Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Our First Christmas

On Christmas morning we went to church where I sang with the worship team and Dave did a reading with a few other people. He did a great job. After church we stopped at Dave's work because he needed to check the fridge temperatures.When we got home we grabbed some L&P and Sprite, and headed off to our pastor's house for a Christmas dinner. His three youngest kids were home; Vanessa, Ronda and Dave. His wife Heather was busy cooking and another older lady came, but I forget her name. We sat around and talked to Paul's kids for a while. Dinner was great! We had turkey, potatoes, beans, salad, ham and some other yummy food. After dinner we played a game called Kiwi Trivia. It was kind of like Trivial Pursuit but instead of different categories there was different levels of Kiwi trivia. Dave and I were asked the easiest questions, so we almost won. We knew quite a few of them, but the ones about the Maori were pretty hard. We left around 4pm. When we got home I took a nap while Dave talked to his family. At 5 we played a game of tennis with Paul and Ronda. Tennis on Christmas...I know, not your typical Christmas event. We were quite equally matched which made it a nice challenging game. Once we got home we started cooking our own Christmas dinner. The dinner was delicious. Once the dishes were finished, we sat down by the tree and opened our gifts. We received gifts from Dave's brother and sister-in-law, my parents, my friend Sarah Matherly, our landlords, and a few from each other. We'd like to thank everyone for the wonderful presents! We love them all and can't wait to us and eat them all. After opening all our presents we plopped on the couch and watched the best Christmas movie ever, Home Alone!
Ok, so this isn't a Christmas picture, but of our broken camera. It cartwheeled into a lake and decided to die due to water and sand inside it. We disassembled it to dry it and get the sand out, but it didn't work. We'll have to buy ourselves a new one as a late Christmas present.


Standing by our pastor's Christmas tree. Look at all their Christmas cards!

Christmas dinner.

Christmas dinner with just the two of us.

Snuggling in front of our Christmas tree and exciting presents.

Don't you like the book, Dave?

At least I liked my book.

Best Christmas present ever! All my favorite foods. Thanks Sarah!!!

Dave posing with new socks from my mom and a few other presents.

We had a great Christmas together!
Merry Christmas everyone!

Monday, December 24, 2007

Sewing Sensation

After making our Christmas tree I had a lot of the purple silk material left. I didn't want to just throw it away so I decided to make something else out of it. A shirt seemed like a good idea, seeing as how I've never made something from scratch before, didn't have any type of pattern to follow, and am without a sewing machine. Sounds great. I started cutting away and hoped for the best. It started out nicely. I had sewn a few hems on the top of the shirt and moved on to the straps. I didn't know exactly how they would turn out. My first one looked terrible. I had taken about a day (or two) to sew three long strips of material to braid into one of the straps. The edges were frayed and would not do at all. I started all over and came up with a much better solution. The shirt took about 5 days. I'm happy how it turned out, especially for my first major project.
The freshly cut pieces of material.
The finished product.

The back view. There is an invisible zipper on the side which allows me to put the shirt on.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Ho Ho Ho

Dave and his coworker Matt...and their sweet hats.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

The Breaking Point

Guess what? IT happened. Back in October, during a rousing game of tennis, I was a little over-aggresive and stubbed my toe in the process. Since then I've been eagerly watching for the day of toenail removal. Tonight while watching "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" I suddenly hit my toe against the coffee table. As pain surged through my toe I took a closer look to discover that the impact had caused the toenail to loosen. I could now lift the top toenail layer and see the new nail underneath. I didn't even think there was a whole new toenail underneath yet. I waited until Dave came home from work and gave him the honor of ripping off the dead tissue. After a few hard tugs the nail was free. A new and very disgusting toenail is now visible. It has this weird ridge in the middle and a few crusties of dried blood. The tip of the nail is really soft and it's a lot smaller than my normal big toenail. I've been told it will grow back to it's normal size eventually. I'm hoping that's the case.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

O Christmas Tree

O Christmas tree! O Christmas tree!
I wish you were real and 3-D.
O Christmas tree! O Christmas tree!
I wish you were real and 3-D.
A twinkle from your star would help me.
That would give me so much glee.
O Christmas tree! O Christmas tree!
I wish you were real and 3-D.

The ornaments are purple, but you can't really tell in the picture.


