New Zealand Travel Adventure NZ Days 1 through 3– Getting Acclimated

Even though we were without luggage for the first 40 hours of our time in Nelson, it was still great to get here. The view from Aunty Pam’s living room window is almost indescribable and pictures do NOT do it justice. You can see Tasman Bay and mountains at the same time. The sky is as blue as any you’ve ever seen. Multiple beaches are just up the road. There’s almost no traffic. It’s basically what I would envision heaven looks like.

The first order of business upon arrival was assembling Aunty Pam’s Christmas Tree. The boys did a wonderful job of adding ornaments and tinsel before we called it a night.

The next morning, we headed off to the beach. You have never seen two boys happier than Cameron and Noah were to be at the beach. Cameron probably picked up half the shells on the beach. He found starfish, sand dollars and lots of colourful shells. Noah wanted to do nothing but go swimming, despite the very cold water. By the time it was all over, Noah was down to nothing but a diaper.

Friday evening, the Slinns (Tania, Peter and Jean) came over for a combined birthday celebration. We were celebrating my birthday along with Jean’s. On the menu:

New Zealand lasagna (a little different than what we’re used to, but still pretty good)
Cold chicken (although Cameron asked for his to be heated up)
Carrot Salad
Rice & Kumera Salad
Banana Cake with “lollies” (translation: essentially a cake that looks and tastes like banana bread, with lemon frosting covered in gummy worms and other assorted candies. Basically, the perfect dessert)
Here's the after picture of the cake. You'll note the missing "lollies" as those were the pieces that Noah particularly enjoyed.

Saturday morning, our luggage arrived. Noah and I were still getting acclimated to the time change so Noah took a 10am nap while I have been napping off and on since we got here.

In the afternoon, we headed back to the beach (this time with proper attire). Noah swam until he nearly gave himself hypothermia, and then built his first sand castle. After seeing Cinderella’s castle later while watching Toy Story 2’s opening credits, Noah opined “I build sand castle just like that.” Cameron continued to grow his sea shell collection.
After playing on the beach, we headed to the playground where the boys and I got our first taste of Mr. Whippy. I can definitely say that it won’t be our last Mr. Whippy visit.

New Zealand Travel Adventure Hours 1 through 60– “The Terminal” (in reference to the Tom Hanks movie)

We started off our adventure with high spirits, excitement and enthusiasm. Adam Metz successfully shuttled us to the airport at 10:30am on Monday, December 12 (Happy Birthday to me!!!!) Our flight to Chicago was on time and the trip had officially begun. However, in Chicago is where our problems began. Due to a broken lavatory on our plane, we ended up being delayed for 4 hours, which would cause us to miss our connecting flight from San Francisco to Auckland. No worries, we’ll just get our flight changed and everything will be alright. Or, so we thought...

The woman at the gate told us that we would have to go Sydney/Wellington/Nelson (adding significant flight time to our journey) or we’d be stuck in San Francisco for a few days. Feeling like we had no other option, we went with it. By the time we got to San Francisco, we had already missed our flight to Sydney, so they rebooked us on the San Francisco/Auckland/Nelson route and put us up for a night in a hotel.

United Airlines put us up in what could best be described as a sub-optimal hotel. It was a Comfort Inn & Suites in South San Francisco. It was under construction and was an outside room entrance hotel, which means they did not offer adjoining rooms. A lack of adjoining rooms meant that Megan had to sleep in one room with Noah while I took up residence in the other room with Cameron. But, at least they gave us $15 per person in food vouchers (to last us for 24 hours) that were only good at the airport.

We had to check out of our room at 11am, so we headed off to the airport. The Air New Zealand ticketing counter didn’t open until 3:30pm, so we had some time to kill before we could get our boarding passes to get through security. When we got to the ticketing counter, we discovered that United hadn’t booked us on the December 13 flight to Auckland, but rather had rebooked us on our original December 12 flight. So, we had to get reticketed again. When they tried to reticket us for the December 14 morning flight from Auckland to Nelson, they determined it was full, so we were going to be looking at a 12 hour layover in Auckland. Oh well, we could again see the end in sight.

When we got to Auckland, we searched out an Air New Zealand ticket counter and asked if there was any way we could get to Nelson earlier. They were very helpful and rerouted us through Wellington in the hopes that we could catch an earlier flight from there. The issue with getting to Nelson wouldn’t be as much finding an earlier flight as finding ANY flight that could get to Nelson. That’s right, to add to our adventure, they were having once-in-a-hundred-year floods and many of the flights into Nelson had been cancelled.

Our first New Zealand dessert a Raspberry Lamington.
The plane that would FINALLY deliver us to Nelson.

Finally, on Thursday, December 14 at 3pm local time, we arrived safely in Nelson. The hug from Aunty Pam that greeted us was long overdue. It was great to see a familiar face.

Side note: Our luggage arrived a mere 40 hours later after being routed through Sydney.

April Showers Bring May Flowers?

Well, that's what we're all hoping for anyway. With the amount of rain we've had in the past few weeks, there should be MANY beautiful flowers blooming. We are a bit tired of being stuck inside, so I thought we'd update you on what we've been up to this past month.

