Happy Birthday To You!

This weekend was Kirstens birthday weekend! She’s 22! WOOHOO! This is what we did to celebrate her wonderful day of birth!

Friday

On Friday we had a whole day planned at Takapuna Beach. We had finally figured out the bus routes so that we could all meet at Takapuna at 1:00pm and we were ready to go! We got to the bus stop and headed towards Westgate (where the bus is required to stop). Emily and Kirsten were on the other bus next to us with their favorite bus driver Tua. They insisted on taking his bus and they convinced us to hop busses. Little did they know the bus route Tua was driving was not a direct route to Takapuna like our bus that we got off of was. We ended up taking a very scenic route to Takapuna. We drove through all of downtown Auckland and even crossed the bridge. Meanwhile I was having a mini panic attack because we were supposed to be meeting Mikaela and Amanda at the bus stop in Takapuna at 1:00 and it was 1:15 and not even close. This wouldn’t be bad if Mikaela and Amanda didn’t already have a really hard time figuring out the bus system and didn’t have a very complicated bus route everywhere. We eventually got to the beach and it was so sunny and a beautiful day. It was lucky because as soon as we found a patch of grass in the sun, Mikaela and Amanda had just arrived and found us! Thank goodness.

Then Phyllis took Kirsten, Mikaela, Amanda, Austyn, Alisha and I out to dinner to a restaurant called Valentines. Valentines is a big time buffet here and it was delicious! It had foods from all over the world that were sure scrumptious. My favorite thing was the spicy chicken curry, but that might just be because I’m a huge fan of Indian food. After the main course, there was dessert. This is where you could say, everyone lost their self control. We seriously had an entire plate full of all of the desserts. We just wanted to try them all. Is that so wrong? They were all mouth-watering good. I had two favorites: a chocolate roll with cream in the middle (looks like a pumpkin roll) and powdered sugar on top, and the second was a mini pavlova filled with cream. There is only one word to describe it: YUMMY!

Saturday

Thank goodness for free days! We got to spend another day at a different beach! I can’t help but laugh a little when I think that I am at the beach and almost everybody else is in Provo and it is snowing. Anyways, we went back to Orewa Beach. We went there the first weekend here in New Zealand and it was pouring rain so we were all excited to go back to the beach and actually enjoy it.

Reece, one of the YSA, took Kirsten, Kirsten, Emily, Mikaela, Amanda, Atti (a girl that lives with his family) and I to the beach. Sarah, Brittany and Micah were already there. They live with Reece’s Uncle.

I have decided that boys don’t like to just sit there on the beach or just wade in the water. They have to be doing something. Well, at least Reece does. This was actually a great change. He taught us all how to play cricket, which has become one of my new loves. Then, we played a very intense game of Rugby. This was not an ordinary rugby game; it was full on tackle in the water. This was so much fun and I even have battle wounds! Once we finished this game we immediately jumped right into playing a game of volleyball. This was when I could really feel the heat, literally. My shoulders started burning. Then I realized I hadn’t reapplied any sunscreen in between our crazy games. I lathered up the sunscreen, but it was too late and the damage had been done. Lets just say I’m the color of a lobster, with a really intense bathing suit line. I even have a line from where my earrings were.

*It's definitely more red in person. If you saw it you would probably die.*

Afterwards we (along with Sarah) went to get dessert because we were in dyer need of some dessert after the buffet..PSYCH! We went anyways and it was so worth it. The place we went to was called The Chocolate Boutique in downtown Auckland. I got something called Death By Chocolate. It was deadly...delicious. Basically it is chocolate ice cream, chocolate mousse, and then chocolate syrup. It was definitely my chocolate fix for the day. Thank goodness I shared this with Mikaela or else I would have eaten the entire thing by myself.

Because Reece spent the entire day doing things that the girls wanted to do we went back to the Sorenson’s (where Emily and Kirsten live) and watched the Dark Knight. Lucky him; he got to spend an entire day with 7 girls.