The ocean, Halloween and a bike ride.

It was pointed out to me tonight by my beautiful wife that she has written the last 8 posts for our blog. She suggested that maybe I should write this one in case anyone was wondering if she had finally gotten rid of me ... she hasn't.

Last weekend was Labour Day Weekend in New Zealand making it a long weekend. We had the Monday off. We spent Saturday in Invercargill doing some shopping. We found lots of treasures at Savemart - the Kiwi version of Value Village. The best find of the day was a brand new pair of Saucony running shoes for Samantha for $8.99. We also finally bought a bed. We've been sleeping on a double bed that was graciously supplied to us on arrival. It's been alright but not great. We expect our new queen size to arrive next week - I'm looking forward to a little extra space. Sunday was all about gardening. We planted a cucumber patch, some sweet corn and a strip of tomato plants. Samantha is planning to make salsa, relish and dill pickles from these. There are no dill pickles in the stores here and the relish is gerken - not sweet. If all goes well we may have some fresh veggies to share with my folks in January. Monday we headed to the ocean, Porpoise Bay to be exact. The kids packed their wet suits and we packed the cameras - still and video. We got to the beach, set up our chairs and Samantha got the camera out. It was at this point that she discovered that I had forgot to get the battery out of the charger. Oops! I did have our Flip video camera though so we got lots of video footage only to later discover that it is broken and we can't transfer footage to the computer right now. Luckily we ran into a guy that I play hockey with, Zee. He was at the beach with his wife and son and they let us use their camera to snap a few pics. You'll see them below. It was a great day at the ocean and on the way home we stopped at McLean Falls, a really spectacular waterfall about 1 hour from our house. I'd love to show pictures of that but you know the story.

So this weekend was Halloween.  We knew well beforehand that it is not a big deal here.  Some Kiwi's actually resent the fact that it happens at all because they feel like New Zealand is being Americanized with such a consumeristic "holiday".  This being the case we didn't go trick or treating.  Our church hosted an Angels and Heroes party as an alternative to trick or treating on Friday night.  Abby dressed as an angel and Sam created a costume for a character he called Super Aqua Man.  It was an enjoyable evening but not what we are used to.  Samantha and Abby were surprised to feel homesick during this time.  Sometimes the feeling creeps up on us when we least expect it.  

You'll see from the next set of pictures that we went biking this weekend as well.  We found some really nice mountain bike trails at the Sandy Point Recreation Reserve near Invercargill.  It is a big area, over 2000 hectares, that was set aside for recreational pursuits.  It has many walking tracks, a mountain bike area and everything from rowing clubs to stock car racing to horse riding tracks.  One of the pictures below is of the sign that lists everything that is there, what a wonderful idea and great use of land.  One of our reasons for heading there today is that we are planning to ride the Central Otago Rail Trail in January, a 3 or 4 day bike ride, and we need to build up our saddle time before then.  We also wanted to test how Samantha' s knee would hold up and to see if Abby could get her head around the idea.  The good news is that Samantha's knee did okay - starting and stopping wasn't great but once she was rolling it was pain free.  The bad news is that Abby had difficulty wrapping her head around the biking, as you will see from the pictures.  We still have some work to do with her before we head out for 4 days. It's not that she can't bike, she just doesn't like to.  She hasn't every since she once wiped out in front of Samantha and got run over.  We may need to get her some kind of therapy.  We'll keep you posted on her progress.