Time in Boston

It's been a while since we have posted a blog, and for all of our avid followers we are sorry that we haven't posted sooner. The past 10 days have been extremely busy as we travelled back home to Boston. We were very busy during our time at home, but I'll provide a brief summary below. Sorry if I left out certain things as if I put everything down, this entry would be extremely long:

-Arrived home late at night and were greeted by M&D Ciaccia at the airport.
-Got our first glimpse of our nephew John Jacob who was born in January as well as our new niece Mirabella who was just born in November. We also spent a lot of time with Avery and saw Will for the first time in a year.

-Spent some time at PwC Boston speaking with colleagues about my return in May while Erin and her Mom got a massage. At night, we hung out with friends and had some drinks while the snow continued to come down hard. We hung out at JC's place which was great and got a Birthday cake for Erin and 1/2 Birthday cake for me (Thanks Tim/Jackie)
-We also got our teeth cleaned (we don't like the dentist)
-Attended Mirabella's baptism where Erin had the honor of being her Godmother. We continued to battle the snow and partied to celebrate her baptism

-Spent a couple days up in Old Orchard Beach with Erin's Mom, grandmother, sister Julia (boyfriend Mike), and dog Bosley. While there, we did some shopping, lots of eating, and more.
-Hung out in LAX with Erin's Dad and Grandmother who flew down from Northern California to visit with us during our layover.

We wanted to express a special thanks to M&D Ciaccia who allowed us to use their car the whole time we were home, gave us a place to stay, and picked us up and dropped us off at the airport. Also to Erin's Mom (Peggy) who took us in for 2 nights as well.

We're off to travel the south island for the next 10 days with Tim and Jackie who are flying in tomorrow from the US. Stay tuned for updates from those travels as I'm sure we will have some great stories about the adventures that we encounter.

Kiwi 12 Days of Christmas

I realise that here in NZ there are only 8 days until Christmas, but figured that people around the world would like to see the words for the Kiwi 12 Days of Christmas. If you know what all of those things are then you are a TRUE KIWI.

On the twelfth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Twelve piupius swinging
Eleven haka lessons
Ten juicy fish heads
Nine sacks of pipis
Eight plants of puha
Seven eels a swimming
Six pois a twirling
Five - big - fat - pigs !
Four huhu grubs
Three flax kits
Two kumera
And a pukeko in a ponga tree.

Rangitoto

After 2 previous attempts to do our kayak trip to Rangitoto, we were finally blessed with a sun filled sky and very little wind. Rangitoto is an island in Auckland Harbour which was formed 600 years ago through volcanic eruption. Our trip started at 10am in the morning with a safety briefing about the double kayaks that we were able to cross the 5km harbour in. Stephen and Deon (from the US) joined us for the trip as well as about 8 other people and 3 guides. The trip over was about an hour of kayaking, then an hour hike to the top of the island (then 45 mins down), and a little over 1 hour kayaking back. The sun was shinning the whole time which was great.

Yes I'm very sweaty

Click on it to make it bigger and you can see the cityWe practiced our kayaking skills for the 3 days/2 night trip that we will do when Jackie and Tim visit us the end of this month down in Abel Tasman (north part of the south island).

After the kayaking, the 4 of us stopped in Mission Bay and had some fish and chips!

On Sunday, Erin and I did a lot of shopping for Christmas presents. We felt as though we had been doing a lot of shopping over the past weeks, but we spent about 3-4 hours out and about getting stuff today.

Only a few days left until we head back to the cold/snowy Northeast.

Promotion

We have received some good news from Erin's work. She's worked very hard in her new role in establishing the Hudson Career Center here in New Zealand and has been rewarded with a much deserved promotion to Consultant. I spoke with her boss at her work party on Friday and she commented how well deserved this promotion was.


Great job Erin!!!


As a nice husband (I need a little credit) I bought her a very nice arrangement of flowers in celebration. As you can see a wonderfully crafted home-made congratulations card went along with the arrangement.

Kylie Minogue

Last week when one of the partners offered me 4 tickets to see Kylie Minogue at Vector Arena here in Auckland, I wasn't sure how I would like the concert even if I would like it at all. Leading up to today, every person I tell that I'm going to the concert tonight has been very excited and said how she will put on a great show, and the costumes will be spectacular.