This year instead of a real tree we have opted for the flat tree made out of fabric. The obvious second choice for a Christmas tree. We figured it would be a waste of money to buy a real tree, a tree stand, lights, ornaments, etc. Then we'd have to try and sell all the accessories or just give them away. I intend to buy candy canes and tape them on as well, as long as New Zealand has them. Next year we'll have a better tree, hopefully. At least this way we won't start the house on fire because we left the lights on.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Little i Commercial

Here's a silly commercial that was made for the UK. Enjoy.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Bay City Cinemas


Well, I started my new job at the movie theater. I've worked a total of three days so far. I've worked at a theater before, so I know all the basic stuff. Although this theater is much cleaner and nicer. The picture above is the theater. One nice thing about the layout of the theater is that it has a tall "shelf" above the concession stand for all the promotional cardboard stand-ups. This way they stay out of the way and customers don't wreck them.
Day 1
Justin (one of the managers) showed me what to do when working "the floor," which includes turning on the lights, tearing tickets, theater checks, cleaning the theaters, opening & closing the doors, etc. I had never seen all the different cinemas, so he gave me a tour of those. We have a total of 8 screens; 6 main ones and two downstairs. The two downstairs are super small. And when I say small, I mean small. One only seats 25 people, the other seats 18. And they have tiny screens. After that, Sam (one of the workers) showed me what to do for the rest of the day. When trailers start showing in a theater, we usually want to close the doors then. That's my favorite part. All the doors are on this magnetic system. So I just go to the closet, flip a switch for the right door, and it automatically closes. It sounds really cool too. So the floor isn't too hard. In the mornings it's usually one floor person and one candy person. When the candy person goes on break, I have to go work the concession stand/bar. The computer system was quite similar to what I had worked with before, so I knew the basics. One weird thing here, they sell the tickets at the concession stand, I guess so people don't have to get their money out twice. Cass was working the bar my first day and showed me what to do before she went on her break. She didn't bother to teach me about vouchers because she figured no one would actually come in and buy one while she was gone. I knew how to sell tickets and candy, so I figured I was good to go. Wrong! Right after she left a woman came in and asked to buy a voucher! Luckily...or unfortunately, my boss Paul was standing right there and he was able to help me figure it out, but he wasn't too happy with Cass. Once that lady left a man came in wanted to redeem a movie voucher he received to see a movie that would be playing later that night. I had absolutely no clue how to find the movie on the computer. Sam came to my rescue and showed me that you have to scroll through a whole bunch of pages to get to movies that night. What a great way to start off. But other than that, the day went really well.
Day 2
I worked the floor again, this time all by myself. Everything started off good. I turned on all the right lights. Closed the doors at the right times. Cleaned the theaters thoroughly. Then came the delivery. Today was stock day. In came four huge pallets of candy. Since it was just me working the floor and Amanda at the bar, I was the lucky person to move everything upstairs. In our theater all the candy and soda is stored upstairs. We have a lift that we can send things upstairs to the projectionist or use for transporting the stock. So first I had to move all the boxes from the pallets and count to make sure we got everything we ordered. I started with the Skittles. I came up with 7 boxes extra?! I asked Amanada if that was normal and she said they always get the right amount. Great! I moved on to the M&Ms. Well, what do you know, 2 boxes too many. This is not looking good. Plus I didn't have a calculator, so I was multiplying and dividing on this little sheet of paper, hoping I'm doing my math right. Eventually I counted all the boxed and the plain M&M's and the peanut M&M's cancelled eachother out, but we still had too many Skittles. Now that everyting was counted I started filling the lift. The lift can only hold 300kg worth of weight. Like I have any clue how much that is. I put what looked like a good amount and started my many trips up and down the stairs. Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention earlier. Almost every door that staff members have to use have a key pad on them to keep nosy customers out. Which wouldn't be so bad except they all have different combinations. And I have a lot of different doors to go through. There is the door to get in the bar, the door to upstairs, the door in each theater for the cleaning supplies, the door to the garbage, and the door to the staff room. On my first day I had to stay in the staff room during my whole break because I was too afraid to go out and then forgot the combination to get back in.
Day 3
Floor again, which is fine by me. I like working the floor. Nothing too special today. Today I got to dip ice cream. New Zealanders love their ice cream. I guess it's a staple to have ice cream cones at the movies. I bet about 80% of the people I saw in my first three days bought an ice cream cone. We have two kinds, vanilla dipped in chocolate or vanilla dipped in chocolate with nuts. I went in the back and Abbie showed me how to do the nut ones today. Take a cone, dip it in the chocolate, let it dry for just a little bit, then roll it in nuts before it completely dries. Pretty simple.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

The Land of Sand and God.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Dave and I flew up to Kerikeri for a little trip. We had bought cheap flights from "grabaseat" off of the Air New Zealand website. They have a promotion where they sell cheap flights within New Zealand and sometimes neighboring countries. When we first arrived, we picked up our rental car and headed to the very north tip of the northern island. Along this peninsula was 90 Mile Beach, which you are allowed to drive your car on. It is flat and smooth, but watch out for the ocean and blowing sand from the sand dunes. We stopped at the sand dune for a little bit. It was huge!

