Pumpkin Party '09, originally uploaded by Lbc42.

If you'd like to view them! [check 'em out]

Yay pumpkin party!!, originally uploaded by Lbc42.

Thanks to all who came out and to those that could not make it, we missed you!

This is what I did in the last hour..., originally uploaded by Lbc42.

I put up all of our cake toppers on the wall! Why waste how awesome they are on just one day?

I'll try and post some pictures of the trip soon!

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In case you were unsure how it is done, originally uploaded by Lbc42.

I love that there are step by step instructions, you know, just in
case this all was confusing.

Trust me.

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Yesterday morning we got up when it was still dark to go to Milford sound, which is in Fiordlands national park. We went on a glass-topped bus for 5 hours, stopping to do short walks to cool stuff. I believe truely that lord of the rings was filmed here. We got to the sound and took a 1.5 hour cruise out to the Tasman sea and back. At one point, they pulled the boat right up to the waterfall and got us all soaked! We also crossed the 45th parallel, which is officially the mist south that I have ever been! If I could only get a few more degrees south, I could touch Antarctica!

The way home was rather exciting - we were supposed to get a fixed wing plane ride of the area, but there was clouds and rain so it got cancelled, so we upgraded to a helicopter ride (which took 40 mins rather than 5 hours back on the bus). The heli took us up into the nooks and crannies of the mountains that we had passed on the way and even landed up on a snowpack at the top of one of the mountains, were we popped out, took some pics, tromped around getting soaked and frozen because we were not prepared to be in snow, and then popped back in to go look for llama, which we did not find, but we did see sheep (surprise!).

We got home, ate some good dinner, walked around downtown and came to the b&b for an early crash-out. Today we are just re-packing, showering and getting to Queenstown airport for a mid-day flight to Auckland for a night before we leave for home tomorrow.

New Zealand is awesome and recommended for all, although I would suggest more like 3 weeks if you want to not be totally worn out by the end. I'd love to come back soon and do all the stuff that we missed because we were powering through. Or maybe 2 trips - one for each island.

Anyway, I am homeward bound.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V67YXb86VmU

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After some quick Internet time on a foreign laptop in the lobby, we headed to WOW, which is the world of wearable art and car museum. It is one of the coolest museums I have ever been to and now one of my life-goals is to go to the WOW catwalk show (which we missed for this year by mere days) and even maybe someday have an entry!

We then drove across the top of the south island to the west coast where we looked at some pillow rocks, which were cool and saw what we think were a mamma and 2 baby kea birds. They are adorable. After a very long drive, we are finally at a VERY nice B&B (thanks Chris!) outside if a town called Ross before we head to glacier country and Queenstown tomorrow. The following day we will go to fiordlabds and do a bus ride/2 hour cruise/small prop plane tour of the Milford sound region. After that we head back to Aukland for one more day and then time travel back home, somehow arriving before we left.

I have high hopes fir this plane ride as the last one was so successful. I hope it goes well! More pics and updates as I get Internet!

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I think ship travel is definetly for me. The many cruises that I have been on have all been great and I'd much rather travel this way than by plane, even if it does take 4x as long to get there. I'd love to take a trip someday that was entirely by ship and rail and see what it was like to travel back in the day. I'll add that to my bucket list and get back to the line item that I am doing right now...

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Oh and on the way we saw ostriches so we stopped to take a picture. This gigantic male came over to us and started doing this dance where he wiggled back and forth and put his wings out and then bashed his head onto either side of his body. We later learned from the bird sanctuary guy that the ostrich was hitting on us and if there hadn't been a fence between us, I might be with egg right now.

The drive to Wellington pretty much let us see the whole center of the north Island. It is really really beautiful here. Everything is effervescent green and there are sheep and goats and cows on every hillside. They all look very happy and fat. There's a bunch of llama farms here too, with really pretty animals. It was a really long day of driving, but well worth it to see the countryside.

Today we are going on the interislander ferry to the south Island to a place called Nelson, that everyone is on about. It is supposedly a wonderful art community and lots of scenes from LOTR were filmed there, including the prancing pony. We arenot totally sure what we will do there but people keep screaming "Sunset Bay" at us, so I am suspecting that we might show up there at some point.

Pictures to follow...

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I can't even describe how beautiful that is.

It is pitch back in there and it feels like you are looking at the milky way for the first time.

I have no pics in there because they are not allowed, but I took a large number in the allowed parts of the caves with stalactites and stalagmites, which I will post when I get home.

We had a lovely dinner and are now at a cute B&B close to the caves. I tried venison for the first time and had a really good fillet. I don't think it is my first choice of red meat, but I ate it all so I guess that counts for something.

If I am right, tomorrow is Tuesday for us, and we are gonna go check out kiwi birds and then head down to Wellington to see what there is to see there. So far, New Zealand is as beautiful as you would expect. I'll try and take some pics with my phone tomorrow and post them to show you all.

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I sort of expected today to be a crash day, but since we got at least some sleep on the plane, we decided to head down to the main street and see what was happening there. We found a very large cache of Asian food places and had a fairly decent lunch.

We then wandered over to a building which looks remarkably like the Space needle and found that at 220 meters up, it us the highest observation tower in the southern hemisphere. Who could say no to that? They have some sort of controlled jump from the top that is not bungee jumping, but mire like base jumping with a harness that slows you as you get to the bottom, so we sipped our cafe drinks, which www some of the coolest looking drinks that I have ever been served from a coffee bar, and watched people scream their way down 40 stories for a while.

We had a nice walk through the main shopping area and then through a lovely park and back for a hit tub and a swim, then dinner that we had a scare at thanks to me taking a bite out of a shrimp flavored cracker (I took 2 benadryl and it was only flavoring and a tiny bite so I got away with hives and major itchyness all night - all is well).

Anyway, hope you all had a nice weekend, I'll post up some pics I took as well below!

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The sky tower in Auckland, originally uploaded by Lbc42.

We had a great time hanging out at the top. The wires are used to
Guide the jumpers to the bottom.

Beautiful view from Albert Park across from our hotel, originally uploaded by Lbc42.

In Auckland, NZ.

Zorak came over for a visit, originally uploaded by Lbc42.

This thing is at least 5 inches long on the front guest room window of
the house. We have 2 inch wide blinds if that gives you a relative
comparison. Crazy!!!