Amber's Visit, Part Two

Moving on from Rotorua, we traveled north-west to the Coromandel Peninsula.  On one of our stops, we saw this statue of a Maori Chief.

I can't not post this next photo, but to be completely fair, I totally set poor Amber up for this pic...forgive me, Am!  :)

We decided to stay in Hahei Beach, where I stayed with my family back in October.  This time we rented a cabin instead of camping in a tent.  It was cute and comfortable.

The next morning, we walked straight from our beach to the trail that led to Cathedral Cove.  It was a bit rainy, but still peaceful and beautiful.  I loved walking and talking with Amber.  We had some great talks over the course of our little trip.  I consider myself generally pleasant when meeting new people, but I was impressed with how genuinely friendly Amber was, cheerfully saying "Hello" or "Good Morning" to everyone we passed on the trail.  We stopped at several points along the way for photos:

The rain picked up steam once we arrived at Cathedral Cove, but it gave the whole scene a mystical quality:

We hiked back to our cabin and picked up some shovels (spades) from the holiday park office.  From there, we drove a few miles to Hot Water Beach.  Since I had been there with the family, I knew exactly where to dig this time!  We found a great spot, with water so hot that we actually had to move around a few times to prevent ourselves from getting cooked.  We spent a few hours in the warm water and visited with so many nice people from all over the world!

We were soaking in our little "tub", chatting with our new friends, when a man and his wife approached us, and the man said, in a thick German accent, "It's our singers!"  He had been in our dining group from two nights previous at Mitai Maori Village!  He bragged about us to everyone.  It was so sweet.  Later, at the holiday park, we ran into a different couple from Mitai as well, who recognized us.  What can I say?  We're sorta famous....amongst a small group of people from around the world that we'll likely never see again. :)

After all that hiking and hot-tub soaking, we were hungry.  We ordered fish and chips to go, and spent the rest of the evening eating and reading and laughing and talking and relaxing in our cabin.   

At sunset, we took one last stroll on our beautiful beach:

We set out for home the next morning, stopping along the way to see the temple (closed for sessions, but the visitor center was open).

After one last stop to see the glow worms in Waitomo, we arrived safely back in Palmy.

For the next few days before Amber had to return to the States, she jumped right in, helping me with all of my daily duties and tasks.  We both agreed that if it weren't for the whole "sharing a husband" thing, having a sister wife might not be too bad!  Ha ha.  Amber was so cute with my kids.  Luke and Landon fell in love with her and begged her to do the "tickle spider", and Emily immediately started declaring, "I love Amber!" (which has turned into "I miss Amber!" now that it's been a few weeks since she left).  One thing we enjoyed doing together, when Steve was home or the kids were all at school, was running the stairs at one of our local parks:

Nearly 200 stairs to the top -- best workout ever!  I was so impressed that Amber would often take two stairs at a time.  Granted, she is several inches taller than me, but still.  We worked our way up to doing several rounds up and down.  Man, I'm gonna miss these stairs when we move.

I hated saying goodbye to Amber, but she has a busy life as a wife and mother that couldn't be put on hold forever.  I'm grateful for the wonderful memories made with my treasured friend.  Love you, Amber!

Amber's in the House!

Say hello to my beautiful friend Amber Colledge.  We have been friends since we were 9 or 10.  My first concrete memory with her was when I walked into the girls' bathroom at East Layton Elementary and noticed that she was crying.  She was so upset because she had gone to get her beautiful long hair trimmed, and the lady ended up cutting off several inches.  If you've never been a 10-year-old girl, trust me...these types of experiences are devastating!  So, we talked about hair that day, and we've been talking about it ever since (along with many other topics).  :)

We got really close in high school because we spent a lot of time singing together in the same performing groups, including Laytones at Layton High School.  As you can see, we Laytones were pretty much the coolest kids in school, what with our super snazzy outfits, big hair and such.

For those of you who may be struggling to identify us, Amber's got a prime position right there in the middle, with her head tilted ever-so-slighty.  Me?  I'm crammed in near the right side -- the only person in the whole photo with not an inch of body showing, just my face and my gigantic head of hair!

