will most likely go back to our weekend trips. And, if anyone still wants to try a holiday away from home, our door is always open…..seriously….any holiday, even Confederate Memorial Day - I still have a few friends who get that one off.

Hello! We are back home safe and sound (with our luggage thankfully). As I type Blaine is out on our deck pruning our grapevine b/c it is overgrowing our bedroom window! It is about 80 degrees here, so strange to come from winter to summer. Our flights were o.k. The only real hardship was sitting on the runway for 5 hours in L.A. before beginning our 13 hour overseas leg. With all the bad weather in California, L.A. airport was very crowded and we had to sit in line to take off for many hours.
We arrived to some very bad news: Jonny's dad had a stroke 2 days before and is in ICU. The good news is that he is making some good recovery and is now able to walk with some assistance. Please pray for him and his family, for a speedy recover.
We will post some pictures from our trip to Mississippi when we get over our jetlag. Thanks to all our family and friends for all the visits, meals, gifts, and time you invested in us while we were home. It was my favorite Christmas and I have many treasured memories!