Our holiday comes to a close....... :(

The last few days i did not have access to a internet connection so here is a little story of what happened over the past 2 days.
On Tuesday we went to the buried village. it was really interesting. In 1904 a volcano erupted and buried several villages.a little like pompeii. it was amazing to think of the force that destroyed and killed everyone in the village.

There was heaps to see.
Once we walked around Zoe and i went for a waterfall walk. the views were great.

Then we went for a little drive to see the volcano that did all the damage. the volcano is dormant but will erupt again.

You can see the volcano top in the distance.
That night we decided to go to the pig and whistle again for tea. while waiting for dinner Zoe locked herself in the toilet. she was a right state when she managed to get out (mind you she had to crawl under the door which was only a 8 inch gap.) Any way like the daughter so is she went and complained to the wait staff she got upset about the whole thing and they gave her a free sundae. she was very happy with herself as you can see in the picture!

She then decided to share it with poppy . the 2 of them were bouncing off the walls giggling for hours after! It was all that sugar!!!

Here is the 2 of them sharing the flake on the top!!!!!

The next day we went to Auckland and checked out the factory outlet village. it was ok. then off to the holiday inn and then today we flew home...... to find the washing machine broken! Typical!!!!
All in all we had a FANTASTIC holiday!!!

Rain,rain,go away............

Yesterday it just rained ALL day So Rob looked after Poppy and i took Zoe to Rainbow Springs kiwi park so she could see a Kiwi.

Even though it was raining the place was beautiful. 

We saw some great animals but best of all was, we went to the kiwi enclosure and as they are nocturnal animals we only got to see a faint shadow of the kiwi. but when we went to go outside a lady from the park was going to collect an injured kiwi so we asked if we could watch and she said yes. It was great we managed to see the kiwi up close and take a picture of one.

 

After the park we picked up Rob and Poppy and went for lunch/tea at the pig and whistle. the food was great!!!

Hopefully today the weather will get better as we all want to go to the buried village.......

Wales 66 - Fiji 0........what more can i say............

So today we went off to see Wales play Fiji in the Rugby World Cup. I think firstly i have to say a big thanks to the mobility permit Zoe gets for her brace. We got to park in the disabled parking which was just outside our gate entry.Yeah! here is a pic of how close we were. the car was right next to us.

Poppy was enjoying the atmosphere...

We arrived early so we went to a pub near the ground, it was great a big sea of red!

Around 4pm we made our way back to the car and dropped off the pushchair as we could not bring it into the ground.
Here we are in the ground.

We got to our seats and waited for the game. Zoe was Really excited!

The view from our seats.

Here are the Wales team training...

Then the Fijis put on a show.

Then the game was opened.

And out came the teams....wales!!!!! and Fiji......

Zoe started to get really excited now!

Then the national anthem played for Wales.
for some reason blogger will not let me upload it so i will try facebook.
After the national anthem we watched Wales thrash Fiji!!!!!!!!

right at the end we went down to the bottom and watched wales get interviewed etc. i managed to get my program signed by Sam Warburton the captain of wales. Just for you Nesta!!!! we also got a pin for the world cup too. there was a bloke handing them out only to some people ,you could not buy them so we will sent this to you too Nesta!

It was a great day!!!!!!!

day 3...glowworm caves

Today Zoe and I went to the Waitomo glowworm caves and rob looked after Poppy. It was a 2 hour drive to Waitomo and on the way we saw turkeys on the road. zoe was quite excited about it!

Then we went to all 3 caves. the first one was the big glowworm cave and you got to go on a boat ride but unfortunately you could not take pictures.
then we went into the other 2 caves which you could take pics

while we were in the last cave we got to see more glowworms. you could not really take good pics of the glowworms but i managed to get a pic of tthe strands that the glowworms make to catch their food.

on  the way back we had to go on a spiral track in the caves it was quite cool.

this is the view from the top.

and another pic of zoe!
tomorrow is the rugby match. i will put pics up when i get back!

Day 2 thermal pools.... and zorbing.......

Today was the day Zoe had gone on about since we arrived......Zorbing. going down a hill in ,well,what looks like a hamster wheel. So we arrived paid for zoe and rob to go down together in the same ball,they got changed,went to the top,zoe got in....screamed.....cried and demanded to get out she was to scared! typical! so rob went by himself! here are the pics......

Next we went to Waikite thermal springs to have a soak. we hired a private pool first for 40 mins which was great. then went into the other pools. after that we went for a small walk to see where the hot spring water came from. it was amazing! the hot water came up from the ground at 98 oC then it ran into the pools via a bunch of rivers to cool the water down. very cool!