Let's start with March Madness. It was awesome. We celebrated a storybook ending for the Washington Hatchets with their 4th state title in the past 7 seasons. We also got to celebrate the fact that Washington had their 3rd Mr. Basketball (all by the last name of Zeller in case you know nothing of Indiana basketball) and 3rd Trester Award winner in the past 7 seasons. What a great way to end the Zeller era in Washington. The Rogers' are certainly glad we were able to attend the State ee Finals and experience all of those State Championships as fans. One of the best parts of attending the State Finals this year was the halftime show. No, there were no kids jumping rope or even dogs doing tricks. The halftime show I'm talking about didn't even take place on the floor of Conseco Fieldhouse. It happened out in the concourse. It just so happened, that during halftime of the Hatchet game, the Butler Bulldogs were playing for a ticket to the NCAA Final Four. Only in Indiana could one experience what we witnessed. It seemed the whole stadium evacuated to watch the televisions in the concourses. Even the workers had left their stands to witness Butler pull out an overtime victory over Florida to earn their second straight trip to the Final Four. It was incredible and certainly a memory I will carry with me forever. I ended my perfect basketball weekend by traveling to Dayton with a friend to watch the Tennessee Lady Vols play the Notre Dame Fightin' Irish play in their regional final. While Tennessee did not reign victorious, it was still a thrill to get to see Pat Summitt coach.
Once March Madness ended and we all finally left the couch and the television, it was back to our normal busy schedule. Cam's soccer season has begun with limited activities due to the crazy weather. Both Stuart and Cam have been crazy busy with Boy Scout Activities including the Blue and Gold dinner and the Cub Scout campout at Camp Lazarus. Stuart will be traveling for his job almost every week until the middle of June. It makes things very hectic around here but we survive because we have good friends who come visit and help out when they can. Noah continues to be a ball of fire and he certainly keeps us on our toes. He has not handled this rainy weather well because he is a kid who needs to be kept busy at all times. He is talking more. Right now he is obsessed with buses (because he knows it brings Cameron back to him at the end of the school day) and Choo Choo's.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend. We had a nice weekend at home and enjoyed a nice church service yesterday as well as lunch with friends. Here are a few pictures of our crazy lives. Enjoy!!!

Noah in his Easter outfit (courtesy of Uncle Mohamed)

Stuart saw this sign on his travels to West Virginia. I'm thinking they should move this street sign to Washington!!

More signs from Stuart's travels.


The Cub Scouts have been busy with their spring campout and their Blue and Gold Dinner.


The Easter Egg hunt at church.



First soccer game of the season.

Coloring on a rainy day.

The Lady Vols at the Regional Final in Dayton.

Why We Love March

Basketball of course!!! The question is, why do I love basketball so much? I have been pondering this question much of the morning. I have managed to trace this love back to some very special people in my life.

Thinking back on basketball, the obsession probably started when we moved to Washington, IN when I was about 5 years old. It's a basketball crazed town in Southwestern Indiana of about 10,000 people. The high school in Washington has one of the greatest gyms in Indiana as well as the entire United States. Indiana has 11 of the top 12 gyms in America and Washington ranks twelfth.





It is in this gym that I used to sit in the Southeast corner with my Grandma and Grandpa Nimnicht (not my biological grandparents, but grandparents nonetheless) and watch the Hatchets play. It didn't matter whether it was the boys team or the girls team, they were at just about every game and I loved sitting with them. When I was in elementary school I started to play basketball like most of my friends. I could shoot alright but beyond that, I was a pretty mediocre player. Nevertheless, I loved it. I remember when I started playing basketball and Grandpa invited me over on a Sunday afternoon to watch the NCAA Women's Final Four. A team named the Tennessee Lady Volunteers coached by Pat Summitt were playing. He told me what a great team the Lady Vols were and how their coach was really something special. Little did he know how true that was.

During this time I had also developed a love for the Indiana Hoosiers and Damon Bailey. I remember many driveway games at our old house on Tieman Street with my brother Paul. He was always Calbert Cheaney and I was always Damon Bailey. Back then I won a lot just because I was taller than him but that wouldn't last long.

Fast forward a couple of years and I had made the Jr. High basketball team. It was a big thrill to be able to play on a team that I had to be selected for. However, in all honesty, I was in it because some of my best friends were on the team. I was the kid on the end of the bench constantly praying that we wouldn't win by too much so Coach Spillman wouldn't feel obligated to put me in the game.

Our girls program at the high school was up and coming and was destined to be one of the best teams in the state for a run of 5 years or so. I knew I wasn't going to play past Junior High so in high school I became a team manager. Grandma and Grandpa Nimnicht were at every game. We managed to put together a string of sectional and regional championships and even a semi-state championship to put our team in the Final Four. That was the first time I could ever remember crying because we won something and not because we lost. From then on, me crying after a big win became common place. A trait I believe I inherited from my mom who would often be found crying in a corner somewhere after a big game. Funny considering I was just the team manager but she came to love those teams as I did. My nervousness has never subsided when I watch a big game. Even now I tend to freak out a little during big games.

