In October, we decided to finally do a great walk. In New Zealand, great walks are a well maintained set of tramping or hiking tracks through epic scenery. The tracks can be along vast coastlines or in mountain ranges with alpine terrain. The walks range from 32 kilometers (20 miles) to 82 kilometers (51 miles) in length and take between 3-6 days to complete. Originally, there were 9 great walks, but a new track has since been added, rounding it out to a total of 10 great wal

My mom came to visit us in New Zealand and it was great. This happened back in July, which is winter, for those of you who are from the Northern hemisphere. Not exactly the ideal time to visit, but when it's hotter than two rats in a wool sock in Oklahoma, it works. Mom went from the humid, sultry temps of 114 F (46 C) to buying a personal heater to warm up the guest bedroom at night. So, with the winter weather, we did our best to plan some epic New Zealand sights for mom on

From the first day we moved here, the most consistent question has been, "What is different?" So, starting back in February, I began writing them down. The list is getting pretty long, so I thought it's time to share. A co-worker gave me this list, and luckily, I knew quite a few. But, if you would have asked me 8 months ago, I would have scored really poorly. Where do you rank? I'll post the answers at the bottom of the page. The differences I noticed first were mainly vocab

Easter in New Zealand is pretty awesome. It's a holiday that not only gives you one day off of work, but two! It's the time of year for hot cross buns, tons of Cadbury chocolates and autumn. If you don't know (I didn't), these are hot cross buns: A hot cross bun is a spiced sweet bun made with currants or raisins, marked with a cross on the top, and traditionally eaten on Good Friday (from Wikipedia). I didn't try a hot cross bun due to the amount of carbs and goodness they w

We don’t have kids. Hold on mom, before you panic, they are on the bucket list - just not yet. In the meantime, we have our fur babies. I feel like they are great training until kids come into the picture. They are expensive, needy, test your patience, depend on you for survival, need to be bathed, taken to the doctor, make you laugh / cry and hold a special place in your heart. Also, like a proud parent, I love showing off and talking about my dogs, so here they are, Merlyn

Packing and Shipping To ship or not to ship, that is the question. I had no idea what I was getting into when we started to pack. What do I take? Do I ship our stuff? Do we ship our cars? How do we ship the dogs? (I'll post about this later, after they arrive safe and sound) If we don't ship it, what do we do with it? And the list goes on... After many discussions and lots of googling, we decided to keep it simple, start over and only take the necessities, i.e., 4 suitcases e

That's right! We are taking the plunge and moving to New Zealand. Well, we decided to take the leap we've always dreamed about and move to another country. In February, we will become temporary kiwis. This decision, while incredibly hard, was something we couldn't pass up. We'll be living and working in the land of hobbits and dragons....well more like sheep and sea lions, but you get it. Since getting the news, I've been reading so many blogs about visas, packing, taxes, rea