christmas & new year!

christmas & new year!

christmas eve didn't quite turn out as expected - our first campsite was plagued by sandflies (bites itch & swell for about 3 weeks, 10 times worse than mossie bites - the only real native pest in this country) and the second was stunningly gorgeous (we'll be going back) but plagued by groups of 'young folk' with loud music getting pissed, so we woke up in the comfort of our beds on christmas day! tea in bed, open pressies and then we went up the lake to find a stunning BBQ spot...

it was the calmest I've ever seen the lake. we had a little grassy off road park and lovely shingle beach all to ourselves, sitting under the gum trees listening to the exotic calls of the tui bird. it was gorgeous. then we made it back in time for roast wild turkey at jimmy & lizzy's house - they made a fabulous feast and we ended up staying 10 hrs, watched 'bad santa', me & lizzy chatting and fran & jimmy spending hours trying to hit eachother with the styrofoam plane mum put in our stocking!

a delightful patch of bad weather meant fran almost had an entire week off, which was lovely, then we had new years... we went to our neighbours, matt & terri's (who got engaged after a helicopter flight to the top of the remarkables the day before) for a chilled BBQ, indoors due to the chilly, windy weather, and brought the new year in watching the sky channel navigation page! ...we needed an accurate time cause there's no countdown on NZ tv, how wierd is that? being very old & sensible people we then tootled off the bed, but not before taking some pictures of ourselves, and this one very nearly had me wetting my pants with laughter...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!