VAN VOORHIS FAMILY BLOG

Back to the “grind” of Monday – school for the kids, organizing – Sam catching up on work things – but another beautiful day here. Windows open, doing a bit of cleaning for the upcoming visit of my friend Elizabeth from the states. Kids have tennis tonight so we’ll get outside a bit.

We had a great weekend in spite of it starting off on Friday being rainy and cloudy. We took the kids to the pool Friday night to blow off some steam from the week of school – always a nice time. I played tennis on Saturday morning with the ladies here, which I’ve really come to enjoy. Saturday afternoon we got together with our friends the Englekes and drove down to Glenorchy. Every time we go there we’re amazed by the beauty of creation. The drive is about 40 minutes from Queenstown along the lake with mountains on both sides. Just amazingly beautiful and we’ve agreed that it’s pretty much one of our favorite drives we’ve ever done. We pretty much took over the small Glenorchy cafe with our 2 kids, their 6 kids and one grandma. Such a great group of people. We had pizzas, then drove back to Q town and kept 3 of the kids here for a sleepover. The kids all drank hot chocolate (well, not Ethan, since he doesn’t like anything sweet) – and sat in the hot tub and talked. They all looked so grown up!

Sunday we went to church and then went to Arrowtown in the afternoon. Arrowtown is another one of our favorite places and with the fall leaves starting to change- it’s even that much better. We did the “Sawpit Gully” hike with Russell and the oldest 3 of their kids. The hike was very nice – somewhat challenging, but not too hard and we were able to complete it in less than 2 hours. I think it was nice for the kids to have others their age to keep their minds off grinding up and down hills. We drove directly to the gondola in Queenstown and let the kids do 4 luge rides by themselves while Sam and I watched. The view from the top of the gondola is always beautiful – but it was a bit windy!

Sam and I decided to go out to dinner by ourselves – something we’ve only done once before since we’ve been here. We went downtown to a little Italian place and had a nice dinner. Afterwards we were walking through a little mall and came across the -5 degree bar. We stood outside and debated whether or not we were going to get sucked into doing something so touristy and cheesy, but since the kids weren’t with us, we decided to go ahead and do it. We donned our gloves, boots and hooded winter coats and paid our “entrance fee” – which entitled us to an overpriced drink in their frozen bar. We were thankful that is was -5 celsius and not farenheit – so it wasn’t too painful. We spent 30 minutes chatting with the scottish bar tender and other tourists that fell into the same trap. Sheepishly, but laughingly took a few pictures to remember our venture and then headed back home.

All in all – another great weekend. Good family time, good time with friends and a good amount of time outdoors. Thanks for following along with us – I’m sure we’ll post a few more pictures soon. J

I love the debate required in Parliamentary forms of government. It is very formal, but at the same time it requires a quick wit and a sharp tongue.

It requires politicians to understand issues or be publicly embarrassed. It requires them to defend the things they’ve said and done in real time with cameras rolling. People in the government are held to account.

In New Zealand when an MP or a minister crosses the line, the Honorable Speaker Dr. Lockwood Smith requires the offender to, “Stand Withdraw And Apologize.” It is not negotiable.

It is time for many of our political leaders in the states to stand withdraw and apologize. And the President needs come out from behind his teleprompter and lead the way.

Understand, I believe that many in the GOP have acquiesced to – and even been complicit in – policies that will truly do long term damage to our economy and to our freedom in America.

In a few short months, our leaders have completely abandoned the free market, as we once knew it… They have thrashed around placing blame instead of letting the markets and shareholders punish bad business deals by companies and bad decisions by investors and individuals.

Our government has foolishly shunned the concept of bid and ask. After all, supply and demand is so 20th century. Clearly after Obama’s Greek Column Speak, we’ve evolved past these old paradigms. Barack Obama is surely too big to fail…

Candidate Obama decried earmarks and pork under the Bush administration, President Obama has spent trillions faster than he can read “inherited” three times from his electronic crutch.

It seems like only yesterday that President Obama was mangling the oath of office… Now we have already have a government takeover of banks and other financial institutions.

The fabulously tone-deaf Timmy “AIGeithner” even thinks he and the bureaucrats at Treasury should be able in inject themselves into the private affairs of businesses that haven’t required “protection” from the economic storm by Timmy’s TARP.

The new administration is seeking unprecedented power over the private economy just 60 days into the Osiah’s reign. They are as arrogant as they are Keynesian.

By any objective standard, Obama’s first 2 months have been a disaster:

Withdrawing nominees with tax problems…

Giving DVDs to Gordon Brown…

Insulting the disabled on Leno…

Obama is making history, that’s for sure.

Another Obama legacy will be government intrusion into private businesses. It is in fact, nothing short of socialism. Yep, I said it comrades. What did we really expect from a “community organizer?”

When Sarah Palin attacked Obama’s plan to redistribute wealth and called it socialism, I kind of winced.

