Day 12, March 27, 2016

Easter Sunday.

The day started with the boys discovering that the Easter Bunny had been to visit, thanks to Tony and Mandy. There was sooooo much chocolate.

Rhys and Owyn weren't able to even dent this pile of candy.

There was also an Easter egg hunt out back. We'd hidden everything the night before and all but two of the pieces of candy made it through. Whatever got into them didn't like chocolate because it spit out half of it.

Rhys searching for candy.

After clean up, and some more candy we headed out to the Omaka Airplane Museum. This is partially owned/funded? by Peter Jackson and has an extensive collection of WWI airplanes, many of which are flyable.

Weta did a lot of the effects here.

The dioramas are amazing.

One of THREE flyable Fokker three deckers, one of which is painted up as the Red Baron's plane.

Even here there is Marine Corps history.

We finished up here around lunch time so we went back into Bleinheim to get some KFC. After thirty minutes of waiting we got our chow and headed over to a park for a picnic. The three boys wolfed down their food so they could go play. We gave them a few minutes on the playground then loaded up and drove out to White's Bay for some beach time.

The boys head for the water. It was COLD, but they didn't care.

Half of the beach as the tide goes out.

Tracy and Mandy relaxing.

Tony showing the boys how to make a drip castle.

After a couple of hours we were feeling the need for some dinner and packed up to head back to the house. The drive to the beach was over a steep hill. We stopped at the top to look out over the entire valley.

Blenheim is top right. The vineyards we were at are at the base of the hills on the opposite side of the valley.

When we got back to the house Dean and Sandy had prepared another amazing dinner. This time there was a grilled roast, spun on the rotisserie for a couple of hours. They also had another New Zealand delicacy, white bait. White bait is whole fish fried up in fritters. Don't look to closely as their little eyes are still staring up at you.

The white bait is long gone. Owyn ate three of them.

We ended the night by playing another few games. We started with a game of Coup and then played two games of Condottiere, a complex but entertaining game that is on the "Maybe" list.

This game had us up until almost 0100