Waipu Caves pics

Scott, Phillip, and Casey. The boys who went with Jer into the caves on Saturday. See the glowworms?
The landscape in front of the entrance of the caves. The caves are just beyond that.

Glowworm caves and new car

so, i told you i got a new computer. this is what it looks like. this is not my computer b/c i didn't feel like taking a pic of it. it was quicker to find a pic online and post that one. :-) i keep it closed and hooked up to my larger monitor, except today. i'm posting from my bed today, rather than my desk 10 ft away from me. not sick. just cold and was reading in bed. jeremy wanted me to find a pic of a house i was telling him about on this cool UK show called Grand Designs that i saw this weekend. it had my ideal living space in it. two walls of built-in shelves floor to ceiling. then a nice u-shape of furniture in front of a fireplace. it also had a large corner window that made it feel like the outside was coming in. also, the floors were heated. it was great. jeremy said if we have that many shelves, we'd have a lot of empty space. but i said, over the years we'll gradually get more books. not that many though. i also plan for them to be shelves for our things we pick up from our travels and pictures and the couple of my favorite porcelain dolls i've kept from when i was younger. anyway, tangent over with. jeremy brought the computer to me on the bed so i could look up to see if they had a pic of that room on the tv shows website. they don't. just the corner window. 

this weekend, jer went camping a little bit up north at uretiti beach. it loved it. the kemps and i on sunday night, we to our friends nate and rach's house up there for the night. then we went to the waipu caves on monday with jeremy and casey. casey is one of the teenage boys at our church. his family is american too. he camped with jer sunday night. the caves were cool. we got muddy and wet, but it was fun and worth it. there were glowworms. we even got up close to some to see what they really look like and their little sticky substances they use to catch food. we met an older english fellow who is living in australia right  now at the caves. he didn't want to go in alone b/c of a past experience of going in one with another guy and getting stuck for hours. he seemed to enjoy himself. he also seemed to have a hard time understanding our accents, which we thought was strange. we weren't talking fast or anything either. also, jeremy's beach was partially a nude beach at one end. when we went to meet him before the caves, we went out to the water, and i saw a guy and what i presumed to be his two young daughters (10-ish) playing soccer. then, they were nude in the water. i was astonished. partially b/c how i've been brought up, that is not appropriate (dad and daughters nude or nude in public at all) and partially b/c it wasn't cold, but it was def. no where near warm enough to be in your birthday suit in the cold water. it was in the low 60s. anyway, crazyness.

also, this weekend, we bought a car off trademe. it's like ebay, but used all the time here for everything it seems. if you're in search of something, look on trademe. you're likely to find it. anyway, we bought a 1995 Honda Prelude. it's cherry red. we weren't wanting a red car, and i was wanting 4 doors, but it's what we found that was in good condition for our small price range. i'll post pics of it sometime. kiwis are more of the mindset that you only buy cars straight out with cash. no bank loan. where as, some people do get loans, esp. foreigners, it is popular to drive older cars here that you can save up for and get. they get a lot of cars used from asia on the cheap, so that's a popular option. you do have to watch for the odometer being turned back though in those cases. our car has roughly 170,000k (106,000 miles) on it. that's pretty good for that age. it runs well too. we christened it nicely for taking it to the beach and caves this weekend. it's now full of sand and mud. :-)

Easter photos

Nate and Rach came and joined us for Easter lunch. We had a turkey roll with stuffing and cranberry in the middle. I had bought it at Christmas b/c they don't keep turkey in the stores year-round. That's hard to get used to. No turkey lunch meat either. But, we had a good yummy lunch and good fellowship!

