Man oh man, what a month!
Aani had her farewell on March 8, and I was so busy making waffles at our house for all the people that I didn't take one single picture, but Nils got this picture of me finishing off the water when all was said and done. You are welcome.
Aani gave a great talk on her personal conversion story. She will be an incredible missionary. She was set apart on the 29th, and heads to the Provo MTC next week. Home MTC is not anyone's favorite, but she's been doing well.
Our niece Haylee got married to Jake on the 10th, so we partied and celebrated and are super happy for them!
The next day we went on a big family trip to New Zealand!
We left SLC on Wednesday at 3:30 pm, and arrived in Aukland at 7:30 am on Friday. By the time we got to our destination in Queenstown, it was about 5:30 pm on Friday, so it was quite a lot of travel time. They are 19 hours ahead of us, which just makes the time warp even crazier.
We rented a 9 passenger van and saw the sights for 10ish days on the South Island. We stayed in Queenstown for about 4-5 days. We hiked, we walked around town and explored, we rode a gondola up to the top of a mountain, we stayed in a weird hotel that felt like a youth hostel. We ate at McDonald's a lot. We drove to Arrowtown about an hour away for a day trip. We drove 5 hours each way one day to go to Milford Sound. That was a really long day and we all nearly lost our marbles. Nils and Aani went skydiving and had a blast.
We then drove to Wanaka and stayed for about 3 days. More hiking, more sight seeing, admiring the architecture around town.
We drove to Lake Tekapo and stayed at a campground for the night, and then finished the drive to Christchurch where we stayed for 4 nights before flying to Aukland so we could visit a glow worm cave and Hobbiton before flying home.
New Zealand feels very familiar and comfortable. It's quite similar to the US in many ways and was not difficult at all. They drive on the left side of the road and have a cool accent. Food is similar, music is the same, fashion is casual and comfortable.
They call McDonald's Macca's. They have a lot of KFC, Burger King, Domino's, some Taco Bell. Everywhere we went, food was a lot of burgers, fries, pizza, Indian food, and a lot of Asian cuisine. Meat pies and sausage rolls are their thing. They have a lot of great chocolate with fun flavors and combos. They have chicken flavored potato chips, which Nils and I loved!
Anders met up with a couple of Kiwi friends, who met met when he was like 12 on Xbox. They played Fortnite together for years and have kept in touch, so we met them and had dinner. Ezra and Tyler are great. He spent the weekend with them, then stayed an extra couple of weeks after we came home. He's still there!
Prepare for all the pictures in the world. These are not even all of the pictures from our shared album, but these are from everyone in the family, including a lot of film camera pics courtesy Anders. I shall not attempt to label them.
We had a blast, had A LOT of family togetherness (for better or for worse) saw a beautiful country, and had a much needed break from the real world. We ate a lot of chocolate, chicken chips, took a lot of steps every day, saw millions of sheep, lugged our plethora of luggage around in our big old van, grocery shopped at the Woolworth's, and made a lot of memories. Nils LOVED the meat pies. I mean, he really loved them.
