NCAA Tournament-Boise

It's March Madness. In past years, I haven't been too excited, nor have I kept up with the brackets, the seeds, the rankings, or anything else pertaining to college basketball. A few years ago, Mark's office had a march madness contest where you fill out a bracket of who you think will win. One year I actually won!! A t-shirt!! Woohoo!! This year, Mark and I went shopping and bought some prizes for everyone at his office. The grand prize is pretty sweet, but since it's a secret, I won't disclose it quite yet. So I think I'm starting to buy into all this March Madness stuff. It's actually pretty fun, if you like watching basketball and guessing who will win. It turned out that Utah State was lined up to play Marquette (both of Mark's Alma Mater's), and they were scheduled to play in Boise. Since we are only 4 hours from Boise, and Mark was able to acquire "hard to get tickets" through Marquette, we packed up our kids, and headed to Boise with some friends of ours. Since we were only allowed two tickets, the men went to the game, while the women and the kids headed to a children's science museum, a park, and then to Zoo Boise (the men came to the Zoo because the game was over by then). USU lost to Marquette in a really close game (they lost by one point), but overall we had a really great time. The kids loved the hotel, swimming, the museum, the Zoo, the warm weather, and the spaghetti factory. It was a fun weekend. It's good to get away sometimes!

Mark and Caleb at the hotel before the game. Notice that Mark is wearing a USU hat, and a Marquette shirt, but he was really cheering for USU!

The kids playing in the hotle closet

The babies!

FUN AT THE MUSEUM

ZOO BOISE

New Zealand--4th and final part

Our last few days in New Zealand we spent in the Hamilton area. It was fun being so close to the temple. Each night Mark and I would go for an evening walk around the temple grounds.

Here is a picture of the temple at night. I'm standing on the stairs. You can't see from this picture, but there is graffiti on the front of the temple. Most of it came off, but you can still see it a little bit. So sad.

We wanted to have one more beach/swimming/snorkeling day, but it rained the last two days we were in NZ. The day before it rained pretty hard, so we just went shopping. The last day, we decided to brave the weather and go see Raglan beach and Bridal Veil Falls anyway. These were such gorgeous places! I was bummed the weather didn't cooperate, but it was still fun.

Here is Mark walking toward the beach at Raglan.

Beautiful Raglan beach.

If you click on this picture, you will see many surfers. Raglan is known for surfing, and apparently the best surfing days are the rainy ones?! I guess rain is good for snorkeling too?! Too cold for me.

Here I am at Bridal Veil Falls. The water looked murky, but Mark's dad said it is usually very clear. It must have been the storm.

Mark and me at Bridal Veil Falls. We were both wearing our swimming suits, just in case the weather decided to clear up. It didn't. :(

We then went back to Mark's parent's home, packed up and left for Auckland. We visited the Sky Tower which was really cool. There are tower's like this all over the world. Mark and I have been to the CN tower in Toronto which is very similar.

Here is a view of Auckland from the top of the Sky Tower.

Mark and me inside the Sky Tower.

We didn't have any time to eat at the restaurant on the tower, so Mark's parent's drove us to the airport, where we bought a rugby ball for our boys, and then we went home (having 3 little boys we couldn't have left NZ without getting a rugby ball. We also got them some cute All Blacks jersey's. The All Black's are the NZ rugby team). The trip home was good. We were so excited to see our children. When we got off the plane and saw Caleb, he looked at us like we were strangers. It didn't take him too long to remember us. James and Andrew were great! It wasn't hard jumping right back into our lives!

Here we are at the LA airport.

Here are our boys, decked out in their NZ duds!! Aren't they handsome?! Right after we took the picture, James and Andrew started to "play rugby." James said, "Andrew, I'm on the All Blacks team, and you're on the All Red's team!"

New Zealand--Bay of Islands--Part 3

The Bay of Islands was BEAUTIFUL!!! We were so fortunate to have good weather nearly the entire time we were there.





We stayed at the Copthorne Resort, and this is what we saw when we opened the back sliding door of our room. We found the cutest little shells just right down there on the beach.



That first day we went on a cruise around the bay. Ours was called a dolphin cruise and they guaranteed that we would see dolphins. Boy did we ever.




This is Mark and me on the boat before the cruise started. We had front row seats on the very front of the boat.




Here is the rest of the gang just chillin' before the cruise started.



And we're off! Here is just a look at the bay.

Here I am, hanging on to dear life. It was a fast boat.

And then there were dolphins. A lot of them. Here is a mother, a baby, and an auntie (at least that was what we were told).

Many of the dolphins swam right up to the front of the boat (where we were), and tried to race us. When the boat stopped, a few of them came right up to the boat and started "talking" to us. Unfortunately for me, this is when I got a little sea sick. I ended up losing my lunch, but after that I was good to go!! Sorry, TMI.

We got out pretty far in the bay and came to the "hole in the rock."

Here we are actually going through the hole in the rock. The water was too rough our first attempt, but as soon as it settled down a bit, our boat made it safely through!

This was our island stop called the island of caves. It was even more gorgeous than the picture.

We hiked up a little trail and here we are on the Island of caves (do I look a little sick?? I was mostly over it by then...)

On the way back, we saw this ship and wanted to take a picture of it for our boys. Doesn't it look like a pirate ship? They thought it was pretty awesome.

Here we are after the cruise ready to go get some dinner (I was starving!!!!). We ate at a fun pizza/pasta place.

The next morning Mark and I got up early and we went out to explore. We found some neat shells, and a ton a little starfish. Aren't they cute? They were all over.

