Lindsey's Visit: Part 1

Lance Again:

So Lindsey came out to visit after her trip to Australia to stop in and see a bit of New Zealand and of course Sweet Baby James.  I'm going to try and cover the first part of her visit even though I was working for the majority of the activities, so I might be relying on a lot of pictures until Maggie can get onto here and clean up the details.

If my memory serves me correct, I believe the first place they went was Shakespear Regional Park.  As avid readers know this park is featured heavily on this blog as it was the first park I went to when I first got to NZ, it was the first one that Maggie and James went to with me when they got over, and it was the first place we took my parents during their visit.  In between there, we have actually stopped back there a few times, but this was Lindsey's shot.  Maggie and James even got her to go really close to the cows and sheep, that cute little kid can convince anyone of anything.

Next stop, Waiheke for some wine country on the beautiful island in Auckland's harbor.

And of course there were some fun moments around the house with the little guy:

And yes this was Lindsey giving James a popsicle right before he was supposed to go to bed.  All I can say is the revenge will be sweet.

Raglan Weekend with Friends

Lance Again:

As many of you may notice, I go into a lot less detail than Maggie with my posts and rely on a lot more pictures.  Point taken.

One of the great things that we did this "rainy" winter was to do a Bach (sounds like Batch) weekend with our friends out at a really old and cool place that Maggie found for us just outside of Raglan (epic surfing location and beautiful beach).  Even though a few of the crew were a little under the weather during the weekend, we still had a blast and a really good time.  The weather held up decently well except for some crazy winds and storms at night where we thought the place was going to get blown down.  It was a legit fear as there was a tornado that touched down just on the other side of the valley from the house the past weekend.

The house was located at the top of a really cool farm road surrounding by dairy and cattle farms.  It was a really cool area.

We had pretty much the whole gang there:

Katie S

Josh

Ashley

Todd

Megan

Rob

Katie B

Kevin

Elliot

Whitney

There was a bit of increment weather, so we spent a bit of time just lounging around in the house, which was great and then also went to town in Raglan and Huka Falls.

Huka Falls:

Raglan beach, breathtaking and great for surfing.

Oh hey Rob:

As we were all admiring the sights, James taught us all how much fun it is to jump off things, and we pretty much all got into it.

Good form Josh

Of course, Maggie wanted to get in on the action without doing any of the work....

I seemed to have been struggling a lot more with her on my back than James.

 Admiring the last time we'll be seeing Raglan beach during our stint over here in NZ

Here's a few pics from around the house

The boys waiting for Kevin to come back from his run and laughing that I finished early and avoided the downpour that he ended his run in.

And finally the beautiful farm scenes that really represent the true picture of New Zealand: