When we last left our heroes, they were headed to The Shire.

The movie sets from The Hobbit are now permanent and you can hang out by the hobbit holes on a gorgeous working farm.

Look! Bag End!

The end of our (soggy) tromp was the cozy Green Dragon where the grown ups had stout and the kiddos had ginger beer and we all pretended we were in Middle Earth with Aragorn sitting just around a dimly lit corner.

And with that, we dropped off our car, hopped on a plane for the second half of our epic journey, and headed to Melbourne.

Oh how I love this city! I’d forgotten how much. It’s vibrant and cultured and this perfect mix of old and new, technology and nature.

I did my usual “you have to visit the art gallery and you have to learn one thing” so while the grown ups wandered, The Boy found one exhibit and then enjoyed the free wifi.

We explored the city’s nooks and crannies using a free walking tour I downloaded.

(We also got a little lost, but I told my tour group they were getting what they paid for.)

Our evening was barbaric and hilarious (aka legit Australian) with an Aussie-rules football match. Think a mashup of US football, soccer, quidditch, and the invasion of the barbarian hordes. With no sissy pads or helmets to get in the way.

Yesterday we swapped city for country. First stop, a winery (plus bonus picnic by the vineyard).

Then it was off to a chocolate factory! We got to play games to win chocolate, see how it’s made, and even make our own bars.

You’d think that would be the highlight, but no – the best was yet to come. The wildlife reserve! Kookaburras, koalas, and cassowaries.

Wombats, dingoes, and Tasmanian Devils!

Echidnas, lizards, and emus!

But the best, best, best was feeding the kangaroos.

They were big! And a bit assertive, but so fun!

One last wildlife stop for the day – the Penguin Parade!

We waited on the beach ( in primo seats scored by our awesome Scottish tour guide and The Boy elbowing their way to the front of the line and racing ahead of the crowd) and as dusk fell, we watched the little waddlers emerge from the sea and head home to the nests in land. No pics allowed, but we did find this little guy outside of the park.

And with that, our wild day was done. Phew! We’re kinda exhausted, not gonna lie. The Husband definitely packs the itinerary full!

Today is a travel day off to Cairns where the highs lately have been 36 degrees Celsius. Tropical paradise! But first, someone turns Sweet Sixteen! Curious how I managed to put together a birthday breakfast halfway around the world? Stay tuned!

The next phase of our New Zealand trip has definitely been the “adventure” portion of the vacation. First up, The Husband getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road.

(Not a flipped image!)

He’s very good at it! Although fun fact, the wiper and blinker stick thingeys are also reversed, so sometimes when we’re about to turn, the windshield wipers go off. He says he does it on purpose, but it’s not always raining…

Our first adventure was deep underground – we went caving!

And not just into any caves. In our first cave, we got into a raft on a subterranean river, everyone turned their lights off and then ZOMG:

Glow worms!! It was like being under the stars, except replace “stars” with “maggots with glowing bums.”

The next cave was more traditional but also super cool.

After the Waitomo caves, it was off to Rotorua (with me navigating and reminding “stay to the left…). The countryside here is gorgeous.

The next adventure was the craziest – zorbing! Basically you get inside a giant hamster ball and roll down a hill.

Here’s the insider version:

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(The water is to keep you slipping around gently instead of clobbering one another. Since I consider being cold, going fast, AND getting wet to be the trifecta of evil, I stayed at the bottom and held the purses.)

I did participate in the next adventure – a gondola ride up the mountain and luging down it.

(The Girl is pouting because her head is too small to fit grownup sizes.)

It was basically MarioKart!

Then the MarioKarters hit the road again to Tauranga and found ourselves a very Oregon-like beach.

See that mountain? The Husband and I climbed it this morning!

The view was standard New Zealand aka amaze balls. Plus wandering herd of sheep, natch. I even took one of those fancy travel lifestyle pics of me doing yoga at the top of the mountain.

(Like I said, I’m getting SO good at corpse pose!)

Today’s last adventure was a tour of one of the oldest buildings in New Zealand where we got our history on.

