Glow Worms, Paihia, MDS, and Thanksgiving

A few weeks ago, we all loaded up in the Disco and drove 3 hours north to the Kawiti Glow Worm Caves. The caves are a must see, much cooler than what you would see on the Discovery Channel. There was a great story about how the caves were found and who owns the property now. Short version? A woman had enough of her husband and ran away. Must have been pretty desperate too to be hanging out in a dark cave!!! I was surprised by how small the worms were. I don't know what I was expecting, but they are very very small pin lights on the cave walls. When they are grouped together, they look like stars in the sky from very far away. Something we learned, glow worm poo glows too. Bet you didn't know that! They wouldn't let us take pictures inside of the cave, but we still have quite a few from the area. Below you will find some cool rock formations outside of the entrance.



A meeting house, the entrance to the caves and the exit.



The rest of the pictures are on the backside of the cave. We had about a 15 minute "tramp" through the area to get back to the car park.



I don't know what Mom is telling that tree, but it better listen.

From there we drove to the town of Paihia. I really loved it there. We only stopped in to visit and have Lunch/Dinner, but I would love to go back to take advantage of the many activities. I want to snorkel with dolphins and go kayaking. To be perfectly honest, we were only up in that area because I wasn't paying attention when we left the house. We had decided that we were going to go south to another Glow Worm cave that was only an hour out. I completely spaced, but we decided to continue on since I didn't realize it until we were over half way there.

Last weekend we attended the holiday party for Mike's work. MDS treated us to a beautiful evening of food, drink (way too much as some have seen on facebook), company and presents. I truly enjoyed myself and Mike's co-workers were so nice to me. I was told I was missed often, hopefully I can go back soon. I was a space case again and forgot the camera, so I don't have pictures to post. I would like to share with you what his company did for presents. Each employee drew another employees name out of a hat. Then they were presented with a post card where we got to choose what type of donation to a village in need we would like to offer in the other persons name. We were given a dollar amount and could make any choices up to that dollar amount. I don't remember everything that was on the list but there were things like chickens, two weeks of water for a family of 5, and condoms. I just thought that was very generous of the school and makes so much better use of their money than buying gifts for their employees.

Our Thanksgiving was quiet this year. Just the 5 of us. Mike had work and Marty had school, so we celebrated on Sunday versus Thursday. I chose a ham over turkey. My oven is so small in this house and you can only cook one thing at a time. We still don't have a microwave, so I went with what I could work around. We kept up with our tradition and made it a movie weekend. We watched all of the Harry Potter movies. We started on Friday night and ended on Sunday. We did get out on Saturday for a bit to tramp around a local park and marine area. It still amazes me how many neat areas there are that we keep finding in our own neighborhood. At dinner we did give thanks for being together, being healthy, and having the opportunity to live a beautiful part of the world. (gosh my table is pitiful)

We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. We will update again soon!