Sunset at PIha

It was a beautiful day here today, so this evening we took a little family outing to stroll the beach. Here are some of the photos we took.

I am published -- sort of ...

See my first "published" article on this site for dads (especially stay-at-home dads).

What a day!

We haven't blogged about any of our NZ adventures lately so here you go:

We started our day out today with the plan of taking the train downtown to get Zane's birth registered in the US and to get his passport. The train was over 30 minutes late (sadly not too unusual for Auckland) which was going to make us unable to do Zane's passport because we weren't going to have time to get his picture taken. As we are boarding the train my dear, sweet husband informs me that he is not going to pay the fair since the train was so late. Since I am completely non-confrontational I asked if he could just give me some money and Zane and I would sit on the other side of the train. He evidently thought I was just joking so I had to busy myself feeding Zane while he had a short confrontation which ended with a threat of security waiting for us at the next stop if he didn't pay. I think if Zane had not been there he would have sold us both up the river to prove a point. Fortunately though he paid the fair in trade of speaking with some supervisor. I will let him give you the details of the argument because it is quite funny to watch B argue with Kiwi's. Kiwi's have got to be even more non-confrontational then me!

After finally making it downtown we go to the US Consulate. We get off the elevator on our floor and are greeted by a guard behind a desk with a metal detector and x-ray machine. All of our bags (remember we have a baby now) had to be x-rayed, he confiscated our mobile phone, and then checked over the pram before walking it through the metal detector. We of course followed. He punched in a code to a door behind him were a long row of chairs sat in front of about 8 windows--of course only 2 had actual people working. We could not believe how much security we had to pass through just to get a birth certificate! We were almost thwarted though because we didn't have a copy of our marriage license, but they told us we could mail it to them. Can anyone tell me why they would need our marriage license? Since when do you have to be married to have a child?

After that we decided to go find something to eat. We at "China Yum Char Restaurant", which was quite an experience! Yum Char means to eat small servings of different foods while sipping Chinese tea. What happens is you sit down at a table and servers come around with trays of food and you take what you want--like a buffet. Only in this case it becomes a game of great chance and courage because what little English is spoken is VERY hard to understand. So we are sitting at our table outside and are about the only one's outside so the first 2 servers were very patient and worked really hard to try to get us to understand. We blindly picked a couple of plates. Then the patio area started filling up and severs started arriving more quickly and spoke more quickly and we started getting a little anxious--I was really anxious because for some reason I felt really obligated to take something from each server and you must understand they came around about every minute with different things. As the rush hour continued the servers started just coming out of the door and yelling out what they had on their trays. Did I mention that everyone there spoke the language but us? So people are yelling out when they want something and the server would run over and give it to them. We had been being really adventurous and just trying things at random until we saw them serving CHICKEN FEET!!!!!!! Everything we ate came on a plate of 3, but CHICKEN FEET!!!! are obviously cheap because you got a LOT if you were brave enough to eat them. And LOTS of people were getting them. The lady serving those was obviously familiar with the likes of us because she never bothered offering us any CHICKEN FEET!!!!!! I will say the food was very good.

The train back was on time (thank goodness!) and I thought we had made it back when Brandon noticed an ad that made men look really stupid about taking care of children. He was ready to search down the manager and have another confrontation but fortunately the mall was closing. When we arrived home he spent the evening e-mailing various managers and has now decided that he will be a Professional Society Watch-Dog. God help me!