This past week we took our family to Raglan on the west coast of New Zealand, about 2 hours from Auckland. We had a wonderful, relaxing few days! There were many highlights and I took way too many pictures, as usual! I'm telling ya, living in New Zealand is a photographer's dream!!!! So if you'd like to check out a few more pics than I will be putting up here, you can go to my msnspace (or click on 'more pics' in the right hand column). 
We stayed in a very cool little campground/cottage named Solscape overlooking the ocean. It was a place where people could rent a small cabin (that looked like a part of a train car), or park their funky hippy rental van (which made me think of Rod and Judy's days touring NZ before they had kids). We rented the overlander carriage which was a full sized train car that was set up as a hotel room. Very cool. The campground overlooked the ocean and behind us was an old inactive volcano. A beautiful setting. (that's our 'train' on the left of this pic and the volcano in the background)
Paige attended 2 days of surf school. She stayed at their camp, which was another hippy/surf dude hangout. She had some interesting stories about her stay there! Everyone talked like true surfers (think "Finding Nemo" turtles). She was able to get up on her surfboard quite a few times, but realized surfing is very tiring! 
While she surfed the rest of us checked out the village and surrounding area. One afternoon we went horseback riding up in the hill country. The views were absolutely spectacular. And I was pretty proud of myself to have conquered a 30 year old fear and get on a horse! That one hour ride was a great enhancement of my prayer life and I am sure those horses had never had so much prayer coverage before! But we made it to the end, none the worse for wear! Our ride was through cow and sheep pastures, along the hill country. We could see 3 different harbours and 4 different mountain ranges.
We also went on a bush walk (kiwi term for hike) to Bridal Veil Falls. The walk to the top of the falls was very much like the walk to Hardy Falls, except that the foliage was entirely different! It was so dense and tropical. The walk down to the base of the falls was very steep, but well laid out with stairs. In the pool at the bottom of the falls were eels. That was pretty cool. We had some bread along at the suggestion of a local, and fed the eels. I tried to get pics of the eels but the water is pretty murky.
We walked around the village, which was very much like Peachland was 10 years ago. Although it has way more artsy shops and quaint cafes. The town is situated right on the bay and apparently in November through to January large pods of whales commonly come right into the harbour. There was the coolest pic of an orca right beside some surfers that a local man took in 1998 from his house.
Kevin and MacKenzie also took in some boogie boarding, which was very fun. They were catching the waves pretty well by the end of the afternoon. MacKenzie is a natural!
After leaving Raglan, we made a little detour to Cambridge to visit NZ Capernwray. I attended Capernwray in Colorado the year after I graduated so it was great to be able to visit another school. We met two girls who are there from Vernon Alliance Church. It was great to see them and for our girls to meet them and hear all about how wonderful the school is. They're all excited to attend someday! And, believe it or not, the one other student we spoke to was from Didsbury!!! That's a very small town outside of Calgary where I lived until I was 12! What a small world.(and the best part about our holiday - okay well, maybe not 'the best' -....when we returned and I had my zillions of loads of laundry to do....it didn't rain! Now, you may ask, why is that such good news? Because we hang all our laundry and the thought of having to hang all that laundry in the house if it was raining out, was not a pleasant prospect....but the day was beautiful and God dried all of our clothes in record time!!!!)
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