Queenstown

Happy New Year!!! I can’t believe it is the new year here. We drove over to Helen and Geoff’s to return the little mattress they lent us for Zeke, and to say good-bye. Then we went over to the little stone church that Tekapo is famous for. It is a really sweet little church, and when you walk into it, it is very simple with a big window behind the pulpit that looks out onto the lake and mountains. It gives it such a nice, open, natural, spiritual feel. We then stopped in town to get coffee and treats for the kids and headed on to Queenstown. Jordy had a hard time being back in the car and was whining for a while. I tried to come up with ideas of how to help her, but she was just really having a hard time. Eventually I switched seats with her and gave her my i-pod and she immediately became a different person - was singing along happily (and monotonally) with the music. My dad joked that her singing that we all had to listen to then might have been worse than her whining was. We stopped for lunch in Cromwell where they have a little café and lots of good fruit. At one point we thought that Zeke and Jordy were just off running around to get some energy out (as we had instructed them to do) when we found out that they had gone off into an orchard and were eating apricots off of the trees. We explained to them that that was not allowed and showed them how Maddy and I had actually gone into the store and bought some fruit. When we were in the store Maddy had spotted this cool machine where they put in ice cream with fruits of your choice and they got mixed together and came out as a fresh blueberry/strawberry ice cream or whatever. We made an agreement that they could each have one as long as none of them would “winge” (a.k.a. whine) in the car. They loved them.
We then arrived in Queenstown which has a bustling little downtown area with information and booking offices in practically every other storefront. We are staying in a 3-bedroom villa at a place called Heritage which has a wonderful view of the lake and mountains. The kids wanted to immediately go over to the pool so Tony took them while my parents and I went to investigate different possibilities of things to do over the next few days. We were only supposed to stay here for two nights, but we ended up changing things around to cut out some driving. Instead of driving down to Te Anau and then driving from there to Milford Sound, we decided to stay here longer and fly to Milford. Later, Mom, Dad, Maddy and I went out to dinner at The Lone Star restaurant while Tony stayed in with Jordy and Zeke. Maddy is really enjoying the times that she goes out with just the grown-ups.

View pictures from our trip:
December Slideshow
January Slideshow