Christmas and New Year

Sorry its late......
This year was a slightly strange Christmas, the 1st in a long time without Mum and Dad :(
However, we tried to make the most of it.

Unfortunately I was working evenings in the run up to Christmas, I arrived home at 11pm on Christmas eve to find Gem and James had joined us for the holidays. Christmas morning we awoke nice and early (6am!) as Si had to go to work at 8. I cooked him a nice breakfast of eggs and bacon, put the Christmas music on, started up skype and settled down with Mum and Dad on skype to open all our pressies. After we said goodbye to Si we headed over to Waihi beach for the next 2 days. Had a lovely few days eating lots of BBQ food and playing on the beach.
I headed back to Hamilton on boxing day evening as I needed to be in work on the Monday and Tuesday. Those 2 days passed relatively uneventfully and thankfully I was then off again till after New Year.

Wednesday morning Si and I headed up to Auckland to join James, Laura and Alex (James' brother and his wife) for the day. We spent it over on Waiheke drinking wine and enjoying the weather.
That night Si, Andy, Dai and Ash (more friends of ours) and I headed up to the Bay of Islands for the upcoming week. Unfortunately due to our faffing and time on Waiheke we didn't make it up there till well past 1am, caused a stir at the campsite and were faced with slightly rude campsite owners the next day - oops, oh well its not like we tried to be noisy.

The next morning we awoke to rain :( and headed over to Russell to find the bach that we had booked for the next 4 nights......RIGHT ONT HE BEACH FRONT!! The weather soon cleared up and we spent the rest of the day on the beach. Throughout the evening we were joined by the rest of the troop.

The next day was New Years Eve and where better to spend it than chilling and playing on the beach, with a short trip into town to get some ice creams, have a few drinks and buy our supplies for our masked party! After enjoying spending our afternoon making our masks we had a musical masked party that night with a fair few drinks to see in the new year - has to be sad it was definitely one of my favourite New Years!

New Years Day was a nice lazy start followed by a fishing trip. Although it was an amazing trip and the sun shone for us we only managed to catch 1 fish worth keeping, slightly different to our last fishing trip! We were knid enough to put him back after deciding that 1 fish would not really stretch to feed 10 hungry tummies. After our trip we opted for the much better idea of fish and chips for dinner!

On Sunday we headed over to Paihia to go back and show the others the Waitangi treaty grounds - this time remembering our passports to get in free! Set in the most beautiful grounds with the best views over the Bay of Islands. Unfortunately after the treaty grounds visit Em, Andy, Dai and Ash had to head back South to start work. We stayed in Paihia for a few drinks and met up with one of Gem's friends from home.

Monday was leaving day. We spent the day again on the beach and having a generally lazy day before heading back home in the afternoon.

Tuesday Si and I popped into the travel agents and booked our holiday for the following week - MELBOURNE HERE WE COME!!
After which we popped over to Rotorua for the day to see Alex and Laura for the last time before they headed home the following week. We visited the Kiwi house and Wai-o-Tapu.

All in all a good Christmas break!