The boys program at the high school was pretty average during the years I was there. They never won a sectional but came very close several times. During one of the sectional tournaments I was sitting in my normal spot with Grandma and Grandpa Nimnicht watching Barr-Reeve win the championship. I remember Grandpa saying how happy he was for their coach, Dave Omer. He told me that night what a great coach he was and also what a great man he was. Ironically, Dave Omer would take over the Hatchet program in my last years of high school. My family became close to he and his wonderful wife Wilda through Grandma and Grandpa Nimnicht and we shared many Sunday lunches together after church.

I went off to college and became an athletic trainer. I loved working with the women's basketball team and their coach, Gene White. Coach White was co-captain with Bobby Plump on the 1954 Milan team that the movie Hoosier's is based upon. I so admired how he coached and I loved sitting with him in the front of the van (yep, DIII we drove 15 passenger vans) and listening to his stories.

During my college years my parents started working at all the Hatchet basketball games and would report to me about how the team was getting better and better and how there was this kid named Zeller that Dave would speak very highly of. Year after year the Hatchets would come so close to winning their first sectional title since the early 80's and year after year they'd come up short.

I went on to grad school and worked with the Women's basketball team at Valparaiso University. They had a really great women's team for a mid-major conference. My first year with them we lost our conference tourney but got invited to the NIT and made it to the final 8 teams. My second year we won our conference tourney unexpectedly (Cue the crying again) and I got to experience March Madness from the sidelines. We lost to a really great Purdue team in the first round but it was a memory I will cherish. My nervousness became legendary with the coaching staff and the players. We were in the final seconds of our conference championship game that year. The game had been back and forth and we were leading while the other team (The Oakland, MI Grizzlies) had an opportunity to win. Coach Freeman called a timeout and actually stopped in the middle of the timeout to make sure I was okay because he knew how nervous I would get.

During my summer vacations from Grad school I would return to Washington and work for Dave in the athletic Dept. I enjoyed helping with his summer basketball camps and enjoyed even more getting to watch Dave interact with the boys. I became more familiar with the Zeller family and was so impressed with what a great family they were. No wonder Dave always spoke so highly of them!!!

So, here we were in 2005. I was newly engaged to Stuart (who loved coming to Hatchet games and enjoyed the atmosphere of 8,000 people crammed into the gym). Dave Omer is in his final year coaching. His beautiful wife Wilda is terminally ill and Luke Zeller is in his senior year. The Hatchets not only won their first sectional championship since the 80's, they also advanced to their first ever State Championship game. It seemed that the mighty Hatchets were going to get their storybook ending, pushing out to a 19 point lead over Plymouth. However, Plymouth made a run and we found ourselves in an overtime battle. With 1.8 seconds left in the overtime period, Plymouth hits a go ahead layup and all of Hatchet nation stands in stunned silence. I wanted to vomit on my shoes. It was the most awful feeling. Where was the storybook ending for Dave that we all longed for. Surely this wasn't happening. We had 1.8 seconds to pull off a miracle. And it happened!! (click on the link below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N-qQfgn9MA

I remember watching the team head up to the podium to get their championship hardware. I wasn't watching the jubilation on the player's faces. I was watching Dave share that moment with his wife and understanding how much bigger this was than just a basketball game. I was remembering the first time I saw Dave winning that sectional championship with Barr-Reeve and my Grandpa Nimnicht telling me how special he was.

Luke went on to play for Notre Dame after winning Mr. Basketball that year.
In 2008, the Hatchets won another state title led by Tyler Zeller, Luke's younger brother. He also won Mr. Basketball. Tyler now plays for UNC. We love watching him play on TV.



Last year, the youngest Zeller led his team to the State Championship. Cody was only a junior. This year he has led them back to the semi-state and we're hoping for another State Title. Next year he will play for Indiana University which still happens to be my favorite team!!!

So, that my friends, is why March is so awesome and why I love basketball so much. A lot of it goes back to my Grandma and Grandpa Nimnicht and the seeds they planted long ago. I continue to cheer for the Lady Vols and Pat Summitt. I love the Indiana Hoosiers still and am so excited that their program is on their way up. Stuart and I continue to listen to most of the Hatchet games on the radio. We have been unable to make it to any of their tourney games this year but that doesn't stop my nerves. I was shopping with a friend this weekend and Stuart was texting me scores from the radio broadcast. I thought I was going to have a meltdown in the middle of the store. But, that's why I love it.

Dave Omer is retired now and is in the Indiana Basketball Hall of fame. The Zeller family has proven to be one of the best families in basketball. Not only are the boys amazing basketball players, but amazing people. They are a wonderful Christian family and Washington is so blessed to have them.


http://hoopshall.com/hall/o/dave-omer/


Grandma and Grandpa Nimnicht are both in heaven now but I can't help but think how much they would have enjoyed watching these Hatchet teams. It's amazing how one little seed planted long ago has developed into this crazy love that I have for basketball. That is why starting on Thursday until "One Shining Moment" concludes the tournament in a few weeks there will be little else happening here on Sedona Ct.