Living with the Kiwis: 1 more month!

So for the weekend updates....last weekend Jacques' mid-year was a lot of fun, with a lot of interesting costumes. There was an old-fashioned-type photo booth for entertainment and yummy buffet of food. Sunday, we went to the rugby, where the NZ All Blacks beat the Australian Wallabies but quite a lot! And we just happened to have really great seats as well! It was a pretty good game. The week was another busy one, and actually had some really nice spring-feeling weather. Lots of playing outside with the kids.

Then on Friday evening, it was off to Rotorua, to Lakes Ranch, for the Tough Guy and Gal Challenge. We stayed right on the site, which was quite convenient in the morning. Especially for showering after the fact. There were 1400+ people participating in the 6k event and about 400 people participating in the 12k (2 lap) event. The people doing 2 laps started about 10 minutes before those of us doing the 1 lap. Jacques started up at the front so he didn't get caught in all the congestion inside the start building. I did it with some of the girls and we were just taking it more casually and started in the middle of the larger pack and ended up getting stuck behind a lot of people at the start. Immediately upon starting you had to run up this VERY steep hill, so most of the traffic ended up walking after a few steps. Anyway, I kind of decided that I should make it my goal not to let Jacques beat me doing 2 laps and me only doing one. I succeeded, but only barely! He passed me right before we got to the finish and wouldn't have even seen me if I didn't say something! We waited for our times and fortunately I did it in 1 hour and 3 min and he did it in 1 hour and 9 min. I did the 6k and he did the 12k...haha, he did come 12th overall for the 12k competitors, though, so really he did really, really well versus me going slowly! 1:09 was the AVERAGE time for the people doing the 6k!

After the race we got cleaned up, put our clothes in garbage bags, and headed off to our next hostel in Rotorua, went in the hot pools, had a nap and then showered and went out to dinner. We knew there was crazy winter weather coming in over the weekend, but thought we may try and head to Whakapapa to ski on Sunday morning before the weather hit. Unfortunately, our hostel was located basically on top of a bar, and right outside our window was extremely loud music through most of the night. We got up at 5:45 and started driving the 2 hrs to the mountain, stopping in Taupo along the way, initially for some coffee. We saw a sign that said the breakfast special (2 eggs, toast and bacon) was $5 so decided to take advantage of that too! The man working inside kept saying we were crazy to be headed to the snow, lots of snow and cold weather were coming....he was right! We got to Whakapapa village at about 8:45 and waited for the next weather report. It was already snowing heavily up the mountain and the road was restricted to 4wd or chains (neither of which we had). We contemplated taking the shuttle up, because although it was snowing, the skiing would have been great! Then we noticed an extremely long line of cars building up at the bottom of the road. There had already been an accident up the road, before the mountain even opened, and the snow was only supposed to get worse. We decided against going up, also because we didn't want to risk being stuck up there overnight (it's happened before). Instead, we decided to drive to Raglan (a beach on the west coast) since I hadn't seen it before and it wasn't actually too bad a day because the weather hadn't come too far north yet. So we woke up in Rotorua, had breakfast in Taupo about an hr away...checked out the snow, actually saw some snowflakes fall in Whakapapa village, had lunch in Raglan, and then dinner back home in Auckland. We traveled just over 900k from Friday night to Sunday night.

I am super excited to head to Sydney on Friday for this coming weekend! Although, it would be really nice to get down and enjoy all this new snow on the mountain Thursday when the storm breaks. The winter weather definitely made it up here by last night! It was sleeting this morning and extremely cold and windy through most of the day. It even snowed a little bit here!! Absolutely insane! That just doesn't happen in Auckland! The kids didn't even quite get it! I stuck my arm out the door and lots of white pieces landed on it!