Happy New Year everyone!  2015 is awesome.  And for most of our readers back in Canada, you’ll just have to take our word on that.  We’re 16 hrs ahead of you.  In fact, we are in the 1st time zone to greet 2015 (well, 2nd actually but New Zealand is on daylight saving time, so we’re same time as the 1st).
We’ve ended up at a couple campsites in NZ with loads of young campers, and came to a free campsite last night right beside a lovely lake, so expected a pretty boisterous night – I had my earplugs ready in the tent.  What we found here is a gem … not too crowded … older folks …  it started raining around 11PM chasing everyone into their RVs so New Years was very quiet (we heard a couple of whoops from the RV closest to our tent). 

There are birds EVERYWHERE here, so raucous birds are what woke us up this morning.
Our NY’s eve was brought in with a couple of drinks and a couple of card games in the tent.  Kaia won our game of “onze” by a long shot, then we played “halv tol” – a Danish card game traditionally played at 11:30PM on New Years eve (halv is half, and tol is 12 … half 12 (11:30)).  Kaia won that too – this must be a good omen for her 2015?!

We recounted stories to the kids of earlier years’ NY parties where we’d put back the clocks a few hours so the kids would think they were up at NYs.  Kaia then told us the first time she stayed up till midnight was a NYs at friend Emma Booth’s house.  She was disappointed to learn then that this was one of those moved clock parties :).
We’re off to the volcanic hotspot of Rotorua today for some hiking.  We’re looking forward to continued learning and adventure in 2015 and are sending our best wishes to our readers far and wide.  2015 is awesome but we won’t tell you what happens so not to spoil the surprise 😉  

Yvonne, Kaia, Jake, Cam