Tonight, Erin and I along with one of my clients and his wife headed to the concert and it was GREAT! Our seats were very good and had a nice view of the stage and the performance. There was a lot of dancing, very cool costumes, and of course many different songs that I know. We bought one of her CD's on iTunes yesterday to ensure that we would know here songs and there are a lot from a while back and even more recent ones that are very popular and you would know the songs.

Overall a very fun night.

Spraying confetti over the crowd

James and his wife Caroline

Us enjoying the concert

Party, Soccer, American Footbal, and SUN

We've had a very busy weekend here and we have been very blessed with wonderful sunny days.

On Friday, Erin's Christmas Party (We don't call them Holiday parties here, because people think that we are going on "vacation" or a holiday and wonder where we are going) for Hudson took place at a restaurant called Toto. The whole downstairs was rented out where we had food, drink, and a live band. It was a lot of fun and we did a little bit of dancing on the floor as well.

On Saturday, we walked around the city and did some Christmas shopping. At night, we met up with one of my clients and his wife (James & Caroline) and headed to Mt. Smart Stadium where the LA Galaxy played the Oceania All-Stars. There's been a lot of hype with David Beckham being in town and it was good to see him play. On Friday he did the jump off of the SKY Tower which if you remember I did about a year ago. Here are a few photos from the game:




On Sunday, I ended up playing some American Football with a bunch of people from work. There were about 10 of us that played (3 people from the US), and it was a lot of fun. We then had a BBQ and ate Burgers, Hog Dogs, Sausages, and drank Budweiser!

Not much time left here before we head back to the US for some Christmas celebrations.

Another new picture

We decided to print one of Jeremy's amazing photos onto a large canvas as a way to remember our time here in New Zealand. The photo we chose was from our trip to Queenstown this past July. The print arrived today and we are very pleased with the outcome! It doesn't look very good in the photo, but we wanted to share it anyways - in real life it looks great - you'll just have to visit us in Boston to find out!

Don Quixote

Tonight we joined our Culture Vulture friends for a night out. We started the evening with a delicious dinner at Tanuki's, a Japanese restaurant in town. Some of the group shared a massive 2 litre beer. We then feasted on some ice cream before heading to the theatre to see Don Quixote, the ballet. We had a little mishap during intermission - Jeremy stepped outside for some fresh air and got locked out. The ushers couldn't even figure out how to open the door to let him him. Fortunately, he made it back for the rest of the show (after walking around the whole building). The guys in our group weren't sure how much they were going to enjoy a ballet, but we all thought the performance was outstanding and would highly recommend it!

We also learned a new word/phrase today. The word is bags. It's used when someone wants to call something such as the last cookie, or a special seat in a living room. Someone would say "Bags it" or "Bagsy". Not sure if we'll start saying it, but time will tell. In the definition on Wikipedia it says that it's commonly used in the US but not from what I've heard.

Carnival and Santa Parade

Saturday was a busy day for us as we got up nice and early and headed to the gym for a morning workout. We then made a picnic lunch and headed off to the west coast to Piha beach. We've been here before, but decided that with the hot sun shining brightly it was a good day to go to the beach. We relaxed on the beach for a while and put our feet in the water, but not more (it was too cold for us).

We then got ourselves ready for the PwC Christmas function which had a theme of Brazilian Carnival. (We unfortunately didn't find any costumes to suit our styles, so we just got dressed up for the night) We began the night at Gareth's and Claire's for some pre-party drinks and then headed up to the big bash. It was amazing and the costumes that people had were very impressive. There were also some Brazilian dancers (scantily clad) and music which was played at various times throughout the night. Overall the evening was a great time and over 900 people were there. The quality of the video isn't great below, but take a look:

Today was another beautiful sunny day which began with us watching the All Blacks vs. England game (or at least the replay from the game which occurred over night) at 8am. The 75th Annual Santa Parade started at 2am and we wanted to make sure we watched this again this year. It was estimated that 250,000 lined the streets for the parade. It was a very long parade, but had some nice floats as you can see and SANTA at the end.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

We hope that everyone is having a very Happy Thanksgiving. We look forward to celebrating with you next year. Our Thanksgiving dinner was a bit of a mess and we are happy that we got to have one earlier in the week with friends. The turkey didn't cook quite right, so we had some salad, rolls and chocolate pudding for dinner. Oh well!

