I'm in Kiwi Land!!

For those of you uncultured folks, which would be me and most of our family, New Zealand is home of the Kiwi bird. Anyway, here are some pictures of my time here. The first is Huana falls which was gorgeous and a very short hike. The next is the from the Hamilton flower gardens. It was cool, they had little sections for many countires in the world. The one in the foto is our heritage-Japan. The last is the man made lake at the top of Huana Regoinal park. The picture of the keep of the Dam sign was taken just before I hopped the fence and ran down the dam. I was a bit lost and not sure how to get back, so I took the sure way back which was down the dam!
The next picture is of me hiking a volcano called Rangitoto. It was a good hike and took about 3 hours but at the top you had a great view of Auckland and the harbor. It was gorgeous! The other crazy people are the mom and daughter that I stay with and my good friend Sungu from Tonga.

The last picture is the countryside that I drove through to get to the Temple in Hamilton. It doesn't even do it justice, it was amazing! I also went to some glow worm caves which rocked, but we couldn't take fotos so I will have to show you those later. We road a boat and looked up to see the worms which looked like a ceiling full of stars or little green christmas lights. Other than that, just museums, eats, lots of volleyball in the backyard and a ton of flea bites. Yeah, they got fleas, which I will be trying to kill tomorrow. I should take a foto of my body, I look like I have chicken pox! Anway, much love from the lovin' NZ but itchy girl Lori!!

The Big Catch

So we ventured out once again, and this time found ourselves along the banks of the beautiful Liberty Reservoir. On Labor Day we decided to take a little fishing trip w/ our new fishing poles from Walmart. Connie was pretty excited to slay some fish with her new pink pole.


We walked and walked, and w/ each turn around the bend I told Connie we'd just walk a little further. Finally we came to our primetime location and started catching 'em like crazy right off the bat. Connie caught the first, and her reaction was priceless. I was lucky enough to catch a bit of it on film (see bottom). We caught a handful of pan fish, and had loads of fun.


The only keeper we caught was reeled in by Connie. She had caught a fish on her pole and brought it to me to take off. I handed her my pole and began taking off the fish when I heard another scream. She had caught another on my pole and it turned out to be a nice size perch. Even though we only had one keeper we had to take it home to eat. Later on the next week we went fishing one more time where I caught a sweet 16 inch Largemouth.