New Zealand: Our New Life in Paraparaumu

Well, we have successfully made it to Middle Earth!! We are living in a little town outside of Wellington called Paraparaumu. Life is great and we love it!The pictures are better than anything I would be able to tell you so...enjoy!!

This is the first thing we saw when we got through customs at the Aukland airport. Yay!!! We really are in Middle Earth!

But apparently you don't want to mess with Middle Earth....

Here is a larger than life (like it takes up the whole ceiling) Smeagol!!!

Hopefully he stays focused on the fish. It was so cool to see that in person (it was at the Wellington airport, Aukland is at the top of the North Island and Wellington is on the south). Here's a map.

If I were more tech savy I would have added a WE ARE HERE star in Wellington, but hopefully you can find it. 

Getting all of our luggage and us into the much smaller cars of New Zealand was the challenge...but we did it! It did take us just as long to get them out as getting them in though.

And here is a view from nearby (ish)

We love it!!!!

And here is some interesting street art Ramzi found while he was in town for meetings. We are both excited to get to know the area better and meet all the interesting people that make up New Zealand.

I have never seen such a yellow and perfect flower. We saw this on one of our walks and decided we should go hiking to see more beautiful things on the weekend. 

Here was part of the trial on our first New Zealand hike.

The view halfway to the top.

The final view! We can't wait to hike all over the place and see even more beauty! (note: they call hiking 'tramping'....I will probably do a blog soon on the different words they use here)

This is the beach not ten minutes from where we're living in Paraparumu!!

And there I am posing for the panoramic. It's not a swimming beach (too cold) but definitely worth walking around. 

Selfie with Kapiti island in the back!

The craziest part is probably driving on the other side of the road. But I am happy to report we have both driven a fair amount and are pretty used to it. It's still weird though.

And here's Ramzi to prove we have both successfully navigated the opposite side of the road. 

And that about sums up our first week down under in Paraparaumu, NZ. This was the sunset a couple nights ago. We are happy and healthy and blessed to be here. We can't wait to get to work and leave a part of our hearts here as well. 

The Nomadic Adventures of Ramzi and Ramsay

So...after Ramzi and I left Hawaii, Ramzi and I were kind of homeless. Not because we didn't have a place to be but because we were so many different places in about a 6 week period. So here is a taste of our nomadic lifestyle as we travelled from Arizona to Utah to Georgia to Tennessee to Alabama back to Georgia and then to San Diego and ending again in Hawaii. WHEW! Don't worry if you can't keep all the places straight...I can hardly remember the order of how we did things! Bring on the pictures!

 We got to Arizona the day after my 22 birthday, and in true mother form my Mom made me a chocolate peanut-butter cake and we had a big birthday dinner together. It was a great thing to come home to and a wonderful way to start my 22 year.

Besides visiting my family, a big reason why we were in Arizona was to have a wedding reception for all of my friends and family. This is our ward building decked out with yellow and twinkle lights. It was one of my favorite nights there. My mom out did herself and we couldn't have asked for me. Plus it was a great excuse to put on my dress again and get to act all lovey dovey with each other.

This is the gift table.

It was Hawaiian themed, hence all the leis. 

And here is my mom, making it all happen!

And there I am in my dress waiting for everyone to get there! But Ramzi took this picture to showcase all the food we made (green chile! It was delicious)

These were the sugar plumeria flowers on the cake.

The whole cake! One side was chocolate and the other side was citrus. So yummy! It was a great time.

After the craziness of the reception died down we were able to do somethings as a family. My parents, grandparents and Ramzi and myself had the wonderful opportunity of attending the Gilbert Temple open house. Here are a few pictures of us outside.

I can't wait to visit Arizona and to see it again, it was one of the most beautiful Temples I have ever seen.

And I included this picture mainly for the humor of it. Ramzi looks as dashing as ever, but I look like I'm not going to be able to smile for much longer and a little girl is demonstrating her yoga moves on the side. It was a lovely day though.

This is at the desert museum. I was testing out what it's like to be a bat.

And so is Ramzi

And yet another picture added to my favorites of my handsome and silly husband.

Well, we did a lot more things while we were Arizona like go shooting, long walks and stargazing, but that sums up all the pictures I have of it. After leaving Arizona is where our nomadic adventures get a little more interesting. While in Arizona, my adventurous husband hurt his back, causing a flare up from an old football injury. This left me with the responsibility of carrying all our bags and making sure he could walk from airport to airport as we continued our travels. 

