Gold Coast / New Zealand Update

Movieworld was everything a 4 year old fascinated with super heroes could ever want. Dylan got to meet and get photographed with Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman (who still wears giant red panties apparently) and a whole bunch of other heroes. We got to go in to the bat cave, watch a staged batman fight on main street...(are you getting the fact that there was alot of Batman at Movie World?). One item of note is that the girl that runs the roller coaster ride in kid land at Movie World is destined to become an evil lesbian prison guard. She made Dylan take off his shoes and hat to prove he was too short to ride and was still lifting the bar off the ground when measuring him.

Sea World was a little more Katefriendly as they had Sesame Street Beach and a bunch of rides they both could go on. Dylan braved the "volcano" ride and then forced Shannon to go on with him a few times after. Gold Coast ("Brisneyland") was definitely full on resort, and was very relaxing. Every morning they traced out the temperture high in the hotel beach so that we could see it from our hotel room window 16 floors up, and we had our fill of the hotel restaurant fare. Australia doesn't like to part with any kind of food or drink without a substantial amount of money changing hands, and Sufers Paradise was no exception. The daily hotel buffet let our kids eat for free but still managed to require the advancee of a second mortgage.
The big highlight for Dylan was that he learned to swim!!!!! He now wants nothing to do with us in the pool and just wants to jump off the side and swim back to the ladder to do it again. He also learned read, do advanced linear algebra, speak and write Latin and Japanese.

this is Shannon now,

We are in Auckland now. Have spent the last couple days walking around the city. We went to the Sky Tower and ate in a nice little neighbourhood called Parnell at a really great pizza place with a great patio today. Toured a bit on the North Shore today also, Devonport was one area and we plan on going back to Takapuna tomorrow as its a great beach area and has a huge Volcanic lake (Lake Pupuke) and great restaurants/cafes etc.we will also try to get to Rangitoto Island this weekend as well which is only 800 years old. Auckland is a really beuatiful city, you can see the Pacific ocean and the Tasman sea and there are 49 small volcano mountains within the city. It has a lot of the Maori (indigenous people) culture that influences life here and a huge Polyenesian population so it feels very South Pacific. We will update you with some pictures soon.