Cavities and Prescription Toothpaste

I went to the dentist yesterday. I had a cavity. :( It's been about 16 years since my last one though. Everything went well, and I'm still happily married! ;) I can say for myself now that Mark is a very good dentist!!! He also brought home some special "anti-cavity" Rx toothpaste for me. He claims it's for him to use too. Whatever, Mr. I've never had a cavity in my life! It was my first cavity in a long time, and now I need special toothpaste? I guess that's what I get for being married to a dentist.

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.