Thanksgiving!

     Last weekend was insane. I had Thanksgiving, went to a birthday party on a boat and went sky diving!!! Due to our crazy busy schedule we couldn't celebrate Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving so we had to celebrate it the weekend before. I have to mention how awesome Rob and Tanya were about letting me celebrate and helping pay for food and letting me have people over. They were so flexible and helpful. My Thanksgiving story really starts a month ago when I was trying to figure out how you get a turkey. This is not a turkey eating country. You can buy frozen turkeys but they are hard to come by. After calling a few different butchers I found on that could get me a fresh turkey. Saturday rolled around and I showed up to collect my turkey. The fresh turkey had gone off on the way to me so I was presented with a fully frozen turkey. This was not ideal because Thanksgiving was at 3pm and I picked the turkey up at 10 am. There was no way to thaw the turkey. Luckily Tanya had gotten a turkey breast bake that was stuffed with a cranberry stuffing and she went out and bought me a chicken to cook. Turkey disaster averted I started cooking. I had done most of the prep the day before so it was only the meat, gravy and heating up the food that I had to do.
    Kaiya and Indigo set the table. Kaiya made paper lanterns for each place setting. They also made place cards and folded the napkins. By the time that people started arriving the table was beautiful. Tess, Rachelle, Ariel and Ben all came. The girls are all American. Ben is a kiwi.
   When the guests arrived Kaiya helped them trace their hands and had them write something they were thankful for on their hand print before putting it on our thankful tree. We had made the thankful tree the day before as a way to talk with the kids about being thankful and appreciating what we have.
     Other than the turkey issue my first solo Thanksgiving went off very well. Ariel brought pie and dressing. Tess brought salad. Rachelle brought a pumpkin cake. I made mashed potatoes, turkey/chicken, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, holiday sangria and gravy (with some help from Tanya).
    After dinner and dessert Ariel and I scrambled to get ready for our boat party then drove into town. We got there only a tiny bit late. Our friend Mary and her boyfriend Nathan have birthdays super close together. Nathan works on the boat and the owner was kind enough to let us use the boat for the evening. We sailed out to Takapuna beach. It was cool to see it from the water. Normally I'm on land looking out. We had so much fun. There was lots of laughing and dancing and meeting new people. It was an awesome party.
    The next morning we woke up and got ready to sky dive. The place we were jumping from is two hours north of Auckland. Our jump was delayed because they had bad weather. It was beautiful in Auckland though so we hung out on the beach for a bit then got in the car to start heading north. We were going to stop at some markets on the way up but they said to come straight up as the weather had cleared. When we got there we drove around the air port a few times before finding the right place. We got signed in and all of the paper work sorted. Then we had to wait an hour before our jump so we went to a near by beach so we wouldn't be so nervous. When we got back to the sky diving place we found out that we still had to wait and that all four of us couldn't jump together. They have two planes. One fits one person and a tandem master and the other fits two people and their tandem masters. Elisa went first which was really good because she really liked it which made it easier for Ariel and I to go. I really enjoyed going up because the views were amazing. We could see out over the ocean and some farms on the land. The tide was out so the ocean was more sand than water. It was still beautiful though. I wasn't nervous until they opened the door to the plane. When they open the door it gets really really cold and noisy. I had a few seconds where I thought that I didn't want to. Luckily I was strapped to someone else who was jumping out of the plane. He didn't give me much warning just flung us out of the plane and did a summer salt. We free fell for 45 seconds. It was awesome! I loved the free fall. After he deployed the parachute he let me steer it which was fun. It takes a lot of upper body strength to move it about. I absolutely loved it. I would jump out of a plane again.

P.S. Due to issues with technology I haven't been able to move them into chronological order 

Before getting into our plane...so excited and 

yet so nervous

Kirk, me, Ariel and Sam in the plane!

Kirk and I as our shoot was deploying

We survived!!!

Me, Mary and Ariel on the boat!!!!

Part of dinner

Our thankful tree

Awesome place settings

Ariel and I

Light Show

    On Thursday Ariel and I went to the art gallery. There is an exhibit there right now callec the Light Show. It is all art that is made out of light. I really really liked the exhibit. I pulled some photos off the website for my blpng but they aren't as cool as the actual exhibit because cameras don't work like eyes so lots of the illusions created bythe light are totally missed. For instance one of my favorite pieces was three monochrmatic rooms. There was one with vree light, one with red light and one with blue light. The longer you stood in one color the more your eyes adjusted to that color. They had cubs hanging from the celining between the rooms so that youcould see one skde had become white and the color in the adjoining room had changed. For instance if you were in the blue room the light from the green room looked very yellow and if you were in the red room the green looked very much like the Emerald City from Wizard of Oz. Our first go through the monochromatic rooms we missed the point but walking around again we figured it out.

This is a bunch of light boxes that had signs from fast food places and shops at one point in time but the fronts were taken off and they were filled with colorful lights. I think it looks better from the other side were you can see all the lights. You can't see it in this photo but all of the cords and stuff are exposed on the back. The description in the museum reminded me of the book 1984 because it was a very big brother inspired piece of art. 

This is one of my favorite pieces. Each strand had loads of LED's on it. The artist had created a custom computer program to make them go off in random non-repeating patterns. Ariel and I sat and watched this one for a long time. A lot of the piece is lost in a still shot. You really need a video to get the feeling for it. The lights are constantly moving. I love that the patterns don't repeat because it means every time you see the piece is is essentially a different piece of art. 

This is the monochromatic rooms I mentioned above. It is hard to get the feeling from a photo but it shows how the rooms are laid out. This is a hall way on one side of them. You are suppose to stand under a row of lights and not in the hallway to let your eyes adjust but once they have looking into the hallway is super cool. 

This piece is a one way mirror and a regular mirror with a neon light. When you look at it straight on it looks like the lights are making a tower. The artist is also an architect and this is the foot print of a building he made. It is suppose to look like you are on the bottom of the building looking up. 

I really loved this piece. You go into a dark room through a dark corridor. The only lights are the red lights. It is hard to see it in the photo but it looks like there is a screen in front of the red lights and then a wall. In actuality it is an illusion made by cleverly placed lights and a fog machine. The whole area is empty space but it definitely looks like a room. It was very very cool. I am impressed that this piece of art can travel. The exhibit has been lots of places and each museum has different rooms and stuff. It seems improbable that they could all create a room for this exhibit. I wonder if the artist has to go with it and recreate it in each new place. 

This was in it's own room. There was a projector and a fog machine. The projector projected shapes I would have made on my graphing calculator in high school but can't remember the names of now. What was being projected was not the interesting part. The cool part was watching the lines of light as they were projected. You were able to walk through them and be in a light tunnel or look under them. The piece is called Horizontal lines potentially because from the side all of the light lines look as though they are horizontal but as you move through the space and look from different angles you realize they aren't.