New Zealand Day 1 and 2

Our trip to New Zealand was wonderful and the kids did great especially since we were in the car more than they have ever been and had to sleep in 7 different hotels throughout the island. We started our trip on at Friday night and flew 10 hours from SG to Christchurch, NZ. The flight was not kind to us. Our kids don't sleep all that well on planes and therefore we don't either. But we made it.We got our car in Christchurch and headed towards the west coast.

On the way Elyse and Anastasia slept but we had to stop to clean up some throw up from Anastasia (fun) and to let Elyse throw up on the side of the road (even more fun). We had just started our ROAD TRIP and our kids were showing signs of car sickness and we hadn't even gotten to the mountain roads. (Side note- they were overall fine after this which I was soooo grateful for).

We stopped for lunch at Arthur's Pass and decided to hike to The Devil's Punch Bowl- a waterfall.

I started with A on my back put their were A LOT of steps and I'm out of shape and had about 2 hours of sleep so Toby took over carrying her.

The Punch Bowl

Fun on the bridge:

After the hike, we went back into the car and headed for the town of Hokitika. After we checked in (at the Annabelle Motel) and had dinner we went to the nearby Glow Worm Dell. We only walked for only a short amount of time since it was very dark, I couldn't see and Elyse was getting scared, but we did see some glow worms which was cool.

After falling asleep before 9, we woke up about 12 hours later to find a beautiful Easter morning.

Down the street from our hotel there was this great park, so we spent some time on the playground before celebrating Easter.

Look how wide the streets are:

To celebrate Easter we found a place in the park to read the Easter story and then open Easter "baskets"

Then I hid eggs around the area for the girls to find.

After the park we went to Sunset point in town to enjoy the view of the Tasmen Sea.

We were then on the road again. Our next stop: Franz Josef Glacier.

All over NZ are these one-lane bridges. They made me a bit nervous.

Ferns, Ferns everywhere. I can see why the national symbol is the fern leaf.

After a few hours (and no more throwing up) we arrived at our hotel: Franz Alpine Retreat. We had our own unit (we were not roughing it on this trip :)).

Our view:

The woman who runs the hotel was very friendly and offered some great advice for seeing the glaciers. She also came by to tell us a helicopter was landing behind her house. After it landed the pilot let Elyse get inside.

 We ended our day with a great dinner in town and some star gazing.