dead computers and closed stores

my processor is dying. we managed to get the computer running correctly this time, so i'm posting about it and backing everything up. i backup weekly, but doing it again just to be sure and adding things i don't normally back up.  the computer also won't recognize my ipod--not a good sign. when i first woke it up this morning it was having problems so i restarted it. then when it came up, it had changed my email to jer's and was downloading all his stuff. also my doc had changed itself to programs i didn't use. for those of you non-mac people, it's like when you press the start button on the lower left hand corner and the programs you have there to come up first b/c they're the ones you use all the time had changed to whatever the computer wanted. we're looking into options now as for replacement. we were going to go to the store to look today, but it's good friday. turns out, all stores close on easter friday...even grocery stores. we didn't know that. we drove around for while figuring this out. they're open tomorrow for limited hours though, so that's good. we do have food for tonight, so that's good. we stopped by a dairy on the way home to get milk and bread. we were out of those.  new kiwi thing for you.  dairies. they're like convenient stores. they mostly have junk food and sodas. but they also have milk and eggs and bread. along with random other things like spaghetti sauce and brown sugar. it's more of a stop if you don't want to go all the way to the grocery store for something small. larger ones might also have magazines and stuff too. they are frequented by kids after school or just hanging out wanting to get a soda or snack. yep. your new fact of the day.

Pavlova and Heaters

Thursday, we had two german university students over for dinner. They were pretty cool. We had a nice kiwi style dinner then played cards and talked for a long time. I tried my hand at a nice lamb dish. It was supposed to be braised lamb shank, but my grocery only had lamb shank that was already marinated or cooked, and I didn't feel like getting out the next day to go to the butcher. So, we had part of the leg or something. It turned out really nice. It was served on mashed potatoes. The sauce the lamb was cooked in was beef stock, red wine, carrots, celery, rosemary, thyme, and tomato paste. It made the lamb quick tender and tasty. We also that green beans, but they weren't done in any fancy manor. The I also made a pavlova. You serve pavlova with whipped cream and fruit on top. Strawberries and kiwi are pretty traditional, so that's what we had. Pavlova is quite simple to make, you just have to do it a day in advance unless you have time to do it in the morning before anything else. It has to completely cool in the oven. Here's a recipe if you'd like to try your hand at it. It's much better to make it yourself than to buy it too.

Beat 4 egg whites (room temp) on high until stiff. Gradually add 1 cup of sugar and beat until glossy and stiff. Add 1 tbsp of corn flour and blend on low. Add 2 tsp of vinegar and blend on low. Add 1 tsp of vanilla and blend on low. Mixture should be pretty stiff still. Pour into a round cake tin that has baking paper in it. Put in preheated oven at 230 for 1 hr 15 min to 1 hr 30 min (mine took the shorter). Turn oven off and leave dessert in to cool completely. It'll get a nice crunchy outer shell that'll hold.  Just before serving cover in whipped cream and fruit.

Poor baby Corin has pink eye. So, Jer and I have been avoiding him like the plague for the most part. We don't want it! The kids at church on Friday night had a hard time not being able to hold him like they normally do. It worked out the adults had a preview movie night upstairs while the kids had one downstairs. We're previewing Fireproof. The church bought the rights to it for a year and the studies to go with it. We're going to do a community outreach with it and invite other congregations to come use it. It can be viewed as much as we want for a year, but it has to be at our building. That'll be a good study for everybody, I believe.

This morning Leslie and I went to a ladies' breakfast at the building. It was nice. One lady made waffles for everyone while we talked. Yum! Ok, we have less than 10 people usually, so it's not that many, but it was still cool she did it. 

We added an extra blanket to the bed this week. When it's 10 degrees outside (50 fahrenheit) it's the same inside. That was the low last night. It's a whopping 12 right now. I'm glad things cool down gradually. So, we'll gradually add blankets. Luckily, we chose to live in the North, so we won't get temps that freeze. We're now looking at options and sizes for a heater for Jer's office. His poor hands and freeze are freezing sitting at his computer. So, the sight is Jer sitting in his shorts and t-shirt with big wool socks on. I'm surprised he hasn't pulled out his half finger gloves!! He's not cold overall yet, just his extremities. :-)