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.

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.

Purple Haze

The other night we had a really beautiful sunset.

Our First Thanksgiving

At first I didn't feel like celebrating Thanksgiving. I just wasn't really in the mood because we wouldn't be with family or friends, plus it was about 75 degrees outside. Thanksgiving morning I worked online for a few hours and then we headed off to the beach for a nice run. I've never ran on the beach before, and I can now say I rather enjoy it! We went at low tide so the water was out and we could run on the hard flat sand. It's nice on the knees instead of the hard concrete road. We ran about 3km and took a little break, mainly because I told Dave to run at his pace and I'll meet him at the island in the distance. Once I reach him and cooled off a tiny bit, we ran back. I threw off my socks and shoes while Dave grabbed the water from the car. The cold ocean water felt very nice on my hot, sweaty feet. I laid out on the beach while Dave went for a swim. This time it was warm enough that he didn't get hypothermia. Then we soaked up the sun and read on our blanket. After a while, we stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few Thanksgiving dinner supplies and then it was off to the kitchen to prepare everything.

They didn't have pumpkin in a can, so we bought a whole one and made our pie from scratch.

Our cute little chicken cooking. Pie underneath. We even stuffed the chicken with dressing.

Sitting down to a nice Thanksgiving meal with just the two of us. We had chicken, stuffing, corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, fruit and best of all pumpking pie, which by the way, turned out excellent! Kudos to my wonderful chef.

Dave carving the chicken.

All full.

The Big Day

Sorry for those of you who have already seen lots of my wedding pictures and are getting sick of them. But I just want to share a few more. I finally got the CD of all the images my photographer took. Some of these are new, some are old.