It's almost the end of the month so Jeremy decided to trim his moustache for the last day of work. He's done a great job raising money for men's health! Great job Jeremy!

Only a couple days left

I'm sure everyone in the US is getting ready to celebrate Thanksgiving in a couple of days. Erin and I will be celebrating tomorrow with some turkey, etc.

As we approach the end of the month, there are only a couple days left for my fundraising efforts. To date, I've raised $1,218.85 thanks to help from various individuals in New Zealand, Japan, US, and Germany.

I'm still hoping to raise some more money so if you can find some extra cash I'm sure it would be much appreciated. Thanks again to all who have already supported my wonderful MO.

Click here to see my profile and donate

Early Thanksgiving Dinner

Last night we gathered with 15 of Jeremy's work mates for a Thanksgiving feast. There were 7 Americans and the others were from Ireland, England, and New Zealand. The night was really fun as the "foreigners" were very interested in learning more about the holiday. They took the time to make traditional recipes like pumpkin, apple, and pecan pies as well as roasting a 22 pound turkey (which had to be special ordered as they aren't common here.)

Those of us who are American even struggled making our recipes as many of the ingredients from back home, aren't sold in NZ. I volunteered to make the stuffing and spend several hours chopping bread into tiny cubes. Fortunately, my hard work paid off and I produced enough stuffing to feed 17 hungry people. Jeremy picked the lucky seat at the table as he was the closest American to the turkey, so he was in charge of carving it. He did a great job!

Help Needed...

I've completed my 3rd week of growing a moustache and entering into the final week of growth for the Movember charity fund raiser.

To those who have already donated, I thank you very much. For those who haven't donated, I need your help. Please consider donating a small amount of US Dollars. When you log onto the page it'll ask you how many NZD's you want to donate, and just remember that the conversion rate is very favorable for those people overseas. The coversion rate for USD is about 2-1 (so if you say you want to donate $50 NZD that'll only cost you about $25 USD) WHAT A DEAL!
Please help support this great charity and the new month with a Moustache husband that Erin had to put up with.

Just click on the word DONATE to help support

Aboriginal Painting

When we were in Alice Springs we had a day to play around town before our flight to Port Douglas. We went into many stores searching for that perfect souvenir. We wanted to find something that would be very special to us and remind us of the wonderful time we spent in the Outback. It was really hot that day and to take a break from the heat and attacking flies, we stepped into Gallery Kukuwarri. Little did we know how much time we were going to spend in the gallery. We were poking around the different paintings, attemping to interpret them when the shop owner, Caroline, offered to tell us about any painting in the store, as she knew the artists personally. In short, the gallery works as a co-op and provides transportation, food, art supplies, and shelter for aboriginal artist to come to Alice Springs and work.

We were immediately attracted to two different, more contemporary styles and finally picked our favorite piece. This painting is by Jeannie Petyarre who was born in Central Australia but her work is famous around the world. She is part of a family of many famous aboriginal artists.

The painting is the Yam Leaf. The desert yam (yala) is one of the staple foods in Central Australia. In this painting Jeannie uses the colors to represent the changes through the seasons. Caroline, also provided us with four photos of Jeannie painting our painting. We feel that those photos make the painting even more special and "one of a kind".

Wellington

We've been here for 19 months and haven't made it to Wellington (the capital) so we figured it was time for us to make a visit. While down there, we went on a tour of the Parliment/Beehive, took the Historic Cable Car ride, relaxed on the waterfront, went to the great Te Papa museum, and had dinner with some friends.

Jeremy and a Cute Sculpture at the Museum

Flowers in the Botanical Garden

Parliament

The Cable Car and the City
It was a busy couple days down there that's for sure. It sure is a windy city that's for sure. On Sunday when we got home, the USA and Korea were playing in the final of the first FIFA Women's U17 World Cup which was held here in NZ. We headed up to watch the game which was great. Unfortunatly in OT, Korea scored to win 2-1. (A girl named Hayley Brock is on the team and is from Acton, Massachusetts) There were some die-hard USA fans there as you can see.

It's a Girl!

We are so proud to become Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Erin again this year! Welcome to Mirabella Ann Mathews born November 14th at 8:04 pm! We can't wait to meet you in just a few weeks Bella!