So, have you stopped laughing yet?  Really?  Not yet?  Well, okay, if you must... carry on..................

   

Okay, now you're just being rude.  Pull yourself together.  As I was trying to say, Amber has an amazing voice, and it has always been such a pleasure to sing with her.  As you can see from the first photo, she also has five great kids who adore her, she's a very talented athlete, and most importantly, she is a wonderful and loyal friend.  So, when she booked a ticket to come and visit me in New Zealand, I was thrilled!

Steve was out of town when she arrived, and the next day just happened to be Valentine's Day.  Even though we were husband-less, we decided that that wouldn't stop us from enjoying a nice night out on the town!  We shared a lovely dinner and lots of conversation and laughter at Aberdeen restaurant.

We've come a long way since those floral-printed overalls and huge bangs!  (right?!?)

Steve returned home from his trip, nearly moving heaven and earth to make it back as scheduled -- thanks, babe!  The next morning, Amber and I took off on a quick road trip of the North Island.  We rented a sweet little car, which was very appropriately bright red colored (hopefully Big Red wasn't too jealous).  

It was a perfectly clear day, and the view of the Mount Ngauruhoe volcano, in Tongariro National Park, was especially crisp!

You can't take visitors through Taupo without stopping at Huka Falls!

We stopped for the night in Rotorua.  We stayed at a quaint little place called the Waiteti Trout Stream Holiday Park.  They had a lodge where we rented a little room with two beds and a small table.  We used the community bathroom, showers and kitchen.  It was perfect for our needs!  The view from the balcony outside our room, looking down at the slow-moving stream, was so charming.

I think we would both agree that the highlight of our entire trip turned out to be our visit to Mitai Maori Village.

We took a selfie of ourselves near the front of the canoe...

...then quickly realized that the warrior carved onto the front of the canoe was -- how shall I put this -- very well endowed. :)  It wouldn't be a true girls' trip if we didn't do something a little immature, right?  While I feigned horror and confusion, Amber fully embraced (*cough*) the essence of the carving.

Inside, we were seated at a table in a crowded room and our host began to ask where everyone was from.  We were surprised to learn that so many countries were represented, twenty or so!   The host assigned a gentleman in the crowd to be the "chief" of our tribe, and then casually asked, "Do we have any singers here tonight?"  Amber and I looked at each other, but didn't say anything.  After a few seconds, he said, "No singers?  No one?"  We shrugged our shoulders and tentatively raised our hands.  We went to the front of the room, and our host asked us to sing something!  Amber proved to be the brains behind our duo and quickly came up with a tune -- "You Are My Sunshine" -- which we sang loud and proud, no rehearsing, with harmony throughout.  The crowd cheered loudly and we felt great.

The host pulled us aside to say that we would be singing later.  I honestly assumed that we would be learning a song to sing, maybe a Maori song?  I didn't give it much thought, but as we started our tour through the enchanted woods, Amber kept suggesting that we think of something else to sing.  A moment later she said, "Amazing Grace."  Perfect song!  Did we know it well enough?  We went off to the side of the trail and whisper-sang through it two times, to make sure we had the right pitch and were solid on the lyrics.  Just in case. :)

The trail led to a beautiful stream, and before long a canoe full of warriors made their way up the stream, chanting to each other.  It was awesome.

Next stop was to see the hangi meal, with an explanation for how it was prepared.  I won't repeat the details since I covered it very thoroughly in my Christmas posts.  This food looked delicious and was almost identical to the hangi we had for Christmas at the Kingi home:

Yum!!  But it wasn't time to eat just yet.  We were led into the performance tent, and Amber and I, along with our "chief", were asked to stand to the side while all the people started to file in from the two full dinner groups (someone told us it was over 300 people).  Not gonna lie...my heart was beating a bit faster than normal, not knowing what to expect!  The host from the other group took over, and the reenactment of ancient Maori culture officially began.  My phone had inconveniently lost its charge, so thank goodness Amber had the good sense (and enough battery power!) to hand her phone over to a nice gentleman from our dining table, asking him to record our contribution to the presentation:

 

Needless to say, that was an amazing experience that we will always treasure!

