December happenings

The month of December has felt quite busy for us in comparison to the previous months of lockdown. Between my work, Tamara's two shifts a week in the Emergency Department, hanging out with friends, Christmas parties, and our Christmas holiday trip, December has felt pleasantly full. I get almost 2 weeks off from work, from Dec. 21 to Jan. 5, and Tamara didn't have to work between Dec. 20 and Dec. 31, so we enjoyed some time together as a family before we left for our holiday trip on Christmas Eve. During those days before we left, we visited the Hamilton Zoo, had a family Christmas day, and packed up for our trip. The Hamilton Zoo was a nice little zoo, although it felt small; Ralph especially liked watching the monkeys playing and petting the donkeys. He also thought the giraffes were pretty cool - they were getting fed while we were there - and thought the ostrich that came up to the fence was very funny. Ralph also likes his scooter that we got him for Christmas, although he's still figuring out how to ride it himself and generally prefers to have us pull/push us around on it. Our garden is also doing quite well - we had a massive radish harvest (ever tried sauteed radishes with radish greens? Not bad with some lemon juice, oil, salt/pepper, spices), are enjoying a large amount of lettuce and spinach, and just harvested almost a pound of green beans (.4 kg) and the first tomatoes of what's looking like a bumper crop.

For our Christmas holiday trip, we decided to do a road trip down to the South Island (SI) so we could experience more of NZ (more than we would experience by flying, plus much easier to drive in many ways with how much stuff you need to bring for a baby...). However, we got started late on planning and the only tickets left for the ferry between the NI and SI were on Christmas Day. Since it's a ~7 hour drive from Hamilton where we live to Wellington, where the ferry departs to the SI, we decided to drive down on Christmas Eve and spend the night. We stopped along the way at Lake Taupo for lunch and to admire the view, and again in a small town a couple hours down the road so Ralph could stretch his legs at a playground. We were thankful to be able to stay with the aunt and uncle of some friends from church; they live on a small farm in the mountains in Upper Hutt, near Wellington. We took the ferry on Christmas Day, a 3+-hour ride across Cook Strait, to Picton, on the SI. It was quite a fun experience (minus a little seasickness on my part), as they had lots of space to spread out, a magician to entertain the children, and food options to keep our stomachs full. From Picton, it was a 4.5 hour drive to where we were staying in a studio motel unit at a holiday park in Greymouth, on the west coast. We stayed there until Dec. 30, when we repeated the process in reverse, staying the night in Wellington before driving home Dec. 31. The drive to/from our holiday spot was very beautiful, through the rolling hills of the upper NI, past Lake Taupo, along the desert highway with views of Tongariro (active volcano), through the mountains around Wellington, then through the mountains and along the rivers of the SI to Greymouth. 

Unfortunately, the weather during our time in Greymouth took after the name of the city - it was grey and wet! It rained all afternoon/evening the day after we arrived (Sunday), all day Monday, all morning Tuesday, and all morning Wednesday, and we left Thursday morning. Despite that, we enjoyed our stay; our holiday park was a 3 minute walk from the beach, so we enjoyed watching sunsets on the beach and walking along it. It's quite a pebbly beach on most of the west coast, so it wasn't great for swimming, but it was quite pretty nonetheless. We did a couple of hikes in the rain, drove up the coast to Pancake Rocks, enjoyed a few meals out (including at Monteith's Brewery, the oldest brewery in NZ - established in 1868!), and played on the large, fancy playground at the holiday park. Ralph especially enjoyed the giant bouncy pillow on the playground, putting his new cars that he got for Christmas from family and friends down the slide, and watching the older kids run around and do flips on the bouncy pillow.

We were able to video in to see my family on Dec. 26 to celebrate Christmas a little with them, which was really fun. Although we had a fun time as a family on our trip and enjoyed the beautiful scenery and seeing more of NZ, it was hard not to be able to be with our family this year for Christmas. It felt especially sad for me, as I've never previously missed a year of being with my family around Christmas. For Tamara, having lived in Australia for 12 years when she was younger, it was more normal, although still sad. My residency visa is being processed, so Lord willing we will be able to travel outside of NZ in 2022 to see family/friends, at least in Australia if not also in the US.

In 2022, we are also looking forward to welcoming a new member into our family! We are thankful for our baby Pebble, who is due in early July 2022.

Happy New Year to all!

-Stephen

Ralph watching the ostrich at the zoo

Our lunch stop on Lake Taupo on our drive down to Wellington

From our first day in Greymouth (it was the nicest weather we had all week...)

One of the sunsets we enjoyed on the beach

The view from a hike we did, looking over the Grey River towards Greymouth (located in the Grey Valley, aptly enough...)

In our rain gear at a waterfall we hiked to another day

The view along the coast at sunset another day

Pancake Rocks - amazing rock formations we visited!

We weren't as prepared for the rain at Pancake Rocks, thus Ralph's rain jacket-cocoon

Ralph loved riding on the twin bike/car at the holiday park

Some of the amazing desert scenery on the North Island from our drive - who even knew there was a desert in New Zealand??

One of the amazing mountain/river views from the South Island during our drive

The weather was beautiful during our ferry ride back to Wellington!