Lake Hayes New Zealand

On Monday we arrived in New Zealand to stay with our daughter, son in law and our two grandsons aged 8 and 4 and a half. It is so fantastic to see them after two and a half years! We were greeted with great excitement all round :-)
My brother and family also live in Auckland so we went to see them on Wednesday, for the afternoon.

We arrived in Queenstown yesterday where we are staying for 2 weeks during the school holidays.  It is really cold!, 2 degrees when we arrived.

Today has been our daughter's 40th birthday . We have all had a fantastic day which started when we were woken up early by our grandsons as they were so excited about their Mum's birthday. We had a 'party' in the lounge at 6.30 am with cards, presents and balloons and unbelievably and totally unplanned,  birthday cake for breakfast! That was a definite first for all of us :-) It was surprisingly very acceptable although it may be a one off I think.

After a walk and a visit to the library with the boys we had a fantastic lunch out,  followed by a walk along the edge of Lake Hayes which we love. Our daughter and s in l got married in a venue overlooking Lake Hayes, so it has lovely memories for us all. 

We tried to go to the Winter festival fireworks in town this evening but it was so busy that we couldn't get a park so we came back for an evening in, which was lovely.