Photos & Goodbye

Grandpa and Nana are flying home tomorrow morning.... Wow, their visit is over. It has been a very special time and we are all so very thankful they were able to come for such a wonderful visit.

Their flight is at 7am so they would need to be at the airport at 4am. Everyone agreed that it was silly to have to leave here by 3am, so they booked into a motel for in town for tonight (just 5 min from the airport).

Because we would be in town I phoned and asked if it was possible for us to view the photos that were taken 2 weeks back. This was the "free" one that they gave....
and Grandpa bought us each this photo of the girls. A really lovely photo of them.
We then took them out for a meal at a lovely restaurant - a goodbye meal as well as an early birthday meal for Grandpa. Nana had a present for each of the girls to unwrap in the car as we took them to the motel and then we had a difficult goodbye.
We look forward to chatting with them again next Wednesday on Skype. It already means so much more to them when they see photos of the girls as they now know more of the character that is behind the face. What wonderful memories have been made over the last month.

DAY 7

We had planned to spend a couple of hours at the camping site this morning as he has a lot of "farm animals" that he feeds each morning (and afternoon). The highlight for us was to see the beautiful little wallaby. Rachel got to give him his milk. It was really very sweet.
Anther special animal was this golden possum.
He did have the more "normal" things like turtles, chickens, pigs, rabbits and Guinea pigs (just to name a few). But as I had already taken over 170 photos, my camera was getting very full and I had to choose photos sparingly.
Then we saw another wallaby - this one a little older.
Ruth enjoyed sitting on the donkey's back...

and Hannah made it very clear that she wanted a go too.
The family enjoying a very friendly dear.

You loose a bit of the size of this animal with these photos. We have many dear around our home (farmed - not wild) but have never been this close. It was amazing to see how tall they stand. He was so friendly and really a very beautiful animal.

Another wallaby - it was really nice for us to see these for the first time. Apparently there are wild wallabies in the area that will come "visiting".

And we did get to see a normal possum too.
There are also a lot of wild possums in this area (as well as in our own) but we have never seen one. Rachel has perhaps seen one running across the garden once or twice, so it was nice to get a good look at one.
We headed up to Timaru for lunch and then took the inland scenic route back to Christchurch. It rained after lunch, so it was not great for photos.

We traveled 360km today (including the trip home). And surprisingly the unpacking went really quickly. It makes a big difference when the adults outnumber the children :-)

In total we traveled around 2,200km in the week. Here is the summary map of our week. It gives you a bit of an idea of how much we got to see.

We had an amazing holiday and were so very glad we had planned it and for all that we got to see and experience.
"Thank you Lord for so many wonderful blessings"

DAY 6

This morning we headed out onto the peninsula. We took the high scenic road on the way out and really enjoyed the beauty of it all. We came back along the road that is right next to the harbour - the water literally a couple of meters from the car.
We enjoyed most of the morning walking around Larnach Castle. It was very beautiful but once again no photos were allowed to be taken in side (you will have to come check it out for yourself). We also learnt a lot about it all as they had a lovely "children's guide" that Rachel was given which had lots of interesting information in.
We could at least take a photo from the turret.

So we got a nice shot of some of the gardens. We were given maps of the many gardens around the castle but we did not get to walk around all that much of it. It was very beautiful though.

And the view out over the Harbour.

After lunch we headed out to the tip of the peninsula where the Royal Albatross Centre is. It was incredibly windy and the "tour" would be too long and too expensive so we just enjoyed a time of walking around the centre and watching some of the many videos that they had going and reading up about some of the information that was all over the place (on the Albatross as well as other wildlife in the area).

They are such amazing birds.

We then headed up to Waimate where we had dinner and stayed over. Ruth found Nana's socks and shoes and tried them of for size.

We finally worked out a way of not worrying about Hannah falling down the steps at the van's door. She had so much fun walking around the van.

We traveled around 240km today (including the trip out on the peninsula).

DAY 5

Today we headed from Gore towards Dunedin. Thankfully there was not too much traveling to do so we could stop for morning tea and the girls could stretch their legs. Hannah's walking has gotten better every week and it is so fun to see her toddling everywhere.

Ruth loved this slide but it was very fast and she ended up flying off the bottom every time. We had to change her completely before we hit the road again. :-)
Another day of beautiful scenery to enjoy.

And again Rachel was so excited to see the sea. We took the scenic route from Milton into Dunedin which was really pretty along the coast.

The holiday park in Dunedin was by far the best park of the whole trip. The facilities were great, the sites where great - it was just nice in every way. We arrived in Dunedin in time to have lunch and then enjoy the afternoon around town.

