Exploring the Land of the Long White Cloud

What would "summer" be without a beer fest to attend? On April 1st we headed down to the sportfishing club to go to the Mountain Ales Beer Fest. It's the third year it's been on here and we've been each year. The setting is awesome and we got sun again even though the norm lately is rain. Overall it's a good event with lots of breweries participating. This year though, the variety was pretty much pale ale, IPA or APA. There was supposed to be a porter but the keg didn't arrive :( Must just be the trends but we found most of the options to be pretty similar. At least it was generally quite good. The highlight of the day was winding up the night with kareoke! Never fails to please me :)

The last 4-6 weeks has been busy busy busy. We're both going full steam at work (me mentally and Dustin physically) and there have been social events on weekends and even on some week nights. So, this Easter weekend, we made a point to not have any plans (and even turned down a camping trip) to just stay put and do nothing. Dustin woke up with a bit of a cold so he's been doing lots of napping today and yesterday. There were massive weather warnings on Thursday for cyclone cook but for our region, nothing much materialised, which is a good thing really. Lots of power outages and flooding elsewhere though! We've been getting sun and rain which is making it tough to stay in doing nothing but then as soon as the rain comes back again it's easier. And hanging out with this little pup helps too!

Dustin has been getting more helicopter rides over the last couple months. They had an over-nighter and often the supplies they need require a helicopter to drop them. So, they usually get a ride in and walk out or get picked up. He spent the last couple weeks digging out a track to put stairs in so they could r elease the North Island robin last week . It sounded like pretty intense work so he's been pretty exhausted these days. The birds waiting in their boxes. But now he's off for a week and a half so the next projects might be around the house instead of the mountain!