Welcome to 2006

Well, it's 2006 and we got here before you did!!!! Auckland has just partied in the new year, and I was there with my trusty camera to get it all on film!! Happy New year from us here in Auckland...

A New Arrival

Laura and I are excited about our new arrival; Emily Mac arrived on Monday and weighed in at just 50lb!! She is so cute....
She is bringing us much joy, and we're simply loving getting to know her....
More soon...

What is a kiwi christmas like

If you want to know what we did on christmas day; take a look at the movie we made by clicking here.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everybody!!!

We're having a great christmas day, and was made special by a surpise visit by santa at church. Can you guess who it is? Click here to watch the video!!!

Christmas Is Coming

WOW!!! Only 2 more days until our first New Zealand Christmas and we're very excited. We're now both on holiday for a couple of weeks so will be relaxing and chilling out for a while. As you can see we didn't go for the traditional tree in our apartment, but have gone for something a little more alternative!!!

Merry Christmas....

23-26 January06:

A 4 day city mission - Join City Lights to light up Auckland through practical service!

Find out more...

iPodmania!!!

Well the staff at St Paul's have gone iPod crazy!!! Laura and I recently got up to date and got a 30gig iPod video with an Altec Lansing inMotion iM7 speaker system; It totally kicks butt!!!

We're going to spend the rest of our lives saving for an iMac to go with it!!!

We're going to U2!

Well, in what was a very stressful week for us, we managed to get hold of tickets to see U2 play here in Auckland. It is pretty much the event of the decade here. Both concerts sold out within 90 minutes and the tickets are like gold dust!!! Can't wait!!!

Christmas In The Park

Every year about 200,000 people descend on the Auckland Domain to attend the CocaCola Christmas in the park - it's a huge concert hosted by low rank New Zealand celebrities, and is actually masses of fun!!

I really didn't want to go and was very dubious of the whole idea, but around 50 young people from St Paul's went along together with our picnics and blankets; We sat in the park in our shorts and Ts from about 5 till 11!!! We spent a lot of time eatind drinking and singing.

There were performances of pop songs from various NZ celebs as well as some good old christmas carols. The whole evening finished off with a massive fireworks display. You'll be able to see more photos in the photo section.

Rich got Ordained!!!

Well, Rich has fastracked it all and got him self fully ordained as a vicar! We went to the service, and can absolutley guarentee it was one of the most boring things in the world!!!!

We've posted some photos and you can view a short video here.

It seemed that it didn't take rich long to get himself back to his normal self!! In the evening about 50 of us from St Paul's went to party in the park and Rich was to be found necking champaigne from the bottle - good lad!!!!

A Weekend In Waiheke

Well, on Friday Laura and I decided to have a weekend away - or a night at least!!!

We jumped on the ferry from Auckland city cetre and headed over to Waiheke.

It's a small Island about 30 minutes away by ferry, and it's worth taking the trip as the pace of life is even slower there than it is in Auckland. We stayed at a very quaint little homestay called Blue Horizon run by a sweet elderly couple in Sandy Bay.

It was very comfortable, and very cheap ($95 for an ensuite B&B) and provided a great base for us to explore the island....

Naturally our exploration didn't get a lot past the local beaches on the first day!! We headed out to Oneroa which is the main town (more like a village!!) We had fish and chips there and sat on the beach and comtemplated life. As we didn't take our car with us, everything was on foot which was great. Aucklanders have to drive everywhere because the public transport is so shocking, so it wa a welcomed break.

On Saturday morning we awoke to a beautiful day, and incredible views from the deck that flowed from our bedroom - we took some photos and then headed to Oneroa to meet our friends Jeremy & Emily. We spent a fair amount of the morning and afternoon on Little Oneroa beach, where we built a sand mermaid, swam in the sea, and ate lunch!!!

Making the most of Jeremys wine expertise, we took an afternoon trip to Stonyridge Vineyard. Stonyridge make New Zealands most expensive red wines, and has a beautiful vineyard that we took a tour around. Jeremy used to work there so we got taken round for free and plied with alcohol :-)

Shortly after our wine tour we jumped on a ferry and returned to Auckland refreshed and relaxed...