What a Puzzling World we Live in!

Mercy me, we have GOT to stop doing so many cool things because I'm getting soooo behind.

Okay, April 8 to 11 here were the highlights:

April 8:
Puzzling World in Wanaka! It's a building filled with puzzles, games, and illusions.

Hmmm...what's the illusion in this picture?!...

Ooooo, this is soooo deceiving. Dad and I are giants and Mom & Lowell are just teeny weeny. How DO they do it?!....

My Mom is standing straight up. Really...

Oooo, this one hurt...

Lowell and I developed super strength...

Oh but that's not all there is to the Puzzling World, folks. My personal favourite part was the convoluted outdoor maze with 1.5km of track.

Apparently most people end up walking 3-5kms in attempt to locate the four corner towers and then the exit. We spent nearly an hour and a half in there and successfully conquered each tower.

What took the majority of the time was trying to find the exit (which we didn't). We went in circles for about 40 minutes then leaped a fence and/or escaped through an emergency exit.

For the record, had the maze not been BUZZING with young and old alike (which are apparently not observed in the above particular shot), we would have zipped around like bunnies 'till we found the right combo of corners. I swear...

April 9:
Our first full day in Queenstown, and it was blissfully relaxing. We took a leisurey stroll through the town, ate fergburgers, and brought the parents to Onsen Hot Pools.

Onsen Hot Pools are the same hot pools that we went to with Marc & Kylie, and later appeared on the Bachelor (not that there's a correlation there). According to the owners, Jason (the bachelor) was a lot shorter than he appears on television. Te he he, that's the juicy gossip from Onsen Hot Pools!

Anyhoo, Mom & Dad loved the garage door feature, and we enjoyed a spectacular view completely in daylight.

We even witnessed jet boats whizzing through Shotover River (the same place where we jet boated with Julie Anne & Erin in December)...

Ahhh, it was soooo relaxing (but don't look too closely at Lowell because he may or may not be wearing his undies as his wife may have slipped up and forgot to bring his trunks)...

April 10:
Mom & Dad had an exciting morning! They took a scenic flight to, and a cruise through Milford Sound- land of the spectacular fiords.

From the air...

From the water...

From the air again...

After their flight/cruise, we headed to Arrowtown. This is a town about 20 minutes NE of Queenstown. It's beautiful fall colours were (nearly) out in full swing and we enjoyed strolling through the town, eating ice cream (we've been doing a lot of that since Daddio arrived!), then unintentionally doing a rather intense hike.

As for that silly hike that we accidentally did... we intended to do a simple river loop, but apparently got a little side tracked. We ended up hiking to about 50 million meters elevation (slight exaggeration) to a beautiful viewpoint of the town.

Well worthwhile despite the fact that most of us were ill-dressed for such an endaevor!

April 11:
*sniff sniff tear tear* This was the day that we bid Mom & Dad farewell. And we miss them. We had such an amazing time together, and as my Mom put it... if we can peacefully live for 2-3 weeks together in such close quarters, then we'll do just fine living two blocks away from them (as that's how close our home which we've never lived in is to them).

Toodle-loo Mom & Dad!