Marching into the New Year

We're enjoying sunny days in the 70's here and not missing all that cold weather and snow back home! Well, maybe a little. I love snow at Christmas. Ralph is in the middle of working 9 days straight, a result of trading around for time off. They've been very short staffed at the hospital, but have another American that just started work this week and a doc that's been on maternity leave coming back soon. This is prime time for vacations here, as the kids are out of school until Feb. 1st for summer break.

We leave Wednesday morning for a 6 day trip to Otago on the South Island. We're going to be bike riding the Otago Central Rail Trail, flying in to Queenstown and back home from Dunedin. This rail trail is reported to be not too hilly (please God, let it be so!), passes through breathtaking scenery and is 150 km long (90 miles). It will take 4 days of riding. We've been riding bikes locally trying to condition the body for the ride. We are both very excited about this trip and feel like we're due a break on the weather when we travel. Stay tuned for how that turns out. :)

Thanks to everyone who sent birthday greetings. It was fun to stretch it out to 2 days with the time differences! We got a boatload of Christmas cards on my birthday, January 11th. They had been mailed between Dec. 9th and Dec. 22 and all came at the same time. This whole country shuts down over the holidays. Most businesses were closed from Dec. 24 to January 5th. In an 11 day time period, the mail was delivered 4 days only.

Last month we discovered a church that we like very much and have visited there 4 or 5 times. People are friendly and God's presence is strongly felt.

While Ralph has been slaving away at the hospital, I've been working on our taxes and getting myself worked up over all the complications this year from our situation. Foreign tax credit, anyone? And I really got churning when I started reading more about NZ taxes, so much so that I had an appointment yesterday with a tax accountant. Their tax year is a fiscal one, ending March 31st. I needed Tylenol when I left his office, a product not sold in New Zealand by the way. :) It's going to be messy and expensive, but the accountant will be a big help.