We also saw a few crabs.

Then we went to do some beaching at another beach just a little bit north and I can't remember the name of it, but I know it started with an "M." Here we are in the waves...doing a little bit of swimming.

Now, if you look at the hill behind me, Mark and I saw that there was another beach at the bottom. It's hard to see from this picture, but it looked fun so we went to explore. There was a little trail that went right up and around and took us to this awesome secluded little beach. This hike was impossible to do in flip flops, so we did it barefoot. I felt like a hobbit, hiking around NZ in my bare feet!! Mark and I found some paua shells here and some other really neat shells. Paua shells are very popular in NZ. They make a lot of jewelry out of the shells and the Mauri people use the shells a lot in their building and decorating. The beach was amazing. The only problem was, we forgot to take our camera with us on our little excursion. We really wanted to stay longer, but we thought the others would be worried about us, so we didn't stay too long. We went to a eat at a little diner. Mark ordered a bacon burger. We were fully expecting there to be a hamburger with the bacon, but no, it was just bun with bacon and a few toppings. We thought is was hilarious!

We drove back to the Bay of Islands and did a little shopping and resting (nap!!!). Then we went to dinner.

Here we are at a little Swiss restaurant. I ordered the seafood pasta. It came loaded with calamari, mussels, and other pieces of unidentified seafood. I have to admit, it was pretty good.

The next day we took a ferry over to Russel. It is a peninsula on the other side of the Bay of Islands. It was a cute little place with some fun shops. There are only about 500 people that actually live there, but it is very touristy. This is Mark and me hiking down to "long beach."

It was an over cast day, so we didn't want to swim, but we did a lot of exploring. We found this bright blue jellyfish. Mark touched the top of it. We learned from the movie Finding Nemo that one can touch the top of the jellyfish and not get stung. :)

Here is my honey. It really was a long and rocky beach. We could have explored there all day. We saw quite a few crabs. It would have been a great place for snorkeling if it had been a bit warmer.

After that, we took the ferry back, and left to go back to Hamilton. On the way back we stopped in Auckland for a little break and to do some shopping. We ran into some ward members (and our friends parents) who are missionaries in Auckland. It was such a coincidence seeing as they arrived in NZ the day before.

Coming up....our final days in NZ.

New Zealand--Part 2

On Sunday we went to church, then spent a lot of the day at the temple visitor's centre to see Elder and Sister Thornley at work, and to meet some of the other missionaries. Those sister missionaries were so cute. I wish I would have taken a picture of them. Three were from Australia and one was from Alabama. This visitor's centre is newly renovated and beautiful. Mark and I watched the newest Joseph Smith film with around 15 MTC missionaries (yes, there is an MTC there). I love seeing 19 year old boys cry. It was a very moving film. It was a wonderful day.

Mark standing in front of the visitor's centre with the temple behind him.


The Christus, inside the Centre

Mark and me in front of the beautiful NZ temple.

Sister Thornley and me in front of the visitor's centre

All of us in front of the temple

Me standing in front of the temple and the visitor's center behind me.

Sunday evening we went to the Hamilton Gardens.

Bekah and me sitting on a turtle dragon?? Notice that the dragon is biting Bekah's hand, hence the pained expressions.

All of the garden's had a theme, such as a Japanese garden, an American garden (which was quite ugly), a vegetable garden, etc... I can't recall which garden this was, but it was one of my favorites. Tuscan maybe....

The next day we were off to see more sights. Before we left, I had Brother and Sister Hutchins (a cute missionary couple from American Fork) who just happened to be on a walk at 7am, take a picture of us in front of the GR Biesinger building. George Biesinger was my grandfather's first cousin. The Biesinger building (which is still being used by the Maori's for meetings and such) is located directly across from Mom a Dad Thornley's home. George R Biesinger went on a building mission in the 1960's (could have been earlier). He lived there in Temple View, NZ for many years, made many friends, taught the gospel of Jesus Christ, and was well loved and respected by many. In fact, in the sacrament meeting that we attended, the stake president mentioned Elder Biesinger in his talk. The inscription on the sign (that Mark and I are standing by in the pic below), says that the building was erected in honor of Elder "B", by his many friends (or something to that effect). I felt very proud to be a Biesinger! Oh, I also want to mention that my grandfather served a building mission in Germany, around the same time his cousin was in NZ.

Then we were off.

We were heading north, so we drove past Auckland and took a picture from our car. Our final destination was the Bay of Islands, but we made a stop overnight in the city of Whangerei (pronounced Fongeray). I am very happy we did, because we found some gorgeous places to see while we were there. First we went to see a kauri forest. Kauri trees are the largest trees in the world (by volume), but not by height (although they are huge!), and they are among the most ancient. The kauri forest was beautiful! Mark, Bekah and I went for a run through this forest the next morning before we left, so we got to see it twice!! We gave my parents a table mat made of kauri wood, and Mark bought a kauri wood bowl for his office (it holds gum (Trident), for his patients).

Me, Mark and Mom Thornley standing in front of a kauri tree.

Me and Mark in the kauri forest.

We then went to Whangarei Falls. This was also gorgeous. It was just a short hike, but the scenery was breath taking.

Me and Mark's parents in awe of the Whangarei Falls.

That evening, Jon and Bekah took the car, while Mark, his parents, and I went to a Thai restaurant. We walked, and on the way home we got caught in a NZ rain storm.

Coming up.....the Bay of Islands and our trip to the Auckland Sky Tower.