Queenstown Day Two

Woke up and noticed that the mountains across the lake that we look out on had become snow-capped over night. Really beautiful. Unfortunately another day that was back and forth being clear and rainy, though more continuous drizzle than yesterday, less heavy downpours. Tony and my mom played tennis in the morning, but finally got tired of the drizzle and came in for coffee. Jordy had been running around in her new little sleeveless dress to be their ball-girl. It was rather chilly, but she didn’t care. Then Tony and the kids went to the pool and I went for a run/hike up through this wooded area nearby. After lunch we all went up in the gondola to an incredible view of Queenstown. We took the chairlift at the top up to the start of the luge ride. We all looked pretty funny in the bike helmets that we had to wear for the ride, but I think that my parents took the prize, as they put their helmets on over their baseball caps so had the brims sticking out under the helmets. Zeke and Tony doubled up in their luge car-thing, but the rest of us had our own. I was in front of Jordy, and as we were coming to our first curve I hear her call out, “I’m totally out of control!” She was of course smiling as she said it, not particularly worried. She did fine around that corner, but further down was going too fast when trying to round a corner and smashed into the dirt along the edge of the track. Luckily I was there waiting for her so together we pulled hard and got her mobile out. I then started calling her “Crash Hurley.” When we got down she reported to everyone else that she never screamed despite the fact that she had a little crash. We all had fun, and then took the gondola back down.
At the bottom of the gondola we saw the Bungy Trampoline (see the video), which the girls couldn’t wait to go on. It is a thing where you stand on a hard plastic mat and get strapped into a harness and then can jump and go really high up in the air. The girls loved it and kept jumping high and doing forward and backward summersaults up in the air. It was great watching them. Zeke decided to give it a go – he had fun, but was a bit more cautious than the girls. I pulled his legs down so that he would bounce up higher since he wasn’t pushing off very well – he smiled and laughed a bit as he went higher, but then told me to stop. He enjoyed it in his own way. We then went down to the wharf area to see about parasailing for the girls who were dying to do it tandom with each other. We were told however that they weren’t doing it today because the lake wasn’t calm enough. We got a snack along the pedestrian mall street and the girls watched a magician performing there. Zeke and I went into a shop to get him a new sweatshirt, and he picked out one that has a hood with sheep ears on it. He looked absolutely adorable in it, and is convinced that if he wears it around sheep they will come over to him because they will think that he is one of them. Maybe we’ll try it one day when we need a little break from him!

View pictures from our trip:
December Slideshow
January Slideshow