To get to the sand dune you have to cross a little stream and then right away there is an abrupt 45 degree hill of sand for you to climb. We started our journey and made it up the first hill. It was really windy that day which made it not as fun with sand blowing in our eyes, ears, everything. We climbed up a taller hill and was able to see the water. By that time our eyes were hurting and we had had enough. We headed back to the car. On our way back I had one good fall in the sand, as well as Dave. When we arrived I reached into my pocket to give Dave the keys. To my horror they were not there. I started freaking out. Dave thought I was kidding. I wished I was. Somehow and somewhere the keys to the rental car had fallen out of my jeans pocket and our cell phones were out of range. The only thing to do was go back to the sandy hills and hope we find the keys. As we walked back to the sand I just kept praying to myself over and over, "Please let us find the keys. Please let us find the keys." I had no idea what we would do if we couldn't find them. I'm sure Dave was just as worried. How were we ever going to find them again? They could have been anywhere, plus barried and then we'd never find them. After walking up that first hill I noticed a spot of black to my left. My heart raced and I ran to the spot. Could it be? "Oh please let it be the keys! Oh please" To my wonderful joy and amazement I had found our keys within 5 minutes of our search. It was such a miracle. We could have been searching out there for who knows how long, but God provided and we got out of there as fast as we could...with the keys safely in Dave's hands.

Here's a little video of Dave on the dune.



After the dunes we drove out to Cape Reinga, the very north tip. It was incredibly windy there as well. We headed back to the hostel for a good nights sleep. We stayed in Paihia, which was a small town with lots of hostels. On one street there were three within a block of each other. The one we stayed in was nice. The only problem was at 3 in the morning when a bunch of people were yelling to and at each other right in front of our door. Luckily we were able to get back to sleep. We woke up around 7:30 and took out a couple bikes for free from the hostel for about ten minutes. Next up was our tour of the Bay of Islands on a fast speed boat. It was really fun. We sat in the front, got sprayed with the salty ocean water and saw the beautiful scenery. After that we raced back to the airport to return our rental car on time and ate lunch. It was a fun little trip.

Crazy water below.

Window seat, which everyone had because the airplane held about 12 people with one seat on each side of the aisle. And there was no door to the cockpit, so you could see everything the pilots did.
Mountain view.
A weird circle thing around our airplane in the clouds.
Trying to shield his face from the blowing sand.
Our shoes were filled with tons of sand in the end.
The dune.
More of the large sand dune.
Coastline.
Lighthouse at Cape Reinga.
Lighthouse.
Waves caused by the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea currents crashing together.
90 Mile Beach.
Bay of Islands.
The famous "Hole in the Rock".
In front of the hole... or behind it?
Can you find the princess face?

Here's a closer look.
Percy Island.

Going home.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Afternoon Delight

After leading worship in church today and hearing a great testimony from a local woman, Dave and I headed over to Tony and Hayley's house for our regular small group. One quick thing first, in the woman's testimony she was telling us how her husband was in a motorcycle accident, put in intensive care and doctors said he might go into a vegetative state. One day out in the hallway she ran into a man whose fiance was also in intensive care. Long story short, I thought her story was going to be that her husband died and she married the man in the hallway. But eventually her husband survived and was ok, which is really good too. Anyways, every Sunday the young adults meet to have a nice little lunch and then have a Bible study-type meeting. Afterward, a few of us went to "the waterfall". It was about a 15 minute drive from town. They kept saying how cold the water was going to be and that it wasn't that big of a waterfall. But it was great! The waterfall seemed huge and the water was incredibly refreshing on such a warm day.
The Waterfall.
Dave trying to swim under the waterfall.
That's me jumping off the rocks.
That's Dave jumping off from a higher point of the rocks.
Dave and I are sitting in the little cave area. After the waterfall we went to the beach to see the big waves and enjoy more of the sun.
People hanging out on the beach. See the little boy with the blue boogie board? About two seconds after I took this picture he ran to his mommy, stripped off his undies, and went running back into the water naked. Silly little boy.
A warm, sunny day for lots of beach goers.
Dave about to get crushed by a wave.
Oh no!
Help me! I went out there with him for a little bit, but after the third big wave where Dave fell on top of me in the water, I was out of there!
I decided to bask in the sun instead.