(What do you mean “all your pictures have books in them?” I said it was an adventure….)

Tonight is packing up the clothes we washed today in preparation for our next leg. Off to Oz tomorrow! But not without first saying goodbye to NZ by hanging out with some natives (aka hobbits)….

Pretty much the only things I know about New Zealand are from Taika Waititi movies and these guys:

We’re rectifying that this week – Krakes are in New Zealand! Yep, time to pull out the ol’ ninja turtle backpacks again!

The flight over was quite fine for 3/4 of us. For some reason Mr. “Fall Asleep Five Seconds into the Car Ride” couldn’t sleep, so he was pretty wrecked.

NZ is 19 hours different, so while we skipped Thursday entirely, our body clocks aren’t too out of whack. Our first stop is Auckland, and after snuggling some tired children into the AirBnB, the grown ups went exploring.

It’s beautiful here! End of summer, so it’s warm and green. Auckland has amazing green spaces.

(We totally made out on the Lovers Walk. It’s required.)

Children napped, we grabbed them and continued exploring.

(You know the president’s made an impression when New Zealand craft brewers are making beer called “Im-PEACH-ment.)

Day 2 in Auckland was more of the same. We started with the Parnell Rose Garden.

Then it was culture time – Auckland Art Museum:

(The Boy hates museums with every fiber of his being, so I try to find free admission since this is how he spends his visit:)

Then it was park shenanigans, a cricket match (hint: just as exciting as baseball), and unexpected pianos and libraries.

Our last night in Auckland was divide-and-conquer. I took The Boy to the baths (aka the swimming pool).

While The Husband took The Girl to a Twenty-One Pilots concert.

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(We each feel we got the better end of the deal.)

And that’s it for Auckland! The adventure continues in Rotorua today. The question on everyone’s mind: how well can The Husband drive on the wrong side of the road??

Meet my new grandbaby!

This is “Will” (aka The Boy’s project in his “Family Life” Science unit). Will is a 10 lb bag of flour with a drawn-on face that The Boy gets to parent for the next week.

I found Will’s “home-from-the-hospital” beanie to be mildly terrifying, so I dug out one of The Boy’s old sleepers to see if he could be made somewhat more cuddly. It helped a bit.

The Boy is required to keep Will within his sight at all times, preferably being carried either on his chest or on his hip. And he has to come with us everywhere.

(I got so many “congratulations” at church. Our youth pastor just returned from her maternity leave, so she and The Boy swapped parenting advice while they bounced their babies.)

We’re allowed to babysit (provided The Boy “pays” us in chores), so sometimes this happens.

I’m supposed to grade The Boy’s parenting abilities each day on a scale of 1-3. Most days he’s been pretty good and I only have to text him once or twice that “you forgot your baby again.” But sometimes he abandons his child for too long and then something dire happens.

(I’m only giving him a “2” for this day.)

So it’s been a little cray-cray around here lately what with traveling and being sick and hockey and appointments and church stuff and book clubs and all the life that gets squeezed in between. And we’re heading into another similar season (hopefully less “being sick” because there’s definitely more “travel”).

Realizing I was blessed with a weekend in between with relatively little on my personal calendar, I quickly booked a bunch of appointments and had myself a nice little weekend o’ relaxation.

Treatment #1 was yoga. Look at my beautiful yoga studio!

I’ve practiced yoga off and on (mostly off) for years now. It’s tough to find the right fit of schedule, teacher, and yoga style. My favourite classes had always been the first ones I took at Great-West Life – mostly because they were for office workers (i.e. older working women) after work, so most of the poses were done lying down. I’ve always tried to find something similar, but ended up struggling my way through vinyasas and warrior threes and just looking forward to shavasana at the end.

(For the uninitiated, it’s known as “corpse pose” and you basically just lie there and think about breathing. It’s pretty awesome.)

So I was super excited to find a studio near us that has classes like “Restorative Yoga” and “Hip Hip Hooray” and (my favourite) “Easy Does It Yoga.” And I happily head off most Friday afternoons to hang out with the retired ladies and practice my corpse pose. (Oh man you guys, I’m getting so good at it!)

