All best wishes for a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We are currently on beautiful Waiheke Island enjoying the hospitality of Dave’s brother and his family. For someone of No Fixed Abode for the last 14 months, this is heaven – no cooking, unlimited showers, no worries about emptying the grey and black water tanks!

Looking back over 2014 most of which was spent in the north island of NZ, the highlights have been numerous but the most important was our trip to Australia for the wedding of Nicole to Mick Dunbar on their Queensland country property.

We braved the heat and the flies and as Mother Of The Bride I was entitled to wear a huge extravagant hat. It was a gorgeous unusual horseback wedding. made even better by Nic’s two cousins coming all the way from America “just for the day.”

We did have one or rather two other breaks from the caravan. Over winter we homesat a lifestyle property at Otakiri near Whatakane with a huge friendly labrador, cat and about 20 bantams for 6 weeks;

…then shifted to a beautiful home in Tauranga and a feisty Jack Russell dog for another 7 weeks. Winter passed in no time at all and we were back on the road heading north. I have been awed by the sheer beauty and diversity of this country and am still eager to see more. We also hope to start a similar tour of Australia within a year.

I have been dissatisfied with my previous blog website for some time, so I’m taking the opportunity while staying with family over Christmas to create a whole new Blog on a different platform at wordpress.com. It’s long been my desire to have my own website where I can post other stories too, so I’ve created <nancyvada.me>. It will take time to get the stories up, and dependent on internet access, so for now do not expect to find anything except the blog. Subscribing by email is much easier now.