I hope you all found time during the holidays to enjoy the spirit of the season! 

Christmas 2012 was a fun day of celebrating. The boys let me sleep in until 6:36am before running into my room to let me know that Santa had come during the night. I had such a great time watching the boys eagerly open all their presents. Shortly after 7:30 we were all sitting down to enjoy a lovely breakfast. (It was a very early morning for me!)  I drove to Emma’s place around 11 to meet up with all the Whitleys and enjoy a beach walk along Takapuna beach. The tide was in so we couldn’t climb the rocks — but we did have a great walk along the shore. I was able to assist in the capturing of the Santa hat family photo picture for the fam jam. Afterwards we ordered pizza and Indian and had an intense xbox bowling tournament. Lots of fun was had by all.

Boxing Day was a FULL on shopping day. I was not too excited about all the shopping but I did enjoy the company. The weather was pretty rainy causing us to run from store to store. We went to A LOT of the touristy stores. I finally got to buy my first hoodie here. They are sooo hard to find here. We had another night of playing xbox and then drove home later that evening.

I was working on Thursday and Friday and was fortunate enough to have gorgeous summer weather. We went to the beach 3x and swam and surfed lots.  A few weeks of vacation officially started Friday evening. I packed all my clothes and headed back over to Emma’s house.

Originally we had planned to have a beach day Saturday and head to Waiheke Island on Sunday for scooting around. We had to switch our days around because all the mopeds were booked on Sunday. It was a blessing in disguise because Saturday’s weather was absolutely GORGEOUS!!! It was about 25-30 degrees and stayed that way for our day trip. We were  so fortunate to have so much sunshine. We took our 40minute ferry to Waiheke Island at 9:30am. We had one brief stop at Devenport to pick up other passengers. We were able to pretty much cover the WHOLE Island while riding the mopeds. We didn’t do any swimming at the beaches but we stopped at a few to enjoy the view!! The water was a stunning shade of turquoise and the pictures don’t do it justice. We stopped for lunch at Stonyridge Vineyard. We had rented mopeds so we decided it would be best that we not sample the wines. Instead we had a meal and only one glass each. While we were dining a helicopter landed outside in the field. 4 people stopped in for a quick bite to eat. As we were leaving they were boarding their helicopter to leave. Just a quick little stop for them!

Oneroa Beach

Stonyridge Vineyard

Our first stop on Sunday was to Westhaven Marina so Father Bruce could chat with my Kiwi father and see their sailboat. He appreciated his little tour of the marina and chat with another male. I think he liked getting away from the 4 females for a little bit this trip. We then carried on seeing more sailboats at the harbour downtown. There were some big boats docked. We talked to one owner who had his boat on the market for 4.5 million euros…he told us his bigger boat was arriving in a few months and just needed the space to dock the new boat. We stopped off briefly at my home so the Whitleys could meet my family and wish them luck on their one week sailing trip. Ever summer my family goes away on their boat and the boys get to go fishing and swimming every day. We had planned on going to Long Bay Regional Park and walking the kilometre-long sandy beach but instead decided to go swimming.

I am trying to stay on TOP  of my blogging… promise. Spending so much time out in the sun keeps me busy and EXHAUSTED in the evenings. I will try to get back to posting my photos on Facebook too. I was doing so well for a bit. I am hoping to get my New Year’s day/evening blog up today or tomorrow. The Whitleys are leaving today and Ana/Kristy arrived so the house is a bustling.

Buddha Blessings to all
xox Amanda

…remember any of these pictures can be enlarged if you click on them 🙂