http://promisetovisit.com/blog Give up the luxuries of subway travel and move to New Zealand like us. Sun, 07 Dec 2008 05:14:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Yes I'm getting my holidays out of order, having posted our Turducken Thanksgiving Feast before these Halloween pics. It's because, as the Ultimate Warrior, I had sustained wild and possibly career-ending injuries when Macho Man Randy Savage jumped off the top rope with the ring bell and shattered my spine. ... http://promisetovisit.com/blog/2008/12/07/halloween-08/ With all the preparations complete, the Turduckenssan roasting away in the oven and Angela & I properly rested-up, the first of our Kiwi friends began to arrive. We eventually had 22 people over, a worrisome prospect considering the tricky layout of our humble home. Luckily unlike the cold and dark ... http://promisetovisit.com/blog/2008/11/16/thanksgiving-attacks-new-zealand-the-aftermath/ The day is young, but Angela and I are already exhausted from two days worth of preparations. We're hosting a Thanksgiving feast for our Kiwi friends and busting out all the stops. Angela's baked two pumpkin pies from scratch (including fresh pumpkin). I've whipped together a killer stuffing with Madeira, ... http://promisetovisit.com/blog/2008/11/14/thanksgiving-attacks-new-zealand/ I always dread getting back on the blog and feeling like I have to apologize for an extended absence of posts, but this is definitely one of those instances. So to get it off my shoulders... I'm sorry for the extended absence of posts! I guess part of it's due to ... http://promisetovisit.com/blog/2008/10/23/finally-something-worth-posting/ Our campervan trip around NZ is now over a year and a half behind us, and we found ourselves in serious need of a reminder of how beautiful this country can be (besides the usual 1-hour radius around Auckland). So a few weekends back we packed some snacks, hopped in ... http://promisetovisit.com/blog/2008/08/26/a-surfers-weekend-away/ As noted in our last post, the weather has been total crap here over the last month. Yes it's winter, but it seems worse than last year. Anyway, the NZ International Film Festival just rolled through for a few weeks and we managed to catch considerably more films than we ... http://promisetovisit.com/blog/2008/08/02/nz-international-film-festival/ It's not my term, it's what the New Zealand Herald is calling this weekend's severe weather that has taken the northern island, ahem, by storm. Quite a wild time so far. We're getting near hurricane strength winds of 130 km/h (or 80 miles/hour) and one place even recorded it at ... http://promisetovisit.com/blog/2008/07/26/its-a-weather-bomb/ Somehow, I just don't think this would fly in the States... Kaimai School Possum and Bunny Shoot Kaimai School Possum and Bunny Shoot, Bay of Plenty, 20 July 2008 Please come and support Kaimai School, and help to raise funds to buy some more IT equipment, at this truly rural event. . . ... http://promisetovisit.com/blog/2008/07/17/only-in-nz/ I saw that it made it up to $4.18 a gallon in the States recently. Blah. We did the math and we paid $8.72 a gallon today. $74 to fill up an 8.25 gallon tank. If only we had an Air Force here, we could do our part for cheap petrol. http://promisetovisit.com/blog/2008/07/13/stop-whining-about-gas/ Donovan, a good friend of ours, reminded us about how unbelievably and unforgettably delicious the Samoas Girl Scout Cookies are. Yet for some reason while we were in Samoa, we totally forgot about Samoas. And while we sadly never found the Samoas factory, we did find unbelievable sunsets, some great ... http://promisetovisit.com/blog/2008/07/08/samoa-yes-samoas-no/