Wow, time has flown. It feels like yesterday we did the last blog. Turns out we’ve been through more than half the country since the last blog. We’ll keep this one fairly brief as it could probably go on forever. Back to Rotorua, it decided to rain constantly for four days. In between the rain (and sitting in our car) we did end up doing some fun stuff. The first thing we did was white water rafting down the Kaituna River. For those of you who have rafted the Ottawa River, this wasn’t even comparable. The current down the river is [View Full Entry]

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After filling our bellies with cheesecake and other bad food we started our trek to Paihia in the Bay of Islands. Paihia is pretty much completely tourist country with a small population of only 1500 but expands to something crazy like 30 000 during summer season. We opted out of any tourist activities and settled for a hike to Haruru Falls and caught a passenger ferry to Russel, another small town in the bay of islands. Although these places are great for scuba diving we didn’t find them too useful except for us, except for a nice cold handle of house [View Full Entry]

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Things picked up around the farm for a few weeks as Louise had her gallbladder removed and was in the hospital for a few days. Noel was busy on the farm so Matt and I got to step in and get the kids organized and fed. Louise was home before long, but wasn’t feeling 100% and couldn’t lift anything so we were still busy for a while. This made time fly by and we are now packing up to head out for our 3 month long road trip. We have also just recently changed our flight dates from March 11th, to [View Full Entry]

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It has been a while since we had our last update, its not that we have been really busy, it’s just that we haven’t done anything really crazy. It’s taken this long to accumulate enough info to make it worth a blog. Spring has definitely sprung, the sun shines between clouds and the rain has just been hosing down. When we get a chance on the odd nice day we try to get out for runs and on weekends we still manage to get the odd hike in. The rainy days in between are filled with movies, reading and Robert Harris [View Full Entry]

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A few weekends ago we awoke to a mysterious rhythmic knocking on our door. Although we were expecting this wake up call, it was still the earliest we got up deliberately since adjusting to the time over here. Noel had told us the night before that Jay the chopper pilot would be coming to the farm to do some weed spraying and asked if we would want to check it out. We obviously were interested and jumped at the opportunity. A few paddocks down from the cow shed Jay and his helpers had a truck full of equipment and herbicide next [View Full Entry]

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Things on the farm are finally starting to get into routine. Kids going to school, calves drinking milk. The calving season is coming to an end, and the barns are really starting to fill up. We even have a 'one-a-day' pen of calves that look like balloons after they drink, so they only get fed once a day so they don't drink themselves til death. After this week the majority of calves will be beefy calves and not many of them will be kept . . . death by hammer or to the meat works. If the weather stays nice the [View Full Entry]

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Years later ... the rain stopped. This allowed us to venture to the beach! Although it is still winter we did manage to play catch and Matt even went no-shirt for a while. We haven't made it to any beaches where the no trunks rule is permissible yet (thank goodness), but I can't promise that won't be in a future blog. Don't worry, it will be censored. We filled up the Honda Odyssey with $80 worth of petrol (thats "gas" for you Canadian folk) which is 91 octane, at $1.63/Litre. Winter prices. We headed out east up the curviest of curvy [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday was Matthew's birthday, a big 6 years old. We celebrated the occasion by having some friends and family over for a mini party. We ate way too much food, the kids were crazy and the cake was way too delicious (we probably ate about 1/3 of it). After a long day of chasing the kids around it was nice to sit down and watch a movie with Noel and Louise while the kids were fast asleep. Other than that we haven't been up to much these days. The kids just finished their two week school holiday so Matthew was [View Full Entry]

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Although Auckland was warm and sunny, it seems that the winter in Whangarei is quite wet. The good thing about this is that we havent had any run ins with possums. The bad thing is there is water in our 'gum boots' (rubber boots/wellies). It rained for about 48 hours, non-stop with very strong winds, almost cottage blow-over winds. The winds were actually so strong there are trees downn everywhere, some even taking out power lines. We didnt have power from about 2am until noon, so we all cuddled around the fire inside keeping warm and dry. When the power [View Full Entry]

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So, we made it to New Zealand.. 20 hours of flying, 4 movies, $12 worth of bulk barn, and many scattered hours of sleep later, but we're finally here. We started the countdown when we bought our plane ticket, 99 days ago, and it seems so hard to believe that the day is finally here. We left Tuesday, July 7th from Toronto but when we got here it was Thursday, July 9th. Where did Wednesday go? I'm sure it'll turn up when we return, 8 months from now. The first plane we flew on with Air Canada was an airbus, 3 [View Full Entry]

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