Treatment #2 was my typical weekend hike. It’s been a whole year and I’m still in the honeymoon phase of I can’t believe I live by the state park. It’s a sad weekend when I don’t get in there for at least an hour or so. Pictures never do it justice, so I tried a video this time. It’s so springy in there right now! (Also soggy, since it’s been raining since the snow melted, but you can totally hear all the spring run-off!)

Oh the love I have for this forest!

Treatment #3 was the tried-and-true massage. I haven’t been in ages, but I knew The Girl liked the massage therapist I found for her, so I decided it was mama’s turn. And I was definitely not disappointed!

She was perfect! Enough pressure/working out the kinks that I felt like I got my money’s worth, but not so hard that I was cursing the day she was born (it’s a fine balance).

Suitably turned into a noodle, I turned to the craziest treatment of my spa weekend: a float! AKA A SENSORY DEPRIVATION TANK!

(Essentially this. But less dress-y. And less gymnasium-y.)

I’ve always wanted to try one of these. I’m a massive introvert, and there are times when the hustle and bustle of life starts my head buzzing and my adrenaline rushing and I’m just super overstimulated. I retreat to my bedroom in the dark and put in my noise-canceling headphones and just have to take a break from it all.

So when The Husband bought me a gift certificate for a float for my birthday, I was super excited. (And also? How much do you love someone who knows you so well that they buy you a 90-minute escape from the entire world – including them – for your 40th birthday??)

You show up for your appointment and there’s a waiting room (with hippie herbal teas and fancy water, natch). Then they show you to your personal float room.

Look how excited I am for my float!

That door on the left side is basically like a refrigerator door (or, if you’re feeling morbid, like those doors in the morgue on CSI behind which the body is sealed).

You pop in some ear plugs, strip down, shower, and lie down in what is essentially a bathtub/coffin with water that has 1000 pounds of epsom salts. Then you close the door and hit the button to turn off the light and….you float.

It’s like this:

I had low expectations because it was my first one, but it was fab! They keep the water at body temperature so theoretically you lose track of where your body ends and the water begins. I couldn’t feel anything below the waist (so cool!) but I wish the water had been about one degree warmer because when I breathed, I could feel the water on my arms.

But truly, it’s the coolest thing. You know that feeling when you’re perfectly cozy at night and you’re just about sleeping and your mind is wandering and you’re wondering about why Charlie Brown’s shirt was a zig-zag and whether Peter and Lois realize that Brian is a dog and all those other meaning-of-life-style questions and you’re allllllmost asleep?

It was basically doing that for 90 minutes.

After 90 minutes (which felt like about 30), the music starts playing gently and you stretch, let yourself out of the morgue container, shower again, and stumble out with the muscle tone of overcooked pasta and a silly little grin.

(LOL, during my instructions, the attendant told me to make sure I rinsed off really well or all the salt would make me turn into a statue. I was totally going to make a “Lot’s wife” joke but then I thought, eh, he’s probably heard that one before. And then I realized it’s Portland and he *wouldn’t* have heard it and then I’d be forced to try to evangelize via Old Testament Sodom and Gomorrah and that would be awkward so I just left it.)

It was truly so great! I’m actually kind of craving one right now! I’m sure I’ll be back. In the meantime, I’ll just stock up on epsom salts and one of those eye thingeys you get on planes and maybe my own bathtub will do the trick….

Can you believe we’re only a week into Lent? It feels like ages ago since I heard “remember you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” And feels like AGES since I’ve tapped one of these timewasters:

(See that? Had to move them all the way to the fifth screen over so I wouldn’t be tempted by them every time I checked out Justin in that sweet library my email.)

On Ash Wednesday, the priest said that “Lent” is from the Old English word “lencten” which means “spring.” It refers to the “lengthening” of days that comes with this time of year. And he invited us to think about Lent less as a time of hardship and self-denial and more as a time of lengthening our spirits – stretching and growing along with the days, embracing the growing light.

