Sunday Morning Football

It's Sunday morning, and I'm not sure how/why I woke up so early. I guess the good thing about it is that I can "watch" the Notre Dame football game. By "watch," I mean I can Facetime on my iPhone with my brother and sister-in-law in Michigan and watch the game on their TV. 

As I was writing this, Purdue tied the game up at 17-17, and then Notre Dame kicked a field goal with a few seconds left for the win. Woohoo-go Irish!! That means I can wear my new ND shirt (thanks Mom!) today without feeling embarrassed.

P.S. How cute is my brown doggie? We miss you Molly!

My Husband the Senior Manager

Last week, Zack got the awesome news that he was promoted to Senior Manager with Accenture! He worked incredibly hard over the past few years (especially on his most recent project), so he definitely deserved it. I'm very proud of him!

I made a sign for the door to welcome him home on the day he found out about the promotion and then forced him to pose for cheesy paparazzi-style pictures as he came down our hallway. My kind husband is very tolerant of my excessive picture taking!

I found a store in South Melbourne that makes balloon bouquets, so I quickly rushed home from school that day, had them make up a Congratulations one, bought a bottle of champagne, and biked home (not easy with a bag full of balloons!) to get ready for the Senior Manager to arrive.

Congrats Mr. Senior Manager!

We have a tradition in my family: whenever someone gets a new job, promotion, or raise, he or she has to buy pizza for everyone. So I made Zack buy us pizza for dinner! It didn't quite go with the healthy eating plan we've been trying to follow lately, but we made an exception considering the circumstances.

It was a fun, celebratory evening with a shared bottle of champagne, lots of pizza, and several kind Facebook 'likes' and comments from friends and family. We've been waiting and hoping for this news for quite awhile, so it was great to finally be able to enjoy the official announcement of his promotion. Congratulations Zack!

P.S. Zack is probably going to be embarrassed when he reads this post. Too bad...this is what he gets for letting me take over the blog! :)

Frisbee Golf and Farewell

We left New Zealand on Sunday, August 20th in the afternoon. Since we had the whole morning to spend in Queenstown, we played a round of frisbee golf with our friends. There's a fun course right down by the lake (Lake Wakatipu) in the city. 

I was absolutely terrible at the game, but it was still a good time. Being near the lake made for some interesting frisbee chases down the hill! Adam and Todd ended up tying for the win in the end. 

While the boys figured out who won, we girls took silly pictures.

We flew out of Queenstown later that day, sad that our short weekend was over, but happy that we'll be back in December to properly explore the South Island of New Zealand!

Goodbye, New Zealand...we'll be back!

Exploring Arrowtown

On our third full day in New Zealand, we didn't feel like making the trip to another ski resort for sub-par snowboarding, so we all piled in the rental van and went to nearby Arrowtown. This is an old gold mining town, and it's very charming and cute. We started the day with a scenic hike. I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but New Zealand reminded us SO much of Colorado. From the moment we stepped off the plane, we felt that way. Even the air we were breathing felt the same. Anyway, there are many similarities in landscape with our home state.

Below is a picture of our whole American group near the top of the hill on our hike. That random dog in the picture belongs to the person who we asked to take our photo!

Adam, Alena, Emily, Kate, me, Zack, and Todd (and a random dog!)

Zack let his facial hair grow during our Thailand trip, which somehow turned into a mustache. It's gone now (thank goodness), but in New Zealand, it was in its full glory. Here are the guys posing for a "mustache shot."

After our hike, we explored the main street of Arrowtown. Zack and I enjoyed some souvenir shopping and fudge tasting; then we ducked into a country music show to hear some tunes. We were the youngest ones in there by about 30 years and we got a few strange looks, but it was fun to listen to some of the local talent. We finished off our visit to Arrowtown with some delicious hot chocolate and drove back to Queenstown to make a homemade spaghetti dinner. Yum!

The Remarkable Remarkables

On Saturday, we snowboarded at The Remarkables, which is a resort close to Queenstown. It was smaller than Cardrona, but the weather and conditions were about the same.

Zack and I did hike up a little part of the mountain, hoping for some fresh powder, but we had no luck. The view was good though!

We spent more time at the terrain park on this day, trying to master (small) jumps and rails. This is definitely not our specialty, but it was fun to give it a whirl. Adam has a GoPro camera, so he was able to capture some videos of us in action! Well, Zack in action-me just being ridiculous.

More about our time in New Zealand to come...

Carving it up at Cardrona

Zack and I flew into Queenstown on Thursday, August 16. We explored the cute little town that evening and planned to meet up with our friends the next day at Cardrona Ski Resort. They had flown in on Wednesday and were staying in Wanaka, which is an even smaller town about an hour away from Queenstown. Anyway, we got up early on Friday morning and watched the sun rise over the mountains as we drove toward Cardrona...

New Zealand definitely has lots of sheep. Here is one group we passed by early that morning...

We drove up and up the mountain road...

We finally reached the resort and saw some snow!

We met up with Todd and Alena and Adam and Emily and their friend Kate (who lives in Wanaka but is from Denver too). Kate took this picture of the six American expats...

Now, to be honest, our expectations for snowboarding in New Zealand were quite high. We thought it would be just as good as, or actually better, than it is in Colorado. That assumption was completely incorrect. Cardrona is one of the bigger resorts, and it is TINY compared to the ones we're used to boarding. It seemed to have nearly all man-made snow, and the conditions were sort of slushy. But that didn't stop us from having fun! After almost two years, it was a blast to be on a snowboard again, and the weather was sunny and perfect. The views from the resort were incredible, and we had a great time cruising down the slopes with our friends.

Zack and I moved to Australia with no intention of ever snowboarding while we were here, so even though I had just gotten a new snowboard and outfit the year before we left, it's all back in the United States. To get by on this trip, my outfit and gear was a combination of borrowed, rented, and purchased op shop items! Zack, on the other hand, has had the same coat and pants for many years, so we could justify buying new stuff for him when we found a sale at a store called Auski in Melbourne. The funny thing is, he chose this combination of a blue coat and orange pants on his own, but everyone on the mountain seemed to have the same color combo! I captured one of his twins in the picture above right.

Tomorrow, I'll post about our day spent snowboarding at The Remarkables, but here's one last picture from the top of Cardrona...

Check out that view...the one behind the cute guy!
P.S. I have no idea what the mustache was about. 

Flying into Queenstown

Okay, I know it seems like all my posts are about traveling lately. I promise that we do lead somewhat normal lives most of the time. Well, maybe not completely "normal," but it just took me a really long time to finish all of the Thailand and Bali posts from our trip in July. In mid-August we flew to New Zealand for a long snowboarding weekend with Adam and Emily and Todd and Alena (other American expats). They had all been there before, but our big New Zealand trip is going to be over Christmas break this December/January, so it was all new to us.

We flew into the picturesque city of Queenstown on the South Island of New Zealand. For me, this was one of the best parts of the trip. The views were amazing, and I was so happy to have a window seat on the plane! It felt like we were flying just above the mountains, and I took tons of (illegal while flying) pictures. Even the little airport was surrounded by mountains. Here are some of my favorite shots...

My upcoming posts will talk about the snowboarding and other things we did during our New Zealand weekend. In the meanwhile, I'm doing really exciting things like teaching five year olds, folding laundry, and making dinner!