My, what a busy month.

What is happening and what day is it??  We’ve had a whirlwind of a month and I’ve crossed the international dateline too many times to know what day or time it is!  I’ll give you the rundown…

We hiked the Milford Sound with Becca, Darin, Michael (Chris’ brother), and Matt (Chris’ nephew).  It was insane and wonderful and hard.  One day I’ll sit-down and write a proper blogpost about it but today is not that day.  Oh, and I fried our camera on the trail so my photo-taking has been slacking.

Start!

 

The boat when we were all done.

 

Finished!

 

Chris went bungee jumping.  He told me that he wasn’t too terrified until they shoved him on the ledge and the guy started counting down.  When the guy yelled jump, he pushed Chris off the ledge.

The face says a million words.

 

We got in some QT with Becca and Darin before we had to say goodbye to them. I really love it when our friends make the trip over here.  It means so much to us.  Thank you to those that have visited (Alene + Joe, and Becca + Darin) and looking forward to those that are coming (Jeb, Sara (read: Jason) + Jeff, and EVERYONE (hint hint))!!

 

We made the trek across the Pacific to Palm Springs, California for Christmas with the Byrnes family.  The flights were long but completely worth it. Some may ask what my secret is to surviving the 13+ hour flight and I will tell you: Free alcohol on international flights + Ambien.  Seriously, it does wonders for in-flight sleeping.

We spent the entire week shopping (because everything is freaking cheap in the U.S.A!), eating tacos, and drinking as many BLLs as possible.  Those things combined with terrific company made the 7 days we had in the States pretty amazing.

 

 

Erin turned 27 on Christmas Eve.

Beth and Jason made the trip over from Phoenix to eat tacos and drink BLLs.

Our flight back to Auckland included a stop in Brisbane so we rented a car and went to see the Heidrich’s. It was so great catching up with them and booking in Christmas 2013. Sadly, our rental car was the only picture I snapped in Brisbane:

When we got back to Auckland (at midnight), our neighbor, Brad, scooped us up from the airport and brought us home.  We did a quick turnaround and left the next day for a New Year’s camping trip with them to Whatawhiwhi.  I don’t think we were prepared for what we were walking into.  It was absolutely beautiful!

 

Group teeth cleaning.  We do everything together.

 

The Gallaghers

It wouldn’t be New Year’s if I wasn’t drinking champagne from the bottle.

 

This had to be posted.

 

Happy New Year!

 

Baggin’ it.

We feel extremely lucky to have finished off this crazy year spending time with so many people that we love. As per usual, Chris and I are spending the entire week saying, “First (fill in the blank) of the new year” so I guess I’ll end this with: FIRST BLOG POST OF THE NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year from New Zealand!

R + C