Our first stop was Cadbury World. That mountain behind them is thousands of small crunchie bars.

They had a couple of musical moving displays which the girls really enjoyed.

And then we did a shortened tour through the factory (shorter because the factory does not work on weekends - but you get to see some of it and learn a lot about it all). We were not allowed to take cameras into the factory but were allowed to take a photo in this lovely old delivery vehicle.

At the start of the tour they gave us each a packet of chocolates and showed us a very interesting video about the history of Cadbury's Chocolate in New Zealand.
We bought a lovely chocolate smelling fridge magnet that looks like a few peaces of chocolate (with a bite taken out of the one corner) and a bit of chocolate. During the tour she had told us the biggest bar that is sold is 12kg - and when we got back to the shop we forgot to ask about it. Boy would Brendon have LOVED to have 12kg of chocolate..... :-)

Then we headed to the "Steepest Street in the World" and decided we had to give it a try.

Nana decided to stay at the bottom, Ruth was in the stroller and Hannah in the back pack. It was a hard climb but very rewarding to reach the top.

They even have a bench (which the camera is on) and a water fountain at the top (which was a VERY clever idea). When we got down we went to the shop and got our certificate for our climb.

This gives you a bit of an idea of how steep it is, but you still can't see the really steep bit. I must also mention that Brendon ran up the last 10 to 15 meters. And it was quite a job coming down with that stroller too. But a lot of fun and we are glad we got to do it. A very good testimony too to Grandpa's knee replacements. Well done Grandpa.

So here is the info for those who are interested in specifics.

We were blessed with another lovely day. It did drizzle a bit in the day but not a lot. It was just enough to give us this magnificent rainbow to see. We could see the entire bow and it was just beautiful. A friend had told me before about special things that I had never noticed before and so it was nice to see all that I had learnt. (Note the sky is lighter under the rainbow than above. Also that there is another rainbow above the main one and that the colours are inverted.)
We enjoyed lovely fish and chips for dinner and enjoyed a game of rugby on the TV before getting the girls in bed. It was another lovely day.
Only 170km today. A beautiful and fun day.

DAY 4

The highlight for today was our ferry trip on Milford Sounds (which is actually a Fjord). It had been raining the whole night and I was praying that the Lord would give us good weather for the trip. Well, He answered those prayers even though it was not what we had thought would be the best answer (details to follow).

It warmed up nicely (as you can see - no jackets) and stopped raining for our trip out.
Apparently the day before there were only 2 waterfalls to be seen on the entire trip. Well, with all that WONDERFUL RAIN the night before, we were blessed with hundreds of waterfalls to see.
The whole trip was just MAGNIFICENT. I have struggled to get this day's photos up because they are so disappointing.... I can't describe the absolute beauty that we got to see.
These photos are tiny little glimpses of what was truly amazing.

We could even get to enjoy the sights from the deck of the ferry for the ride out. It was a little windy so we all put jackets on.

Proof that Grandpa and Nana were with us. Also a little glimpse of the beauty of this fjord.

There are some waterfalls were they take the ferry up nice and close. Ruth and Hannah LOVED this and Hannah kept reaching out for the water (even though she was getting sprayed). They both really love water and enjoyed this experience (along with the rest of us).

Later we went up even closer to a huge waterfall and only Brendon, Ruth and myself stayed on deck (I think there was only 1 or 2 other passengers who stayed up). We got soaked (as expected) but it was an experience to remember. Rachel had decided at the last minute that she would also like to join us but there were no volunteers to bring her up (it was quite windy so close up to so much falling water).

Then Nana headed back to the wharf while the rest of us.....

went to the underwater observatory. This is a "floating building" which is attached to the side of the fjord by a few movable supports (so that it does not float away) and they have an under water observatory which is 8 meters underwater.

We had a little wait as there were other ferries with passengers wanting to join us on this experience. So the girls got to eat some apple and we got to dry our soaking wet jackets at their big heater.

Then down we went. There were a lot of fish as well as beautiful sea urchins and anemones ect. Ruth spotted this fish which was rather well camouflaged.

So it was a round room with the stairs coming down the middle. Around the observatory (just lower than the windows) is a shelf that is covered in sea plants. This encourages the fish to come and live and feed around the observatory and we learnt so much on our time here.

Poor Hannah was getting tiered and hungry though.... It had been a long morning for her.

She enjoyed a biscuit and a sit on Grandpa's lap as we headed back to the wharf.

We were so thankful that we had organized to do this trip. It was wonderful.
We had lunch in the camper and then headed off for our days travel.

We traveled only 260km today and reached Gore in time for dinner which was nice.