To make this easier, while we were in Utah (which I also don't have any pictures of....but it as wonderful seeing my sister Sarah and her husband) my sister took me down to DI and I bought my husband a walker and to my surprise, he used it! Here are the pictures we took to document.

Hobble, hobble.

Hobble hobble with a smile!

Come on gimpy!

And it was after this picture I put away the camera (note the almost grumpy look).

But apparently we had a nice walker (thank you Sarah and Sterling)! All the airport ladies were complimentary of it and told us to hang on to it...but hopefully we won't have to do that again any time soon.

Well, even with the back troubles we made it safely from Arizona and Utah to Atlanta to drive up to Tennessee to see the McKellars. So here are some pictures from our adventures in the south.

We took this picture  at our hotel in Atlanta to showcase just how different our choices in breakfast food are. At least we both agree on bacon.

This picture was taken on the trip from Atlanta to Tennessee. We didn't think it snowed that much in the south but we made it out of Atlanta right before they shut down the roads it was snowing so much! Little did we know this was foreshadowing the weather we would be getting in Tennessee too. 

I found this picture while I was downloading pictures from Ramzi's phone. Apparently you shouldn't leave your phone in the same room as Maddog (Maddie, our niece) or else you're going to get a duckface selfie.

While we were in Tennessee we were able to stay with Mack and Joyce McKellar and we we spoiled beyond belief! This was just day one and barely the tip of the iceberg of how well we were taken care of.

A cute fortune we found while we were at PF Changs one night. I know as long as I have Ramzi by my side this will always be true <3

And then....came the snow!!! It snowed about 5 inches and our thin Hawaiian blood was not ready for it!

But we still had fun playing in the snow. This is Norm with Maddie in a garbage can after she lost the snowball fight. I never know how serious snowball fights could be until I got to play in the snow with Ramzi's family.

And this is what happens when you leave Ramzi alone with the kids. Don't worry, I rescued both of them from the teasing of Ramzi. 

This was kind of my side project while I was there. I hadn't ever played with legos that often, so when my nephew wanted to start building them I just couldn't stop once we started.

The toucan was probably my favorite. Though we did end up doing a pretty awesome back to the future car I forgot to take a picture of. 

Besides hanging out with family we were able to do some sight seeing. This is us at the Biltmore on a sunny afternoon.

If you don't know what the Biltmore is you should google it. It is INCREDIBLE! And definitely worth the tour.

Spelled Ramzi/Ramsay wrong on both accounts, but we couldn't help snapping a picture. 

One of the coolest things we got to do was go to Gatlinberg and go through the Titanic museum. This is the grand staircase.

I definitely had to rewatch the movie after going.

So, the day before we left Tennessee, I found a box of old pictures and we had a good time going through them. Here are a few cute ones of the Dosch clan I couldn't help but post.  

I definitely want our kids to be a penguin for Halloween at least once. Hopefully they're as cute as Ramzi. 

Beatiful Pamela. I am so lucky my husband has such a beautiful and loving mother.

What a beautiful family. I am blessed to be a part of it now. 

Anyway, after leaving Tennessee we looped down to Alabama to see my cousin Becca who is in med school a UAB. It was a short visit, but I was grateful to see her and give her a hug before leaving.

This is overlooking Birmingham. 

So, after visiting my cousin we drove to Atlanta to catch our flight to San Diego. We were going to San Diego to spend a night before the long flight to Hawaii.

Even though we were only there for one night, this was the view from our hotel room in San Diego. It was nice to get good nights rest in with all the traveling. 

And then, we FINALLY made it back to Hawaii! We were so busy with packing and meetings that we didn't even end up getting to go to the beach together. But the best part of Hawaii was still there to say goodbye to: the piggies.

A lot of the piggies had already been sold, but Connie and Chewy were there and we were able to make our goodbyes.

They're so big now!

Still cute though :)

It was hard saying goodbye. Connie and her babies will always have a place in our hearts. We're just happy we were able to see them one more time. 

And here is the other reason we didn't really get to go to the beach....THE RAIN!! But, I guess it did make us excited to move on to the next place and come back on a sunnier day. So our Hawaii chapter is officially over. We'll just have to see if we can make it back someday.

Onward and upward to New Zealand! Aloha 'Oe!