Dave's 25th

That's right, Dave is younger than me. I'm such a cradle robber. :) Anyways, it was Dave's birthday on July 17th. I tried to make it special for him. In the morning I made blueberry pancakes. I had forgotten to get more maple syrup so Dave made some really yummy blueberry syrup. After breakfast we headed off to Matamata for a tour of the original Hobbiton movie set from Lord of the Rings. It was so much fun. We had a great tour guide who was tried to be funny, which made her funny and told us lots of interesting trivia and facts.

The hundreds of sheep that were already on the farm did not look "Hobbiton" enough, so they brought sheep with black faces from the states. If you remember in Lord of the Rings, at the beginning where Frodo is sitting by a tree and Gandalf rides up in a cart, the big tree on the left is where they shot that scene.

Here is a closer look at the tree. Can you see the resemblance?

The road in this picture was constructed by the New Zealand Army in order for equipment and crew to reach Hobbiton.

Welcome to Hobbition.

It's kind of dark, but the large tree on the right side of the picture is where Gandalf rides into Hobbiton and the kids come running out asking him to shoot off a few fireworks.

The bottom right area of the photo is where they built their specially grown garden with chemically enhanced plants to make them bigger and better. They purchased a green house in Auckland to grown all their vegetation and then flew the plants down to Matamata.

I'm a hobbit. I might actually even be too tall. That's right, me...too tall. Ha!

Dave would never been cast as a hobbit.

The famous "party tree". This is the tree where they had Bilbo's birthday party.

The Party Tree in all it's glory.

There were a total of 37 hobbit holes when they filmed, but only 17 were preserved afterward.
The famous Bag End. Which is the only Hobbit hole you can enter. All the rest are fake.

The lake that the bridge was built across.

It's kind of hard to see, but there are red markers where the bridge was built and yellow markers where the bar was. I forget what the blue markers were for.

This picture shows the bar and part of the bridge on the right from when they filmed.

While filming Hobbiton scenes, Peter Jackson lived in one of the neighbors houses. They had to sign a contract saying they could not tell anyone he was living there. How cool would that be?!

The party tree was very large. We were told the Alexander's (the owners of the farm) had planned on cutting down the tree at one point, but the little boys said they should keep as nice place for the sheep to get out of the sun. Good thing they kept it.

One more look at the lake.

This hill is where Sam's house had been built. It was turned back into a hill later.

So little.
It was so green. Because we came during the winter it was incredibly green and lush. When they filmed the Hobbiton scenes for the movie, they had planned it during the summer and New Zealand was experiencing the worst drought in 14 years, so they built an underground irrigation system under the areas of the pasture that would be filmed.

Our guide told us that they have a lot of people come dressed up as elves, hobbits, Gandalf, etc. One time a 7 foot Germany man came dressed as a hobbit and said he wouldn't leave because this is where he belonged. It took them until 7pm to get him to finally leave.

This is what a hobbit hole looks like if they wouldn't update the painting and so forth. But they have to call in the original makers of the hobbit holes to do all the repainting and reparing to keep it authentic.
The party tree and the green grass area where the tent, tables and chairs were set up for Bilbo's party.
The have not been contacted yet about whether they will film there or not for the next installment of the Lord of the Rings series.

Inside Bag End.
The famous circle doorway.

Before and during shooting there was a no fly ban placed within 500m of the area in order to keep the secrecy. If you were caught flying over the area, your pilots license would be taken away and no more flying for you.



They cut down an Oak tree near Matamata where each branch was numbered and chopped, then trasported and bolted together on top of Bag End. Artificial leaves were imported from Taiwan and individually wired onto the dead tree.

Dave's legs seem to have gotten shorter.

After the Hobbiton tour they had a sheep shearing demonstration. I had never seen this done before. I was the only one in the room. Isn't that little sheepy so adorable?!

He just sat there.

Getting a haircut.
I think he was a little embarrassed.

And then we got to bottle feed the lambs.

Hehe.
One last look.

After Hobbiton we drove out to Katikati to go on a walk. I thought I was taking Dave on a walk he hadn't been on, but apparently he had already done this one with his friend Andy. But anywho, on the way there we got a flat tire. Gutted! But we were able to get it changed and hiked the short trail. At the end was a very large Kauri tree. It is a large native tree to New Zealand that sheds it bark therefore keeping parasitic plants from accumulating around the base.

The tree is this wide!

This is a picture Dave took of the tree when he was there before. So much for surprising him with a fun new hike adventure.

After that we went to town and had dinner at the Horny Bull. We shared a fajita plate for two. It was delicious. I was able to get him a free piece of cake for his birthday. Little did he know I had a huge birthday cake waiting at home for him as well.

The cake box was just so pretty I had to take a picture of it.

Beforehand, I had arranged for our friends to meet at our house and surprise him. When he walked through the door and turned on the light, they all yelled "Dave" and had spelled out his name with their bodies. He was very surprised. During dinner I had been texting them, telling them where I had hid the key to get in and Dave kept asking, "Who are you texting?" I told him I was arranging a movie night with one of my friends. He found it strange that it took so many texts to get that figured out. Little did he know...

We played a game of "Super Charades" as our friend Alex has named it. Everyone writes down ten names. It could be a cartoon character, actor, singer, politician, etc. Throw them all into a bowl and mix them up. There are three rounds. The first round you just describe who the person is. Go around in turns until all the names have been guessed. Put them all back in the bowl and mix. Second round, you can only use one word to describe the person. It can be quite hard if you just say, "blonde". Put all the names back in again. Third round, you have to act out the person. We all had a blast. After that we ate cake and ice cream and ended the night. Happy Birthday Dave!