My Last Christmas?!

I was having a great Christmas season this year, until somebody reminded me that it would probably be my last one at home!!! After that I made sure to have an extra great Christmas season:

Danny, Oak and I improvising to Christmas songs :D

 

We did our best to make it seem like a normal Christmas by baking sweet breads and covering our windows in snowflakes, but thats not so say we didn't enjoy the warm weather too!

  

And then suddenly it came much too soon, Christmas morning! (please note that at this point I was still the tallest in our family :P)

The Banter Brigade

Meet the Banter Brigade:

From left to right: Cal, Jack, Seb, Danny, Phil, me, Alex and Cory.

Haha let me explain... You see, every year our school runs various adventure camps for the year 9's. Probably the one with the most adventurous reputation is the "Tongariro Camp" run by my adventure racing coach and geography teacher, Mr. Hewlett. And traditionally Mr. Hewlett asks his senior adventure racers/outdoor education students to help out at the camp as "prefects". Anyway, this year that meant Alex, Cory, Phil and I were invited!
Then (because I was going to be a prefect, Dad was going to help as an adult leader and Oak was signed up as one of the year 9's), Mr. Hewlett invited Danny along too. And then because Cory had a younger brother Danny's age too (Calum) and they had another friend who missed out on this camp last year (Jack) Mr Hewlett said they could come as well. And then Seb (who was a French exchange student) asked if he could go along as well to get a bit of the "kiwi experience".
And that was us! The motley crew of senior students from all around the globe who were supposed to be helping the year 9's but ended up having more fun than any of the little guys :D

 

We spent the week rafting, climbing, hiking, caving, assembling a massive stash of snacks, shooting the year 9's with gummy bears from my slingshot, and exchanging "Phil"osophical banter :D

Do it for the Picture

I've recently noticed that I probably wouldn't have nearly as many adventures and cool memories if it wasn't for the fact that Dad and I love taking cool pictures. Not to say that the only reason we go into the outdoors and do cool things is so that we can take pictures, but there are certainly things that we wouldn't have thought of doing if it wasn't for someone saying "Go for it! It'll make an awesome picture!" Here are some quick examples from earlier blog posts:

  

But I'm pretty sure this adventure of Dad's and mine trumps all others on the "do it for the picture" list:

Omaru Falls. The hike out to it is super cool, because you just follow the river through relatively flat farmlands and forest, and then all of a sudden, BOOM! There it is, a 45m sheer drop!

 

  

And a big thanks to Oak for stunning the photography!!! :D

Important Decisions

 

Welcome to the boys' room. As you may be able to tell, it's an awesome place sitting on top of the rest of the house, with windows in three of the four walls. Not only does it have the best views, it also has easy access to the roof, and nothing fancy that we have to worry about breaking when we mess around.

Recently my mom gave me this genius idea! (As well as the financial backing to accomplish my plan.) A graphics shop in town prints A3 size pictures for about $5 each. So she told me to pick out a "few" favorites to hang in our room...

Lets just say that picking favorites is not something I'm good at, especially when we've got so many epic pictures!

 

I ended up with 29 pictures and felt unable to cut any of them! Upon telling this to mom, she came over to help me weed out some of the pictures. But after seeing all of them she gave up as well and we just decided to print them all :D

I've decided to include all the pictures in question in this post, even though I think I've used most of them before. If any of you have opinions about favorites or ones that I should have cut I'd be interested in your comments! :)

                           

Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving has traditionally been one of my very favorite holidays. I mean, what can compete with  family, amazing food, sports and no school? But this year I've had a very unique Thanksgiving. For one thing, it was the first week of my Summer vacation! For another, I was away from home, camping with my adventure racing team and doing some intense training, and then even when we did have our feast, it just isn't quite the same with no extended family.

I spent Thanksgiving day in Tongariro National Park, on a practice rogaine (basically an 8hr treasure hunt with full packs) with my team.
      
Although pretty tough and hard, it was also super fun, and we saw some amazing country!

When I got home Friday I basically went straight to sleep, and when I woke up (late) Saturday morning I was immediately recruited to make pies for our Thanksgiving feast with a bunch of the Americans from our branch.

The lemon meringue pie (bottom right) is mine. I literally pulled lemons off our tree and was zesting and juicing them less than a minute later! It made for a pretty delicious pie if I must say so myself :D Although, I have to add that Danny's apple and Oak's strawberry pies were pretty amazing as well.

I think this picture illustrates that even though our Thanksgiving was a little different, we still managed to enjoy it to the fullest :)