Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Hey Everyone (or anyone who's still popping in here) ~~

We're back!

yeah :|

Back to work, kids, housework, cold wintry weather...

Well, at least I still have a job ~~ although things are not all hunky dory on the work front ~~ another drastic pay cut, supposedly temporary.... yuk.

Anyway...

Saw lots of beautiful places, met lots of nice people, took lots of pictures (somewhere around 800). It's going to take a while to go through all the pics (edit, compress, caption, etc.) and get our adventures written down, so to tide things over, here's a pic of Mount Maunganui, New Zealand. Enjoy.

We've Made it Safely to NZ

Sitting in our hotel room in warm, humid, rainy Auckland. Loving the warmth ~~ the humidity, yeah, not so much :)
But I understand the rain is very welcome as they've had a fairly hot, dry summer. They haven't experienced the wildfires like Australia, but the fire danger is still extremely high along the east coast of both the North and South Islands.

What little I've seen of Auckland is beautiful ~~ it's very lush here. Lots of trees, bushes, flowers everywhere. The view from the plane as we flew in yesterday was gorgeous ~~ green everywhere, rolling hills, beaches and seashore...

Our hotel is right across the street from the University and a beautiful park. We've done a bit of walking about, yesterday and today, down the hill, through the Chancery and along nearby streets, windowshopping and just enjoying the area.

With all the overcast, we're not seeing much of the surrounding area...

It's odd when we call home ~~ It's Tuesday morning here and Monday afternoon there. Kids are doing ok with Grandma... so far :P

Anyway, we'll be heading off to the ship shortly, so I've got to get everything packed up and tagged properly.

Hope to be able to post more from the ship.