Oct 26-29 - Labour Weekend continues... (Monday-Thursday) After saying goodbye to the Woods and Sydney, who had to return to Timaru and to school, we headed to Nelson. Wow, were we lucky with the weather. It was sunny all morning, became overcast late morning, and basically rained the rest of the day and night. We drove through Nelson, which looks like a lovely sailing community, and to the World of Wearable Arts (WOW) and Collectible Car Museum. How cool is that to have something for the men and the women:) They were both great museums and wonderful displays of talent. I [View Full Entry]

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Oct 23-25 with the Woods at their home in the Sounds - Queen Charlotte Sound This was a really special weekend for us with our very good friends, the Woods. It was so nice of them to make this trip happen for all of us, only their youngest, Blake, wasn't with us as it was his special weekend in Wellington with his grandparents. Oct 23 - We left Timaru at close to 4pm on Friday with a 6-7 hour drive ahead of us - through some of my most favorite areas of New Zealand, the Kaikoura coast. We made a dinner [View Full Entry]

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Australia - Part II - Melbourne, Phillip Island, and St. Kilda Oct 6-13, 2009 Oct 7 - First day in Melbourne, and Gregg doesn't have to go to his meeting until 1pm so it was his choice of what to do in the morning. He chose the Old Melbourne Gaol. I thought it would be boring, but it was everything but that. We hooked up with a Middle School tour and learned all about Ned Kelly and other Melbourne villians. Graham locked Avery in a cell for 10 minutes before I found him, so he really got a "locked" up feeling. [View Full Entry]

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Oct 3-13, 2009 - Australia Adventure for the second year in a row... This time Victoria! Australia...the land of warmth...not this time around. We had a fabulous trip, but it was cold. The kids got to surf only twice and were really glad we had the wet suits! We also brought all of our tennis racquets with us and played several times - It was more like tennis weather than surfing weather. But in typical Shivers fashion, there was very little down time to actually find time to play tennis or sit at the beach. Oct 3 - Ach, the flights [View Full Entry]

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July 6-12 The long awaited beach vacation! Phuket, ah, the beautiful beaches of Phuket that I had heard so much about nearly 30 years ago in Germany. This was may dream to one day get to Phuket - and here we were! Albeit ALOT more built up and touristy than I expected. Luckily our hotel was in Karon Beach, and not the oh so touristy and infamous Patong Beach. Our hotel was nice, very family oriented. In fact, during our time there we met 2 Timaru families staying at the same hotel! Tan and Dia opted for the more luxurious Hilton [View Full Entry]

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Kanchanaburi - 5-6 July 2009 Sunday - This turned out to be an awesome and memorable get away for all of us. Initially we were going to pack it all in in one day, but the overnight was a perfect solution. None-the-less, we were off to an early start on Sunday morning as we needed to drive 40 minutes south of Bangkok to see the Floating Market in Klong Ton Khem. It was only happening in the morning. It was very colourful, smelly, and hot. It was awesome to see, but all the variety of Thai breakfast foods (hot spicy soup, [View Full Entry]

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This was a day trip from Bangkok. July 3, 2009 Up and out the door early, a big day of sight seeing in store for us! For Tan, Pui, and Greg, this was especially difficult as they did not get back from the airport until around 2 am. Ayuthaya was the Siamese royal capital from 1350 to 1767. Our first stop of the day was just south of Ayuthaya at the Summer Palace, Bang Pa-In. In addition to beautiful buildings, the grounds were lovely and vast. We let the kids hire a golf cart to tool around in while we adults [View Full Entry]

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July 1-12 - Thailand - Wow, the trip of a life time!!! In at least 3 installments... Bangkok - July 2 and 4 Day 1 - We left Timaru on July 1st. Our flight from Christchurch left at 1:30 heading for Bangkok via Sydney. In the Sydney airport we ran into a group from Timaru Boy's High School and a friend of Syd's, Ryan Ammar. They were headed to London also via Bangkok. We had smooth sailing straight through to our destination and arrived with our bags on time. Tan, my Thai friend from Williamsburg, Virginia, met us at the airport [View Full Entry]

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Wellington - June 5-9 A weekend in Wellington! Gregg had booked a conference on "Lean in Healthcare and Improving Patient Flow" and the boys and I thought it would be a good opportunity to tag along. Sydney went to Wellington the weekend before with her drama club to compete at the Sheilagh Wynn Shakespeare Festival. Thirteen girls from Craighead got to spend 3 nights performing, taking workshops and exploring the city. We left Timaru for Christchurch on Friday afternoon and got to see "Stomp" Friday night. Syd had seen it in Wellington the weekend before and had raved about it. It [View Full Entry]

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Queen's Birthday Weekend - May 30-June 1 - Ugh, this is the abbreviated version, as I wrote for an hour and lost it all!! Friday May 29th - Sydney left yesterday for Wellington with her drama group. They are competing in the Sheilah Wynn Shakespeare competition. Gregg and I opted to stick around Timaru Friday night so that Graham could go to Brayden's for a birthday dinner, Avery could go to Blake's birthday party and we could go to Boy"s High to see and hear "The Musical Island Boys", a International award winning Kiwi barbershop group. They were only in their [View Full Entry]

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