The rest of the program was awesome...lots of singing, dancing, and demonstrating traditional Maori battle methods.  We loved it! 

We had been saved two seats on the front row, right in the center.  Those guy performers weren't wearing much, and as they energetically performed, we honestly felt a little uncomfortable, especially when they would come right to the edge and we could essentially see under their little wraps.  It was one of those situations where we were like, "Do we look?  Do we turn away?" Ha ha.  Maybe it's what we deserved after being so silly earlier with the canoe!

After the performance, we returned to our tent and enjoyed the amazing food.  It was all so delicious, especially the scalloped potatoes and stuffing!  I'm not usually a stuffing fan, but Mitai's stuffing was incredible.  Of course, the meats and potatoes from the hangi were perfect too.  We ate to our hearts' content, and were sitting back, letting our food digest, when the host picked up the microphone and said, "I think I speak for everyone when I say that our singers were wonderful.  How about one more song?"  Really?!?  We rolled ourselves to the front and sang a rousing rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."  By this time, most of the dinner guests had had a few drinks, so they cheered louder than they might have otherwise.  We kinda felt like celebrities.  It was awesome.  I wanted to grab the mic and say, "We're just a couple of housewives, and have eleven kids between us!!"  But, I just smiled and said "Thank you" to everyone who complimented us.  Definitely unforgettable!  

I think this is a good place to stop on my Amber report.  Part two, coming soon!

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones......

....... or, jumping from a high table on top of your twin brother might do the trick as well.

I have been trying to post our experiences chronologically during the course of this blog, but I was reviewing my posts today and realized that I never blogged about Luke's broken elbow!

It was the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  These pictures of Luke and Landon were taken right after church...they must have been getting out all of their church wiggles, and this is a good illustration of how life has become with these two.  They are constantly ratting each other!

Later that evening, I left to play the piano for Seminary graduation.  When I arrived home, Steve was telling me about some of the events I had missed... normally, Sunday evenings are generally uneventful, but apparently this one had been an exception.  We were sitting at one end of the kitchen table, and Luke and Landon were wrestling on the ground near the other end.  Then, Landon climbed on top of the table and jumped off.  We were a bit distracted in our discussion, so before we really realized what they were up to, Luke followed suit and jumped off too, only Landon was still on the ground, so Luke landed right on top of him!  You'd think that would be more painful for Landon, but Luke immediately cried out in pain and then started sobbing.  It was, as you might expect, a different cry than we had ever heard from him before.  I knew immediately that it was serious.

After several moments, Luke's left elbow began to swell and his crying persisted.  Steve was pretty sure that it was broken, so we headed straight to the hospital.

I hadn't met many of Steve's colleagues, so it was an interesting way to become acquainted with some of them.  They got us right back for an x-ray, and were so tender and gentle with Luke.  Poor guy.  He was so sad.  It broke our hearts to know that he was in pain.  Surprisingly, after nearly 16 years of parenthood, none of our six kids had ever had a broken bone before!

After the fracture was confirmed, they put a big, heavy plaster splint on Luke's arm.  He wasn't very happy about it.

It was about 8:30pm when the accident happened, so by the time we arrived home from the hospital, it was very late.  Still, cute Lukey allowed me to take a video, getting his take on his traumatic experience:

Julia captured this precious photo of Luke the next day:

By Thanksgiving, a few days after that, Luke had adjusted to his new reality and was acting as normal as ever.

We made a visit to the fracture clinic, where the plaster splint was removed and replaced by a fiberglass cast.  By the looks of these photos, Luke was feeling pretty flash with his new cast and sling!

A few days after Christmas, the cast was removed:

We waited in the lobby of the hospital (or as Luke says, the HOS-a-poe), so Daddy could come over from the ER to see Luke without his cast.

Julia had to take an "after" shot, similar to the first:

It took Luke several days to straighten his arm all the way, and he winced often from the stiffness, but gradually he healed completely and commenced wrestling with his brother again on a daily basis.  Heaven help us!