Outstanding October: Moving & Auckland

If you read the last blog, you'll know my start to October was a little rough...but by the end of the first week, I was pretty much back to normal! We survived the first week of school holidays with trips to the country, library, and theater. The girls learned how to care for and ride ponies, were able to make thaumatrope toys, and saw Smallfoot (super cute). 

Learning how to lead the pony around the corral.

 Coloring in the thaumatrope.

Emily was able to invite a friend along when we went to the movie...Ava was with too!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6TH
A few blogs ago, you might remember I mentioned that we had moved. Well, this first weekend in October is when we officially made the move! I spent most of my Saturday going between the houses, loading and unloading boxes and organizing my room and the girls' rooms. It brought me back to my good 'ol college days...moving in and out of the multiple dorms and apartments. Thankfully Saturday was sunny - the perfect moving weather. By 8:00 that night, I was exhausted and starving. Clara had driven down and planned on spending the night at my house so we met up and went out for curry...what else would we have chosen? 😉

Breaking in the house the right way.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7TH

We started off the day with breakfast at La Tropezienne - a french café in Browns Bay. Unfortunately, the day was a bit overcast, but as always, we were prepared with rain jackets! And it actually cleared up a bit by the time we got into Auckland. Our plan for the day began with a visit Mt. Eden since we had only been to it at night. Mt. Eden is the tallest volcano in Auckland with a crater 50m deep. We walked up, admired the skyline view of Auckland, stared down into the crater, and then went in search of a geocache. If you remember the last time we were at Mt. Eden, you will recall we attempted to find a geocache in a tree (with no luck). When we looked on our geocaching app, we saw that it had been replaced. On our way down to the tree, I accidentally slipped on the grass and down a small hill - thankfully only Clara saw! 🙈 This time, we were successful in finding the cache (easy if it's there) and were off to complete the walk around the crater.

Auckland skyline.

On our way back to the car, we walked by a beautiful flower wall...check it out! On our way up Mt. Eden and back down, we were met with the lovely smell of spring onions - it reminded me of summer gardening back home. 💜

Next up on our tour of Auckland was the Winter Gardens! When we had visited the museum a few weeks ago, we had seen the garden area but ran out of time to walk through them. The flowers and plants were gorgeous. My favorites were all of the different colors of snapdragons - seriously. Snapdragons in NZ are just so colorful and large...much larger than what I've seen back in Minnesota! There were many people in the Gardens due to the not so pleasant weather, but we made our way around the first section and then outside to check out the fern walk and courtyard. The area is set up so there are two glass greenhouses on opposite ends of a courtyard displaying a sunken pool and statues. One of the houses is heated for the various tropical plants it displays while the other house holds temperate plants that are changed out depending on the season. Enjoy the following pics of a few of my favorite flowers and plants I saw.

Snapdragons!

Watch what it does!

 Waited until everyone had walked away to get this shot.

 Millennium Tree

What's that? Oh ya know...just hanging out.

We spent about an hour at the Gardens before deciding we we needed sustenance. Off to a nearby takeaway place we went and soon we were eating our food in the car. With satisfied stomachs, we drove to stop #3 on our list - Martha's Backyard (a.k.a the American store)! I was so excited for this! I had heard of this place my first or second month here but it took me until this day to actually go and see what was inside. Clara should have taken a video of me walking around the store because I was exclaiming over everything! 😂 Of course I had to buy some favorites from home: Kraft mac & cheese, Dr. Pepper, cook & serve chocolate pudding, brown sugar cinnamon pop tarts, blow pops, and bounce sheets. A random mix, but oh so great! Clara even bought some American candy to try - such as tootsie rolls and a 3 Musketeer bar. The only bad thing about this store was the prices. I mean come on...$9 for a tube of toothpaste?! Once we finished shopping, we hit up Dunkin' Donuts for a coffee and then went to a small park to enjoy an afternoon snack. On our way there, we accidentally drove into a retirement village area (thanks Clara). The gardens there looked beautiful though!

It felt a little like home in this store!

Fun in the park.

Evening was approaching, so back to Browns Bay we went to grab some gelato. Gingersnap wasn't open but Penguino's was (thank goodness!). They also have excellent gelato, but Gingersnap is still my local favorite. Before Clara headed back up to Snells Beach, we went geocaching near my new house. We were successful in finding the two we were searching for - yay us - and we even found an awesome tree with a tire swing!

This picture doesn't do it justice, but the sunset was gorgeous.

With that, we drove back to my house and Clara got on her way back to hers. Overall it was a pretty casual weekend but it was nice to be able to relax around the area instead of tramping all across New Zealand. Don't worry though - there will be plenty more of that in future blogs!


I hope you all have a wonderful week!