happy birthday amy!

It's St Valentine's Day, and Amy's bday! Yay! Better yet, she made it into Wellington today and we picked her cute rear end up from the airport and then had birthday lunch at Mac's Brewpub. Mmmm!
But now I'm ahead of myself. Josh and I headed down to Wellington on Friday to see more of New Zealand, stay with the lovely Lydia (and meet her boytoy Dave for about 10 minutes before he had to get to the airport to leave for China for work, where he'll be for 6 weeks), and then hang out with Aim on Sunday! Driving to Wellington was beautiful (goodness, it's all beautiful!), but coming into the city reminding me of Duluth--lots of hills, the harbor, and an familiar shaped ship in the harbor!

Look familiar?

Saturday we headed to Te Papa, an incredible museum with lots of interactive exhibits, including an earthquake house that shakes you up. It was great.

If you look really carefully you mght be able to read the sign above this lovely hunk of green rock, or pounamu--it say 'Please touch this stone.' More museums need those kinds of signs!

A huge war canoe (waka) in Te Papa. The carving was awesome. I heard a little boy say, 'that's a big boat mom!' to which mom replies 'it's not a boat, it's a waka!' Yay! More culture! I'm still having quite a time with pronunciation, though.

Then we checked out the Island Bay festival (after checking out the Chinese New Year festival stuff, which turned out to be a fashion show--modern fashion, not traditional--interspaced with hip hop dancing. ??? It was fun (and funny). Oh, and we stopped to watch the skateboarders on the skate park too--there was a competition later on, so we got to see the practicing), where Josh found a surfboard.
Wedding pictures at Island Bay!

Lydia showing us how to play with poi on Saturday night. I kept hitting myself in the head. Or neck. Or back. Or legs.

Sunday morning Lydia was ambitious and was up super early to do a triathlon. She's so motivated. Josh and I may have taken our time to get up...but I did make it to church! Then we went to get Amy from the airport. She gets the 'first visitor' prize!!! Check out the cool fish market! These guys were super quick filet-ers.



Must play with art. We came across the bronze man on Friday, and then made Amy take pictures with him too. I bet this dude makes it on lots of cameras.


Birthday lunch and birthday beer.

And on our way back home--gorgeous coastline! Lydia directed us to the Icebreaker outlet about an hour north of Wellington. We spent some money. Ouch. But worth it!