Regardless of the legitimacy of the claim, I thought that it sounded like over the top political rhetoric from a desperate campaign. Second, it just allowed the left-wing hatred machine and media Marxists to continue their non-stop over-the-top attack on Palin, her character, her family, her church, her state, her gender, her intelligence, her motives, her childhood, her hobbies, her accent, her clothes, her glasses, her lipstick, etc… Third, even conservatives like me were panicked enough to want unlimited government insurance of deposits in US Banks after Senator Chuck Schumer irresponsibly and unethically blew up IndyBank. But I digress…

We need to stop the drift towards a welfare state…and towards socialism. And we need a real debate, not a lecture from the President’s speechwriters, a contrived town hall meeting, or another late night talk show.

Perhaps if we had actually had a parliamentary-style debate, some of the pork, waste and political payoffs in the stimulus bill could have been stopped. Perhaps we could have kept government out of the private business. Perhaps we could hold President Obama responsible for the things candidate Obama promised.

One day history will force Barack Obama to stand withdraw and apologize. Maybe he can read it from his teleprompter.

Technically (according to my calendar) we are in week 13 of the year. We left our home in Ponte Vedra on New Year’s Eve day and arrived in New Zealand early on January 3. Amazing to think of all the things we’ve seen and done in the last 3 months – and that we still have 2 more months. Funny to feel like our trip is coming to an end when we still have a little more than 8 weeks left. We leave our house here in Queenstown on May 10 and will meander back up to Auckland to head home.

We’ve come to the conclusion that our favorite thing to do here is to do the multi-day hikes, so we’ve signed up for yet another one in a few weeks. We leave on April 16 to go do the Hump Ridge Track – it’s quite a wicked day 1 climb (over 900 meters) – but supposedly a beautiful hike. We also are looking to drive up the west coast and do the Able Tasman Track as well. I guess the kids are getting their physical education credits for school!

We had a great few days in the Catlins. The weather was beautiful and we did a spur of the moment trip on Sunday and came back Tuesday evening. We took off with no agenda or hotel reservations, something that we usually have. Armed only with an atlas and a cell phone that had only occasional reception, we made our way down to the town of Kaka Point. When we asked the hotel manager where we could eat, he said that the local pub had an event, so the next option was to drive to a nearby town – where the only food option was a grocery store. It’s so different down in the south of the south island – very laid back, very rural. Only the main road was paved, so the majority of our driving was on gravel roads. I think Sam was relieved to get Marge (what we’ve named our old Land Cruiser) back on to a paved highway.

We went to Nugget Point at sunset and saw the light house, then we went down to a nearby beach overlook to watch the yellow-eyed penguins come in to the beach at dusk. It was exceptionally cold, but we stayed out there for almost an hour to watch. It was so amazing to see them swimming in from the ocean and waddle up the beach, fighting the waves till they got on to the sand. Their friends would come to the water to greet them and walk/waddle back to the grasses where they had their homes. These penguins are very rare, and much larger than the fairy penguins we watched at Phillip Island in Australia. We only were able to see about 7 penguins this time – but it was a great event. Along with the penguins, there were 2 large sea lions in the grasses – not too active, but moved a bit.

The next day we made our way down the coast and stopped at a number of beaches, bays and forest walks. Again we were able to watch a group of 6 sea lions at Cannibal Bay – very cool. We did a waterfall walk and walked to a blow hole set inland from a bay. We found a little camp ground that had little stand alone rooms so we checked in there. That evening at low tide, we took a beautiful walk through the forest to the beach and made our way to the Cathedral Caves. These are only accessible at low tide and we were able to walk into the one cave and make our way out the next. Very beautiful and strange – I’m sure my mother wouldn’t have enjoyed being inside the dark recesses of the caves. That evening we had a surprisingly delicious meal of lamb and laughed to ourselves when our waiter suggested that I drink a merlot instead of the pinot noir that I had requested to have with my lamb. Out in the middle of nowhere there still are strong culinary opinions.

Tuesday we worked our way further south down the coast and made some nice stops at another waterfall, to Slope point which is the most southernly spot on the south island. We also went to a bay where there were fossilized trees and some really beautiful seaweed. Our last bay we visited we saw 3 sea lions – one bull that went out in the water, and a mother and cub. We ended up in Invercargill and found Queen’s Park where we took an hour to play and have a look around. On our way out of Invercargill we finally were back in cell phone service and received a text sent a few days earlier that Sam & I had a tennis match that evening – so we busted it back to Quenstown and got 2 sets of our match in before the light made us reschedule the last set. We finished that today and unfortunately went down in flames due to my inability to hit the ball! But – we lost to a team that we really enjoy playing with and wish them the best in the final. We have enjoyed our social tennis league over here and are sad that the season has ended.

We continue with school work for the kids – grilling out good food in the evenings and trying to get outside as much as possible. My friend Liz from Ohio is coming here to visit a week from Saturday – so I’m looking forward to keeping busy with adventure activities while she’s here.

Well, enough of my rambling….. Hopefully Sam & the kids will post again soon with more witty banter. All is well here and we hope the same for our friends back home. J