Queenstown

Sadly the Waitomo caves were the last of our adventures on the north island.  Bright and early the next morning we flew off to the southern tip of the south island.  We really never got to see the middle of the country, just the north of the north island and the south of the south island.  Guess we'll have to go back someday ;)

I do need to record one small almost disaster that turned into a miracle.  In our first 4 hotels on the trip Taylor and I were split up in hotel rooms with the kids split between us but in each case our rooms were either right next door or just across the halls.  We got kind of used to letting them just come and go between us.  In Hamilton we ended up with adjoining rooms so we decided to have all the kids sleep in one room and just leave the adjoining room door cracked open.  We put Isla's crib in their bathroom so the boys had to come use our toilet at night.  Seemed perfect to us.  We stayed up late watching baby Ezi while the others finished up their glow worm tour and then we turned on our white noise machines like usual and crashed.  Around 3am I heard loud knocking on our door and opened it to find Mack and Miles.  Mack proceeded to explain that Miles had needed to go to the bathroom and he'd found him out in the hallway down the hall and around a corner, lying on the floor holding himself and sobbing that he needed "to go".  What???  So I let Miles in and we all went back to sleep.  And in the morning we got the full story.  Apparently Miles didn't realize that the cracked door was the one he needed to go through to find us and instead assumed it was like the previous nights when one of us was in a room across the hall.  We'd locked the door in his room but it was one of those where if you push down on the handle it unlocks for you.  So he'd needed to go in the middle of the night and just walked right out into the hall and then not been able to get back in.  And we hadn't heard him because of our white noise machines.  Luckily Sam, who is 6 months pregnant, and had been having a hard time with all the driving was having a hard time sleeping and was hungry and had sent Mack out to find a healthy snack- bananas and peanut butter- at 3am!  Lucky for us she did.  Miles had wandered the hall and wasn't anywhere near our rooms and had given up and laid down on the floor.  Thankfully Sam sent Mack out and he saved the day literally.  

After our flight to Queenstown  we settled into our amazing hotel on the water.  The kids wanted to explore so we headed out the back door.

And down to the little path behind the hotel.

Ducks are a universal source of entertainment.

Unfortunately we didn't have any bread so the kids ended up throwing rocks into the water.  The ducks thought it was bread so they kept circling around and eventually I had to put a stop to all the fun so the ducks wouldn't get hurt.

After a fun time outside we headed back in, got dinner, and then went to bed early.  All this fun and travel can be exhausting.