New Zealand

We had a great time in New Zealand! The scenery was, of course, amazing, and although we only spent a day in each port we felt we got a nice taste of a little bit of a lot of the country. On land one of the top favorites was the day Travis and I toured around the geothermal 'playground' of Rotorua in the pouring rain. I've never seen a geyser that goes off when soap is dumped in (by a park ranger of course) - as it started to erupt giant soap bubbles floated off into the sky...what a sight! Not the mention the endless pots of bubbling mud...geysers that erupted non-stop, and local Maori that cooked their veggies in the hot hot water. Also the trip Penny and I took to see the giant Kauri trees and the cave with the teeny glow worms.

Best all-family outing was a tie between Wellington's botanic gardens (wow! make sure to check out the bug that was stuck on FFM! ) and the Albatross/penguin day in Dunedin - pronounced Done-eden (thanks for the tip Mom, we sounded less like idiot tourists than most people on the ship).

And a bonus video from the latter half of the trip - although I'd forgotten to turn on the microphone so I had to add the music back on afterwards. I promise - it's the actual tune that was playing when the video was taken - Toddler headbanging to Farmer in the Dell.

Life at Sea

Life onboard was good for FFM, and traveling on a cruise was surprisingly easy. Everyday there was a playgroup, we had the same babysitter (and a very affordable one at that) for each night that we requested babysitting, and FFM made friends with all 800 staff onboard.

The windows we splurged on were a big big hit. There's a tiny well in front of the window and F would perch on the ledge and stick his legs in the well and peer out to see what was at sea that day...
Christmas day was one of the days we were at sea all day. Travis brought a wee tree, lights and all, all the way from Perth in his duffel bag and I still had our stocking from the trip home, so we felt very much in the holiday spirit. A few small gifts were exchanged Christmas morning and Santa even managed to find us and stuff a few goodies into our stockings. Thanks to Captain Olav for making sure Santa knew where we were.After our little family celebration we went up on deck to wait for Santa to arrive onboard. His elves had spread the word that he would arrive in the morning. FFM was quite the scene with his feathered, sparkly, jingle antlers and now TWO jingle bell jinglers. He made enough noise that we fooled several groups of adults into thinking Santa was really on his way (the kids knew better...). This was the beginning of FFM's notoriety onboard - he was utterly unmissable.

The ship was all decked out for the holidays, with trees and menorahs, and a giant display of gingerbread houses. After following Santa's jazzy marching band from the pool deck (on deck 9) to the gingerbread deck (on deck 4) all the kids lined up for a sit on Santa's knee. EVERY kid (500 under 18s on this cruise) got a real honest to goodness gift!

Some teething and a sore mouth for FFM meant food wasn't as tasty as normal, but a couple days into the cruise cold fruit soups started showing up in the buffet dining room. After spooning a couple of bites in I handed over a straw...that strawberry soup disappered in 10 seconds flat. Thank you to the soup chef who prepared yummy soups, both fruit and veggie, that were a big hit every night (and not always eaten with a straw, they also got drunk out of a coffee cup).

The first of many

So, I haven't done much with the pictures on my camera since about day 2 of the cruise when Travis took so much video of the Maori dancers I had to make room on the disk... but I do realize it's been like a month since I posted any decent photographic evidence. So here goes, all the way back to early December when it was about 0F instead of 100F.

FFM having a little chat with his great grandpa. I missed most of the chatting part...but they're having a grand time...

We had a lot of snow up at the mountain house, but it was a really nice day so we went to the playground anyway. It's tough to slide into a snowdrift but FFM was determined to do it over and over and over...

Then there was early Christmas (we departed Colorado and the USA on Dec 18) - complete with Santa delivering a flashing reindeer nose to complete the ensemble FFM started with the feathered, glittery, jingly reindeer headband picked up a couple weeks earlier.

During our brief stop back in Denver, prior to our flight back to Australia, we swung in to Denver Zoo lights.
Then back to Australia! First stop, Sydney (east coast) where we finally connected back up with Travis (west coast - 5 hour flight away from Sydney). Travis' mom, Penny, met us in Denver and flew with us to Sydney. Sydney Harbor Bridge and Opera House below. Travis and Penny climbed the bridge one day while FFM and I hung out.

We took a ferry ride around the harbour to a zoo and got off across the way from our hotel, and walked across the bridge to get home. ...and stopped off at the famous Luna Park on the way. Who wouldn't want to play at an amusement park where you enter through a giant face?

We got a good deal on a nice hotel in Sydney, and through various mishaps ended up getting upgraded twice (wrong room type once, then the A/C was broken in our new room so we moved again) to a new room. Our final room had THIS view! Needless to say we were pretty content to sit out on our balcony and sip Aussie wine in the pleasant summer evenings after FFM was asleep.

Then, on the morning of our departure from the hotel, we woke up to THIS view. Our cruise ship had arrived! Off to New Zealand for us, we just had to figure out how to get our stuff from the hotel down to the ship (taxis were unhappy about such a short distance and we really had just too much stuff to carry ourselves...although we could have done it in a pinch. Travis found a taxi willing to wade through cruise boarding traffic that would take us).

Upon boarding our ship we practiced our 'lifeboat muster.' After getting an appropriate jacket for FFM we were all ready for our trip up to lifeboat 9!Note the adjoining staterooms (you can see into our stateroom from Penny's - look at the far right of the photo). A GREAT thing during this cruise. Nothing like being able to put your toddler to bed and then having a room right next door to hang out in.

Coming soon - holiday and cruise photos. You can bet FFM was a huge hit running all over the ship in his jingly antlers ;)

Hot

...and when I said the house was hot last night - I really meant it.

Central A/C was not something we found in any of the places we looked at here in Perth, we have a large wall unit upstairs that does a pretty good job of keeping us in the low 80s / high 70s in the playroom and the master bedroom. We rented a portable A/C for FFM's room when we did the package of rental appliances way back when we moved in. And downstairs, well, we close the shades during the day and open the windows when it drops below 85F.

Back

After spending more time on the road than actually living in our new Perth home, FFM and I have returned to Western Australia. We made it home, with Penny and Travis, late last night with all luggage in tow (amazing). The house was HOT but we all crashed into bed. Today will be filled with laundry and groceries, deleting junk email and the such. More blog updates coming soon.