Happy Queen's Day!

It's our first New Zealand Holiday. Queen's Day. NZ is celebrating the Queen (of England's) birthday! People are off of work today. Children don't have school. And they are celebrating. How?

By not really doing anything.

Queen's day is pretty much like our President's day. People get the day off but there are no parades or fireworks. No cookouts. No family get togethers. It's just an extended weekend of relaxing and maybe going shopping.

Cara and I have decided that we love holidays and we love birthdays, so even though we are not British or Kiwi (and could care less about the Queen of England) we are going to celebrate this day by making a birthday cake for her. Yum.

Actually, we've already had a kind of extended celebration this weekend. After church yesterday the senior pastor, Campbell, and his wife invited us over to their house for lunch. It was a lot of fun. They live on a plot of land outside the city that's like a mini farm. They have a few pigs, some sheep, a goat, some chickens (which lay exotic green eggs!), and some rabbits. Most of the animals they have they raise for the sole purpose of eating (except for the rabbits). It's kind of like how we in the States grow vegetable gardens so we don't have to buy produce in the store. Well, in New Zealand there are many people who raise animals so they don't have to buy meat in the store. Interesting huh?

Campbell has three boys, the youngest of which is 6 and the oldest of which is 12. Those boys have A LOT of energy which added another dynamic to the lunch. I love kids! It was fun. They also have a pure breed dog that just last week had a litter of puppies. The puppies were really cute. Can you believe each of them will sell for hundreds of dollars?

After lunch we hung out with the family and then they offered to take us to see the beach on the West Coast that evening since they only lived 35 minutes away from it. Cara and I jumped at the opportunity to get out of the city and see some more of the beautiful country. So we rode with the whole family out to the Beach in Raglan. It was a beautiful, black sand beach. There were parts that were smooth and parts with giant rocks. There also were crazy surfers out in the freezing water riding the waves. I think this was the first time I'd ever seen surfers in person. After our sunset beach tour we had some fish 'n chips at a local fish place. It was served wrapped in newspaper. Delicious.

I was very thankful for Campbell and his family extending such love and hospitality to us. The day was just what we needed to feel refreshed again.