A Taste of New Zealand

Needless to say our Christmas vacation in New Zealand was everything we hoped for and more! We got to see Jayce's parents again, we went to quite a few beaches, watched movies, took walks, caroled, met fabulous New Zealander's, relaxed, went sailing, had nurf gun wars, ate Pokeno's ice cream, and had yummy taste tests! It was a perfect break. Jayce and I both came back refreshed and ready to jump into second semester. We even got to stay in California for a couple of days after we got back from New Zealand to visit the Waldner's and be there for little Jayden's baby blessing.

We spent our first couple of days in New Zealand just vegging around the house. We went to the lake by their house too, but we didn't want to do too much until the full party had assembled. Jayce's dad was still on the island of Niue when we got there and Lindsey and Josh were fighting through quite the airplane fiasco to reach us in Auckland. There was a lot of wii playing, movie watching, and naps in those first couple of days, which was so nice! I took the opportunity to finish reading Mockingjay, the last book in the Hunger Games series! SO GOOD. Man I love reading. I would have changed the ending a little bit, but I sure was hooked on those books!

Everybody eventually arrived and then the games began! Nothing like a nice game of "capture the dinosaur" to bring a family together!

We went to a few beaches over the course of our stay:

Takapuna Beach was the most visited because it's right by the Porter's house. We took walks along the beach there almost every other night probably. It's so nice because it has a great view of Rangitoto, an old volcano in New Zealand. I collected most of my shells on Takapuna. :-)

How could I possibly pass up the opportunity to take a picture of this? We took a walk on New Year's Day and found this message in the sand:

I don't know the real name of this beach, but for our purposes we called it the "Sand Dollar Beach." We found so many sand dollars here! Most of them were still alive, so we threw them back in, but we kept some to bleach and keep in our collections. It's so crazy to find them because you have to wade out a ways and feel them out under the sand with your feet. Another cool thing about this beach was that at low tide the water was low a ways out until the land dropped off and it suddenly got deep. It made it so that we looked like we were walking on water. :-)

My favorite beach was probably Piha. It's a black sand beach and the waves were huge! If you went too far out you really were risking your life. Closer to shore they were big enough to be fun, but not so big that you were in danger. They have big surf competitions there every year apparently. It was so beautiful!! There was this random mountain in the middle of the beach that you could climb too. Man it was a cool beach.

Heading in to Christmas Day! Of course we had our Christmas Eve dinner:

After a very nice Christmas Eve family devotional we opened our Christmas pajamas! Aren't the boys just so precious? Jayce will probably kill me for posting this particular picture, but he just looks so stinking cute! :-)

Christmas morning we woke up to a hate note from Santa. "Porters: You brats! You left me nothing. -Santa" hahaha, so much for the cookies and milk this year!

Our first official baby outfit! You can already tell it will fit him nicely, huh?

Here are Mom and Dad Porter with their main Christmas present from the kids. Every month until the time that they come home they get to open a package from one of the kids filled with goodies to keep them motivated for their last months in the mission field. Look out for March!

We also celebrated Dad Porter's birthday! We turned his office into a nice cabin diner and gave them some dessert while they watched a slideshow of the mountains and played John Denver music. Below we have him smelling mountain air brought all the way from Utah! (Yes, Jayce and I really did fill the jar with snow before we left so that we could take it out there with us)

One of my favorite days of the trip was spending the day sailing with an adorable family in the Porter's ward. It was so much fun! They took us out to a beautiful island where we ate lunch, played on the beach, and walked around. Then we swam back from the dock to the boat in the harbor and let me tell you what--that's a big step for Sarah Porter! 1. I'm no swimmer so it was pretty physically challenging, and 2. I get so scared of the ocean. The whole time I was trying not to hyperventalate thinking about sharks or anything creepy grabbing me. It was a mental and physical accomplishment!!

Visiting the temple in Hamilton! It was beautiful and so fun to do a session all together.

On our last full day in NZ we got to go back and visit Cathedral Cove!!!! This is what we came across on the hike down to the beach. It is just soooo green and beautiful there, I love it! The different kinds of trees there are just stunning. If I were to live in NZ, I would already know what trees I wanted around my house.

This picture is Jayce and I on the little island just off shore at this beach two years ago, right after we got engaged. Yes, this island and beach is near and dear to our hearts!

Here we were two years later with baby on board! It was a pretty cloudy/rainy day, but we still had so much fun! Not even Jayce forgetting his swim suit could keep us from getting in the water and swimming the quick (and very cold) way out to the island.

Well, that's all folks! Hope you enjoyed a peek into the vacation!