Well it's only taken what, 9 months for our first visitors to come over and see us!
First things first though, we have email up and running again. But until I can get someone at work to try working out the laptop troubles, our email archive and contacts list is gone, so please just send us a quick hello email and we can gather your email addresses again!
Jacqui and James turned up for a few days with us before continuing on to Rarotonga. Though cramped with 4 people in our little house we managed to survive! And either they're very polite or the spare bed we have is tolerable to sleep on, so that means the rest of you have no excuse to come stay.
Anyway, they being who they are, we managed to cram lots of activities with them into the short time thy were here. Restaurants, cafes, penguins, karting, driving around to the usual touristy places in town... not to mention plenty of the usual crude jokes, smut, and discussions of bodily functions, that defines our friendship.
Naturally, this coincided with a week of dismal weather... On Sunday we went to Kelly Tarltons Antarctic Experience, where they have a flock (?) of penguins crammed into a small fridge, and a few giant stingrays (cue Steve Irwin jokes) and miniature seahorses.
Tuesday night James and I went karting at what is apparently the fastest (rental) karting place in Auckland. Lots of fun ripping it up and getting sideways, though after half an hour straight I was in pain, and James still beat me by half a second. No excuses, I just wasn't fast enough. My shoulders and wrists are still feeling it several days later.
It's almost a relief to be back to just two of us now. We've got a long weekend here to recover, which also means that I'll have to make friends with someone who has Sky and visit them on Monday morning to watch the F1...
love to all.
postscript - wow to my parents, they just sold their big farm today for... lets just say... rather a lot of money. It will be a shame to see it go (and we need to clear out our stuff from the cottage), but it's gratifying to see all their hard work on the infrastructure of the property pay off.