End of Vacation

Since we are off on another trip tomorrow night, we thought it would be best to quickly summarize the last few days of our vacation. On Saturday we drove north of Port Douglas and took a ferry into the Daintree Rainforest. At 135 million years old, the Daintree Rainforest is the oldest rainforest in the world. Our first stop (nice and early because we wanted to beat the crowd) was the Daintree Discovery Centre.

A little lizard who joined us for the ride

The ferry over the Daintree River which is filled with crocs!

It turns out we were there in the off season, so we were the crowd, but it was nice to explore the place on our own. The Discover Centre has a big walkway that takes you through the forest and then a huge tower that lets you explore the different layers of the rainforest. It was really neat and there is certainly a lot to learn!

Green Ants

Croc warning signs were all over the place.

We explored the area for the rest of the afternoon and Jeremy took a swim in the Mossman Gorge before we headed back to our hotel.


Our last day in Australia we went to a market in town and then hung out by the pool after taking a long walk on the beach. It was really nice to just relax after being so busy! That night we headed back into town to enjoy the sunset, some mojitos and a delicious dinner to top off the vacation.

Enjoying the nice sunset and some cocktails

Monday was a big travel day for us as we had to fly from Cairns to Sydney and then on to Auckland. We were very lucky and were upgraded to first class on our flight from Cairns to Sydney! Unfortunately we didn't get a second upgrade for the international portion of the flight, but the flight attendant did come by and tell Jeremy that he was one of their top customers! Way to go Jeremy!

One of us gets way too excited when she goes to the Qantas Lounge
Next stop: Wellington for a long weekend. We are looking forward to exploring NZ's capital city.

Back on Vacation

Sorry it's been a while, we've been keeping busy with work events, a wedding, and the great spring weather. Back on vacation in Australia...

On Friday morning we took a daytrip to the Great Barrier Reef with Calypso Reef Cruises. We signed ourselves up for 2 Intro scuba dives that day. Jeremy is a certified diver, but I'm not, so we decided to do the Intro Dives so we could enjoy it together. I made sure I took my seasickness pills but my nerves almost got the best of me as I felt pretty queezy during the trip to the reef. I was certain that either I'd get eaten by a shark, left behind by the boat, or my head would explode from the pressure.

Our guide, Erin, was great. We had to pass a basic test with her before going very deep in the water. After three tries and some coaxing I was breathing under water and exploring the Reef. There was a very friendly (and BIG) fish named Marley that came to visit us on the dive. We also saw turtles and other amazing sea creatures. Apparently a shark swam by (not a man-eating one) but we missed that, unfortunately.

What a great experience! I am so happy that I let Jeremy convice me that diving is fun. Between our two dives, Jeremy snorkeled around while I sun-bathed. Here are some of the photos that we caught with our camera:

IT'S MO TIME!!

We are going to take a break from posting about our trip to Australia to get everyone excited about something new that I'm doing.

If you don't know it's MOvember. During the month of November a charitable activity that I've decided to participate in is where I will grow a moustache. I'm sure you are wondering what charity I'm supporting. I'm promoting the awareness of men's health specifically:

-Depression (Depression affects 1 in 10 men....Most people who experience depression make a full recovery. The first step is seeking help.)
-Cancer (Last year in New Zealand 2,700 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 600 died of prostate cancer - (that's nearly two each day))

I'm sure you are all wondering what I will look like with a moustache, so please click on the link below and donate: Donate to Jeremy's Mo and donate online using your credit card.

You can also track my fundraising status at my profile page: Jeremy's Mofile

The Zoo!

We headed north of Cairns to Port Douglas early in the morning in our rental car. We went to the Cairns Tropical Zoo for a couple hours on the way up north. We saw snakes, birds, koalas, crocodiles, wombats, kangaroos, and much more. Erin also got to hold a Koala here and we got a nice picture.

A massive crock having his lunch Us with a friendly koalaA bird in flight at the bird show Cute lizard

A sleepy koala in the maternity ward

We continued north along the coast (a beautiful ride) and stopped at Rex Lookout where 3 hang-gliders were taking off and "gliding" around.

We arrived in Port Douglas and checked into the Sheraton Resort and were shown to our lagoon room. It was a great room with a nice balcony overlooking one of the lagoons. We relaxed at the pool with couple of drinks. We then headed into town for a dinner and found a place on the water and got a great table to watch the sunset. It was an early night to bed as early the next day we were going SCUBA DIVING!!!

Back in non-vacation times:

Happy Birthday Jake!!!