"Man Up!"

I'm not really sure where it came from, but the phrase "man up!" has become a running joke between my brothers and me. We use it jokingly as a response to everything from, "Wow, it's cold this morning" to "No, I can't come shoot hoops. I have to practice piano." Although probably rude if said to anyone else, we find it immensely funny.
Also, it makes a great title for our last weekend's adventure...
We did what's called the Pouakai Circuit, a two day tramp around the volcano in our back yard :) It's known for gorgeous views of the mountain, as well as a huge variety of geology, because the trail goes from alpine ridges, to a marsh, to a rainforest. (this is a picture of last time I did it with my adventure racing team)

Well anyway, this time we didn't get nearly so lucky. It rained. A lot. But we "manned up" and had a super fun time any way :D

 

The  whole crew at the trailhead. I had to add the picture on the left, because we all found it super funny that Danny's head ended up on the bird poop :)

The first day was mostly just overcast and foggy, not rainy, and we had tons of fun rolling rocks down the mountain (I mean "accidentally knocking boulders loose," because everyone knows rolling rocks is irresponsible :P) and made it to the hut just as it started getting cold and wet.

  

The next morning we woke up to some serious weather! The whole hut was shaking with wind, and there was so much water! The other family sharing our hut had little kids as well, and they decided they were going to wait it out and stay another night, but we had to get back to school the next day, so we packed up, "manned up" and headed out into the downpour. 

    

 

(neither of these rivers existed when we came past the day before!)

(the entire trail was an ankle-deep stream!)

It ended up being so fun! Of course we had a few episodes with my younger sisters being cold and wet and tired, but I was so proud of everyone for staying positive and finding ways to have fun and bond as a family.

  

    

  

(sorry for so many pics, I just couldn't bear to cut any of them :P)

Home Alone

Maybe it's just me, but having a morning all to myself at home is a beautiful thing. This time started no differently. The weather was amazing, so I started with a massive french toast breakfast out on our porch, with homemade cream, bacon, fresh eggs, the works. It was soooo good!

 But that's all pretty normal for a lazy morning. The day became blog-worthy when I went down to put our chickens back in their pen. On the way I stopped at the garden. (Now you have to understand that we didn't plant this garden, our landlord did. And we literally do nothing to keep it up, stuff just grows around here.) Anywho, I happened to notice that we had a lot of bright red, ripe peppers. (even just noticing them is impressive for me seeing as how I'm colorblind :P)

As everyone knows, there are two kinds of peppers. I like to classify them as nice peppers, and not nice peppers. well, I'm not dumb, so before I bit into one of the beautiful, fresh peppers I did some thinking: First, I noticed that our garden contained about ten big bushes covered in peppers. So I figured, these must be nice peppers, because no one in their right mind would think we needed that many hot peppers! But then I noticed that these peppers were considerably smaller than the nice kind my mom buys at the store and makes everyone eat to be healthy. "Hmmm," I thought, "Well, I'm sure the ones in the store are genetically enhanced behemoths, and these are just the normal size for a nice pepper." But just in case, I plucked a worthy specimen and broke off a sample in order to more fully analyze the interior with my impressive pool of knowlegde concerning the pepper genus :D After staring blankly at it for a moment I realized that I wouldn't know the difference between a nice pepper and a painful one any better than I know what it's proper Latin name is. So I just popped the whole piece into my mouth and chewed.

 

Well, maybe you've already guessed, but it was NOT a nice pepper. Call me  a wuss, but after spitting it out all I wanted to do was run, hollering, all the way back up to the house. However, just as I was about to execute this manly plan, I had an idea. I decided that logically, the pain in my mouth would lessen if I could see one of our chickens having to endure the same thing :P So I tossed the rest of the offending pepper toward a nearby chicken. I swear to you, the chicken glanced at it, then looked back up at me as if to say, "What do you think I am, stupid?!" At that point I ran, hollering, back up to the house.

So, moral of this story is, if a chicken is too chicken to eat something, then you should be too :)

NPBHS Ruthless

Meet New Plymouth Boys' High Ruthless. From left to right: Cory, me, Callum (Cory's little brother), and Will (Hillary captain from last year). Usually Boys' and Girls' high can get closer to 5 or 6 teams together for an adventure race, but because this one was right before our mock exams, and a 7hr drive away, we were the only four.

It was an amazing race, with a huge kayaking leg, some tough biking, a mine exploration, rifle shooting and some very muddy trails.

 

 Only five school teams from the country entered, two didn't finish and one finished three hours past the deadline, so we ended up winning by even more than we probably deserved. My only regret is that when the host announced that our team had won by four hours he didn't call us Ruthless :D

Adventure of the Year

I think anyone that's followed this blog can agree that I've had some pretty epic adventures in the last 13 months since we moved here. But the one I'm about to share may have trumped them all :D

Last month my little brother, Oak, and I left on a weekend trip all by ourselves... to Tonga! I had to leave New Zealand to renew my driver's license, and Oak was just along for the ride. Danny had to miss out because he was practicing for a concerto concert the next week, and had a basketball tournament :/

Me, parked in the NZ temple parking lot for a 1hr nap halfway to the airport

We drove all night to get to the airport for our flight, and we knew once we got there that we'd be picked up by the family of some friends in our branch. But after that we had nothing planned, only adventure!  The hardest thing about posts like this is picking which pictures to share, but I've tried to narrow it down to some of the most unique and fun things we did :D

 We traveled by bus, hitch-hiking, and in the back of our host family's truck...

 Local rugby finals, it was a super good match!

   

We picked and ate wild coconuts :D

 Because we were staying with a local family, we actually spent a good portion of our time just hanging out at their street stand or meeting relatives and friends. I really appreciated being able to get a taste for the real Tonga, not the one on the travel guides.

Oak and I fashioned a chess set out of random rubbish and scratches on the asphalt :D

It went by so fast, I didn't want to go home! When we got home it was right back into school and life :P I spent the whole first day back shivering in my school uniform because it was so much colder here in NZ

Cheap Fun

During our school break in July we decided to explore a new section of New Zealand, Rotorua!
Rotorua is known for different things depending on who you ask. Tourists would tell you about the alpine slide, the "Zorb" (a big inflated hamster ball that you can roll down hills in), other various adrenaline activities, or the thermal pools and geysers. Most of my friends would focus on the forest full of world-famous mountain bike trails.
      
Any New Zealander you ask will tell you that Rotorua stinks. Yes, stinks. The whole area is so full of thermal pools, hot pots, geysers etc, that you can smell that rotten-egg-sulfury smell pretty much everywhere. Still, it's such an amazing place that people go anyway.

Although we did some of the classic things, many of the best moments of our trip weren't on the major attractions:

An awesome waterfall hike...

    

  

I took the pic on the right after climbing over a barbwire fence and a bunch of thistles to lay right on the edge of the falls :D it was soooo worth it!

 Playing volleyball every time we stopped anywhere...


Playing a lot of VERY competitive family Boggle :)

Getting up at 6:30am to watch Germany's soccer world cup win over Argentina in McDonald's :D

 

And many other random moments.

 

Sagie fell asleep in the overhead compartment of our van during a late night family card game :D