We got cats

Masaru had friends who were getting rid of kittens to the pound. Masaru asked us if we’d like them. We thought about it. It was gonna be hard because we’d have to keep them inside for their training since it was winter. 

Of course we folded and took them. We wanted boys and got a boy and a girl. The girls name is Shichi and the boys name was Hatchi. 

They were pretty cute. 

Hatchi died a couple of months ago (it’s November right now) He was run over. We only had him maybe 6 months. But he was super gentle and kind and nice. 

Goban was horrible to them and took off for a while. 

He’s come back a few times to visit us. I’m glad he’s still alive. 

Shichi is smart and loves us. She’s just not as kind and loving as Hatchi. But it’s good we have a cat. I don’t think we’ll get more until Shichi dies. She’s not a year yet. 

 

Seeing friends again.

Yuki and Takeshi both surprised their partners with turning up a day early. It was pretty cute. 

I got back into hiking. 

Goban missed us. 

Emiko went to a dance with her homies. 

Morgan made cute videos for yuki. 

Emery’s mum was a little weird when Yuki surprised him. 

Takeshi pretended he was the Amazon guy. Morgan was shocked. 

 

Fiji

We had about a nine hour layover in Fiji and we made sure we utilized it to the That we could.

We got picked up by the service and taken out to the place where we would go on the flying fox through the forest.

We were excited to go, Zipp lighting and see the forest and the beach and learn a little bit more about Fiji.

The way that they love is interesting and humbled me. Half of the houses that I saw were tin shacks. It made me realize to be grateful for what I had. The weather was really nice and the people seem really happy.

The people that helped us on our zip lining adventure were really nice

They only had two zip lines a day, but DRU asked them if they could do a special one for us since we were right in the middle of those two times and they did. We were really grateful for that.

They were really good at taking lots of pictures and I would totally go back and do it again. It made me want to go back to Fiji and continue to discover it.

It took them a long time to build peace by peace, the stairs, and the railing for the whole zip line.

They were telling us the story about it as we walked with them to each zip line that they had.

So beautiful. 

They showed us these caves that are Fiji tribe used to live in.

The caves were amazing. 

They said the spot is where they were kill people. 👀 

This is a beautiful tree just hanging off the cliff face. 

They also took really good videos

They fed us lunch afterwards, which was really good and then they took us back to the airport to wait for our flight back to Boise. We talked and played card games and Takeshi 💛 got himself a Fijian shirt which he still wears and loves to this day. It was a really good layover and Fiji and I’m super grateful that DRU booked it for us.

 

Packing up, saying goodbyes and seeing Doana.

 These next couple of days were really good.

So we did all of our washing and then all of our packing and cleaned mom‘s house and her car. Mum has been really good to us and we wanted to make sure we left her car and her house clean.

We said goodbye to Pete. Bevin and Dior and their family came over and spent dinner and the night with us. We played games. It was nice to see them. I’m really glad they came over. We watched the movie with Josh and had a late night.

The next day we went to the temple and did baptisms which was awesome. We had lunch and went to Hayden‘s house and went to the Greenstone factory to pick up last-minute things. We then went to my friend Doana‘s house.

We stopped off at Job‘s grave and said hi to him. 

It was great of Haydn to be able to take us to Auckland to our friends house so that he could see her too. It had been a lot of years since the last time he saw Doana and her family. Grace and Josh came to with us so it’s good to be with the cuzzies. 

Doana had made us a really nice dinner and we got to catch up with her and the kids got to meet her which I loved and we were able to get a good nights sleep. It was really nice being able to see her parents as well. I hadn’t seen them in a long time and they were a huge part of my life when I lived in Invercargill.

My Ruapehu and family visits

 

So we got up early and headed to mt Ruapehu to do the hike. It was fantastic. I’m glad Josh was with us. He was amazing company. 

It was so beautiful. I’m so grateful I was able to do it. 

It was amazing. It was a little windy. The hikes were hard and in snow a little so slippery. It was good though. 

Afterwards we hung out with having for the night which was amazing as well. Good to play games and hang out. 

We were able to see Rylie and his girlfriend after our hike. It was so good to catch up with him and to meet his new girlfriend. I had an amazing time chatting and catching up. 

This was our lunch spot. 

E to the gondola up and down.