A Holiday Before the Holidays

Sorry for the delay in posting...I have found that if we are doing lots of fun things that we should be blogging about, then I have much less time to actually do the blog post! On the flip side, when I'm just sitting around with nothing to do and have plenty of time to post things, there is nothing interesting to write about--go figure!

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A few weeks ago, our group of American friends invited us to get a group together and rent a 'bach' for the weekend. (Click on link above to find out more details about the name!) Anyway...a bach is basically a small beach house that gets rented out for nights/weekends/weeks at a time. So our friend, Mike, found a bach in Waihi Beach which is about an hour and 45 minutes southeast of Auckland. The rest of the group went down Friday night after work, but since we had our advance-purchased tickets to see the last Twilight movie, we opted to go down on Saturday morning.

We woke up about 6am and headed out. Drew had every intention of taking his surfboard, but the lack of space/comfort with the board in the car and the pouring down rain quickly deterred him. We got to the beach about 8am and everyone was still asleep...so we just drove around the little town and checked out the area. After we got back to the house, people were stirring so we got to unpack and check out the digs!

All of the girls walked down to a beachfront cafe for some coffee while the boys stayed home and made themselves breakfast. Afterwards, everyone geared up for a beach hike...5 members of the group headed up and over the mountain, but Drew, myself, and our friend Katie decided to head back to the house because the weather was starting to look questionable. Turns out...we were right...because as we reached the porch it stared pouring down rain! It pretty much continued raining the rest of the day, but we ventured out for lunch and then just hung out at the house playing board games and napping...definitely a relaxing Saturday!

We all pitched in to make dinner that night and it was delicious! After that, it was back to more board games and jamming out to MTV hits on tv.

Sunday morning, we woke up and all had breakfast and then started cleaning. Drew and I headed out earlier than the rest since we had to come home to prepare for mom & dad's arrival!!

We went to Warehouse to try and pick up some board games since we had so much fun playing the ones at the beach...but we quickly opted not to when we realized that a basic board game like Scattegories cost $53! We might be picking up some games during our visit home next month to bring back with us!

When we did arrive back to Auckland though, it was obvious that the holidays are in full swing! Because they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, they jump straight to Christmas (although I know that happens a lot back home, too!) But there is a big (albeit, creepy) Santa & reindeer displayed downtown and I bought my first bit of wrapping paper to wrap a few gifts to take home. Somehow the weather here doesn't really get you into the holiday spirit, but we will do our best to be our obnoxious, Christmas-freak selves for the next month!

Now that mom & dad are here I will have lots more to post--keep an eye out!

Cheers!