New Zealand

We woke up smelling vaguely sulfurous and packed up. Even though we’ve practiced the pack-up routine so many times now, it still seems to take forever. Checkout time was 10:30 and we got on the road at about 10:45. Quick moment for Millie’s beautiful hair. I’m so jealous of it. We drove about 2 hours,…

How were you woken up this morning? Because I was woken up at 6AM by Millie asking “Mom, I have a question. Are you a conjoined twin?” Somehow she accepted my answer of “No, go back to sleep” and lay next to me for another hour. When we got up it was raining heavily, and…

Millie and I spent the morning playing “shop”. She made fake paper money and then invited me into her “everything store” that she set up in the garage. I mostly requested paintings and she delivered. We set off for the village at about 11 and arrived in time to get tickets for their daily performance.…

Extreme NZ tourist day today. We almost didn’t make it out of the house on time this morning because Nick and I weren’t feeling 100% and Millie got a taste of that sweet sweet endless TV time yesterday and was begging for more. I rallied the troops and got us to the Agrodome in time…

As predicted, today was an extremely chill day. Nick and I were both up much of the night feeling awful. We felt a bit better this morning but still weak and nauseous when upright. We have been sick way more than I expected we would be on this trip. The cyclone hit at 3am last…

After we left our hotel we had to get an Uber to the airport to pick up a rental car. It felt funny going to the airport without a flight. We got our little car and began the journey South. We are not big Lord of the Rings fans (I have never even read nor…

Same old boring hotel morning. This hotel doesn’t have breakfast included, and we’re too cheap to pay for the overpriced buffet, so we found a nice coffee shop nearby that serves food. I had a very large and satisfying breakfast burrito. Then we walked over to the Auckland Art Gallery. As with all museums in…

I was up slightly earlier than normal for a work(ish) call, so once that was done I picked up pastries and coffees. We ate and lounged around the hotel room. Lazy mornings aren’t quite as sweet in a hotel, but sweet nonetheless. The plan for the day: visit Waiheke Island. We walked down to the…

Our flight out of Queenstown was at 9:50, so not too bad of an early morning. Everything went fine and the flight was an easy 2 hours. Other than some bug bumps on the descent, it was very uneventful. I can’t believe we’ve carried this little baby doll around the world for almost a year…

We had our typical lazy morning: first coffee in bed while reading (all three of us in bed), second coffee while making breakfast, Millie drew for over an hour, we read some more, took turns showering, booked some places for upcoming stops, etc. It was cloudy today and I woke up with a headache. Not…