Send us back to the US

We can't believe that we've been living here for 2 years and the time has come for us to say goodbye. Although we are very excited, it's also very sad. We had a very busy weekend which started on Friday evening with a dinner at Jackie and Jerry's house. They live in Birkenhead which is north of the city. We picked up a bottle of wine and some beers and headed up to their place. (As we've sold our car, we are currently borrowing Brian and Di's VW Polo) We had a lot of fun with Jackie/Jerry and Jackie made a great Green Curry.

Saturday was filled with cleaning and some last minute shopping. We also spent a bit of time preparing for the evening festivities which included a party at our place with a US theme. There were many purposes for this party but one of the primary ones was to finish our alcohol. We asked everyone to come wearing red, white, and blue and the rule was if you didn't come with those colours on, that you would have to eat a Wheetbix (NZ cereal bar) without any liquid as fast as you can. These bars are very dry and the challenge is to see if you can do it in under 60 seconds. Needless to say, all 16 people at the party tried the challenge (although most everyone was wearing all three colours), but no one was able to do it in under 60 seconds.

There were 4 key drinks which we had ingredients for (Horny Bull, Dark 'n Stormy, Cape Codder, and Gin Chiller). We also had some Jack Daniels (straight shots) and Bailey's (mixed with vanilla ice-cream). Erin had done a great job decorating and preparing some very tasty snacks for all the guests. We stayed at our place until around midnight and then headed into the Viaduct to a couple of bars.

Sunday we did a little more shopping and more cleaning. At night we went to dinner at Brian and Di's house up in Forrest Hill. We brought Matthew an overdue Birthday present and ordered some takeaway food. A very fun night with a lot of very funny stories.

Our last full weekend in Auckland is coming to a close and we are about to begin our final week of work. Stay tuned for more updates throughout our last week in NZ.