Aukland to New Plymouth

 

We played a few games of scum before falling asleep on our way to the hotel that night. When we arrived we couldn't see much, but knew we were at the temple hostel based on the tall white spire peeking over the trees.

The next morning we woke up... :)

... to this! Our first morning in New Zealand was absolutely amazing, and it was so refreshing to wake up to such a beautiful temple.

 We stopped at a fruit market for breakfast and bought thirty kiwi fruits! They were only 99 cts for a bag and were so good!... We ate every single one by the time we arrived three hours later.

Even in the middle of winter it wasn't that cold, and the country is gorgeous. I couldn't get a picture that quite captured it.

Our first view of the ocean!!! We are all really excited to be living practically on the beach and hopefully learn to surf B-)

 Home! This is one of two identical condos that we are living in until we find a house to rent.

Mt. Taranaki, our local volcano, greeting us as we arrived :)

MAVY

Finally our parents came back to pick us up from the airport. They took us to the car dealership where they were almost done making the transactions and paying in cash for our brand new car. All the car dealerships were on the same street.

We drove past this...

 and this...

 ...and eventually arrived at this. Its a 9 seat, diesel engine, stick shift industrial van. Oh and did I mention the steering wheel is on the right hand side?

     

 It has shelving in the trunk, enough to fit all of our luggage (thats saying something, let me tell you!)...

...a table in the middle, surrounded by six comfy seats (with plenty of leg room!)...

 ...and it's so big it doesn't fit in our parking space!!!

 We've named it MAVY, because its our Mormon Adventure Vehicle Yo!... although there is still some debate whether it should be the Mormon Assault Vehicle instead :)

Auckland Airport

My siblings and I spent all of the next day together in the Auckland airport while my parents went to secretive appointments and shopped for a car. Interesting how many fun things you can find to do in a foreign airport with no parents around... 

LA to Auckland

 After retrieving all our bags in one terminal we took a walk under a beautiful sunset (that you can't really see in this picture, sorry!) to the next terminal over to check in again, this time with Air New Zealand!

This was actually probably our biggest dilemma of the trip. All of our carry on luggage was nearly 2x too heavy for the airline's standards! To check them would have been $150 dollars per bag, and our flight left in an hour and a half. At this point we were very stressed, but when I reached into Danny's bag of mints and pulled out a package with two mints in one I knew everything was going to be ok :) haha! Actually our check in agent was super amazingly kind and worked with us for close to an hour repacking and finding loopholes in the rules so that we made it through check in without any additional fees and barely enough time to run through security and reach our gate as they were boarding. MIRACLE!!!

Here's our plane! It was HUGE!!! Pretty nice for people with awkwardly long legs like me :) The personal touch screen TV's were pretty dang cool, as you can see, my brothers were totally absorbed before we even started moving. I improved my driving skills with a car racing game, and the music library had enough country music to last me all 13 hrs!

 Finally we arrived! The first picture is of our route from LA across the Pacific, and the next is of the huge "Welcome to New Zealand" sign above customs.

Pleasant Grove to Los Angeles

Our story starts on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon in Pleasant Grove, Utah...

These are the last pictures I took of our house before we drove away.

      

After loading all our luggage into their trailer we piled into the Session's 12 passenger van, and departed for the airport.

 

Danny, Dad and I took half our luggage in to be checked then came back out to gather the kids and the rest of our caravan. (Danny has a strange symptom where when he gets excited he lifts heavy objects)

  

   

 I was in charge of Joycie for this leg of the trip, which was actually really fun since she was in a good mood. She sang little songs in my ear while we hiked through the airport, and her only fussy moment was when she refused to get buckled for take-off because then she couldn't see out the window. I ended up just faking it for the flight attendant and then letting her have her way :P

We arrived safe and happy after what we knew was only the warm-up leg of our journey, and picked up our luggage to transfer onto New Zealand Airlines!!!