Ooooo, now that is an entirely different kettle of fish, yes? It’s less about mortifying the flesh and more about making room. It’s less about giving up social media and more about listening for different voices.

I’m definitely hearing different voices. Our church is reading through the entire New Testament through Lent (goodness, that Paul was prickly). It is fabulous. I’m used to doing exegesis on small snippets of text; this whole “gulping it down” pace is something completely different. There’s no time to get bogged down in the details – instead it’s all just wave after wave of freedom and redemption and justice and mercy and grace.

This song’s been running through my head these days:

My favourite part:

Tomorrow’s freedom is today’s surrender
We come before You lay our burdens down
We look to You as our hearts remember
You are the only God You are our only God

THIS! Is what Lent is all about. Not white-knuckling through the temporary giving up of all the things that make us happy and being all somber and sad. But about surrendering the things that hold us back (see: obsessively checking Facebook and getting caught up in Reddit and all the never-ending mundanity in the world) and replacing their “loss” with abundance and life. I’m looking up from my phone and seeing the world around me (and, not gonna lie, looking right back down into a book, but a book is a different thing, yes?). I’m realizing what a burden those other voices were and how much their clatter and clamour in my head were costing me.

I feel the lengthening within me. I see the lengthening of days and the budding of newness around me.

Everything and everyone is getting ready.

The rabbit chews the mouse cord.

And when the rabbit chews the mouse cord, you try scotch tape. And when scotch tape doesn’t work, your daughter abandons her computer and uses the laptop every night. And when your daughter hogs uses the laptop every night, it’s impossible to blog.

Blaming my silence on the rabbit. And the fact that we’ve had THE PLAGUE over the last two weeks. Actually, it was Israelites-leaving-Egypt-style staggered plagues where one gets the stomach flu (The Boy slept with a bucket for a couple of nights) and then one gets a fever (The Girl) and then one gets the aches (me) and then a few get felled by a nasty cold (me and The Girl with a bit o’ scratchiness for The Boy).

And then you get a few days off and it all starts over again.

(I think the attendance office is getting awfully used to seeing my name pop up in their inboxes pretty much every day.)

In between a few of the plagues, we got to go to Canada! Lots of Canadian treats:

And some quality reading materials.

And a DQ blizzard with SKOR!! How long has it been?!

And did you know that scrunchies are a thing again? Oh my lanta, I went into Ardene and it was like walking into the hallway of my high school (second floor hallway, natch – first floor is Banger Hall, and last I checked Ardene does not sell Metallica t-shirts with packs of smokes stuck up the sleeves).

(You guys, did you know there’s bodysuits again too? And mom jeans?)

We hung out with our framily and had a fabulous time. Our lovely hostess made us feel right at home with a treat display in our room (although The Boy was scandalized when The Husband grabbed some chips and he said, “DAD! Don’t you have to pay for that?!”)

(Apparently we’ve taught them well where hotel minibars are concerned.)

We had poutine of the real and not-so-real variety:

And of course, on the way out, we stopped at everybody’s favourite Canadian trading post to stock up until the next visit (except no Kinder eggs. Never Kinder eggs).

Then we came home to more plagues. We’re mostly better now, although just when I think we’ve had a good few day run and we might finally be out of the woods, I’m emailing the attendance office again. I’m told it’s hitting all the Portland schools hard, so mine aren’t the only truants.

Not much else exciting in PMland. You can tell we moved here just over a year ago because it’s annual appointment time. Everybody gets to go to the doctor and the dentist and the orthodontist this week. (Actually, that is kind of exciting. I really do love having health and dental insurance.)

Alas, this one’s gotta be short and sweet cuz it’s getting late on a school night, and *some* of us have to start work early tomorrow so they can knock off early to take The Boy to get re-fingerprinted for his big boy green card. And see The Husband off for a quick jaunt to Calgary – good timing, cuz we’re already out of all-dressed chips. But just wanted to check in and let you know that you’re loved and I *do* think about blogging but you know…that whole mouse thing…I blame the rabbit.