Happy Birthday Spencer and Anna!

Happy 16^th Birthday to my brother Spencer!! It was great to talk to him today, and wish him a happy New Zealand birthday, even though it wasn’t even his birthday in America yet!

Also, happy 21^st birthday to Anna today! We celebrated all day long. First, I made us pancakes for breakfast—we’ve been talking about making them for a long time, so I thought today would be a great day to actually do it. Then she got two cakes from her teacher and teacher’s aide at school that we all enjoyed at morning tea. For dinner, Kerry and Sheryl took everyone out to Bollywood, a delicious Indian restaurant. The Lords have made Anna and I LOVE Indian food. Tonight we tried lots of different curries—butter chicken, mango chicken, beef saagwala, something with goat, and a few others. Delicious. The best part when they brought out her cake. Sheryl wanted to have a special cake made for her, and we’ve been keeping it a secret for a few weeks now—she had no idea! Everyone has been sending Anna packages with Reese’s in them, so Sheryl went into our room one day, borrowed a Reese’s, and had a cake made to look just like it. They did a great job, even with all the tiny details of the packaging. It was hilarious, and Anna loved it!

Amazing Reese's cake! If you noticed the smudge, we think the waiters accidently did that, because it didn't look like that when we gave it to them at the beginning of the meal! Also, they boxed it back up for us, and we noticed a piece missing when we got back home...guess the waiters wanted to try it, too!

They made a big deal about Kodie cutting the first piece of his cake at his party last week, but it was just as big of a deal for Anna to cut the first piece of her cake!

We tried sooo many times to get a good picture with Kodie, but he just never looks at the camera! We were pretending to blow out the candles, which he still didn't do, but at least he's laughing in this one. We sure love Kodie and our little Princess Alexis!

After dinner, Sheryl and Raewyn (Sheryl’s mom) took Anna and I to the top of Mount Eden. It was be-a-u-ti-ful! From the top of the mount, you could see the entire city of Auckland whichever way you looked. We’ve been wanting to go up there, and it was great to check that off our list. It was so fun going with Sheryl and Raewyn because they had us laughing the whole time. Whether it was Raewyn saying funny little things like, “Where’s my pod?” when she was looking for her iPod, or Sheryl driving away from the gas station as Raewyn paid inside or Raewyn telling us a story about how she intended to visit a friend today, but ended up accidentally walking into the wrong house and walking in on huge Samoan lady sleeping (she was quite embarrassed about this, especially because she had said, “What are you doing in there you lazy cow?” thinking she was joking with her friend…whoops!), we were very much so entertained. It turned out to be a lovely 23^rd of February.

This marks the highest point in Auckland for surveyors. This is were we stood on top of Mount Eden to take in the 360-degree view.

The red lights in the back are the Sky Tower!