Life at the Wood House

Fall is in the air

Well its cooling down here in the evenings and early mornings. The humidity has gone down too, which is nice. It's not horrible in the summer (nothing like the east coast), just annoying.

Naddie and Evan and doing great. Evan seems like a happy baby so far - mellow always ready to eat. Andrea is getting lots of sleep; he only wakes up a couple of time to eat during the night.


I am back in class. The semester started two weeks ago. Last semester the class was 80 students; this semester its at 130 or so. Students seem to be good. Mostly, however, we have been spending our time at home or close by with the new baby. Naddie really likes being around him, and we are going to pull her out of day care for a while so she can spend more time at home.


Aside from that we are all happy and healthy. Mor-Mor is coming to visit us next week. Naddie is very excited, and we hope the weather stays good for her while she is here.

First binky

Here is another video of his first binky. Big event in any kid's life I think.

More Pictures

Here are a few more pictures of Evan, Naddie, and us having fun in NZ.

New Arrival

BIG NEWS!!!

Evan Jonas Wood was born on February 21st, at 6:02 PM. He was 4.0 Kilos (about 9.5 pounds), and 54 CM (about 21.5 inches). Here is a video taken about 5 minutes after he was born.

Vacation: Part Deux

The other part of our trip, the part that really needs its own post, was the beaches up in the Northland. We were told the water still might be a bit chilly, and that time of year the weather is still not often great (similar to June gloom in SoCal). This is what we got on our first day.

This is Hihi beach, which is right about here on the map. Its quite a beautiful beach, but the water was in fact a bit cold. Naddie seemed to enjoy it just fine, however.

The following day we set out to explore some of the other beaches. We headed north on the Kerikeri peninsula, which was about 20 minutes north of where we were staying. We soon wandered onto a few warmer and sandier beaches, such as below this one called Tokareu beach.

After checking out this beach, we went a little further up the peninsula to a place called Matai Bay. This is certainly one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen, not only for its crystal clear water, but because (unlike most of the US), there was hardly anyone around, and nothing but a campground up the way. No hotels, no parking lots, and hardly any homes. As you can see, it’s a pretty special place.

The beach we ended up spending the most time at, however, was a beach called Taupo, which was the other direction from where we were staying. While Matai was a bit more spectacular, Taupo had a good vibe about it. Its at the end of this little road and most of the drive is windy, and then all of a sudden you are in the little surf/swim/fishing village where people really don't have much else to do but hang at the beach all day. White sand, warm water . . . even some waves.

We spent several days at Taupo because it was close, but mostly because it was so nice. For the 10 days we were up north, we only had rain on one of them, so there was plenty of time to get to the beach.

On the last day we headed down south to the Bay of Islands, to a beach called Matauri Bay. This beach was a bit bigger than the others, but still very nice. The water was like bath-water, and of course crystal clear.

Links to pictures

For a link to all of our NZ pictures, see here.