Visitors!

On April 13, Dave and I woke up at 3:00am to pick up my parents from the Auckland airport. Dave drove. I probably dozed off here and there. We got there at 5:45 and quickly parked the car. We rushed inside and waited at the front for their plane to arrive. However my parents had already been ther for 10 minutes. But that was ok. I just made them go back to the arrival area and pretend to be walking in so I could get a picture.

We went to McDonalds for a little breakfast and drove back home. It was a little rainy on the way, but not too bad. We went to church and all of us were almost falling off our chairs from lack of sleep. We checked out the mount and walked around. My mom collected a bunch of seashells on the beach. That night we had steaks with mashed kumara and toasted bruschetta bread.
The first three days or so were incredibly rainy. I mean, we had more rain in those three days than we've had the whole time Dave and I have been in New Zealand. So we just went shopping a lot and played Settlers of Catan.

I took my parents to McLaren falls one day while Dave was working. It was crazy! There was so much water from the heavy rains before. This is what it looked like after the rains.

This is what is looked like before the rains. We were able to climb all over the rocks and lay out on them.
We drove down to Taupo. At the edge of Lake Taupo they have this golf thing where you tee from land and try to get a hole in one on a little floating island in the lake. Dave tried once. He got really close. If you get a hole in one you win $5000. I think they've had about 500 winners.

We took my parents to Tongariro National Park to see some mountains. It was really fun to see it when the sun was setting.

We also took them to Cathedral Cove in Coromandel. If you see Prince Caspian, look for this shot.

We decided to drive up to Auckland the day before and spend the night there. We stayed at the Sky Tower Hotel which was really nice, especially the king size bed. We treated my parents to a ferry ride to Rangitoto Island. We climed to the top and got rained on.

We also climbed through the lava caves around the island.

Oh hi!

It was so much fun to see my parents. We had a blast and I think they had fun. I think we were able to show them a lot and now they'll know about all the things we're talking about.

There are a lot more things that we did and a lot more pictures, but those are on my parents camera. I will probably post more pictures once I get them.