Sisters by birth, Mouseheads by choice

Hey! Grl WLCM 2 NZ
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OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY, my sister is coming, Lee is coming, and we're gonna see her. I know it hurts to prolong the excitement, but we had to spend three days getting down to Christchurch to see her, so you're gonna have to hear about what we did. We went to Murchison, where we attempted to see New Zealand's longest swing bridge, but some jerk there was protecting the door and was gonna make us pay to see it. So we drove on and found our own *free* swing bridge, and we walked back and forth along it enough to feel that we had more than surpassed the really long one. Then we stayed at a DOC campsite in Lyell, a town famous for crime and outlaws, where we were viciously attacked by sandflies, swarms of 'em. We drove through the town of Reefton and eventually arrived in Hanmer Springs, where we basked in one of the few thermally-heated sites of the South Island. We spent the whole afternoon moving from one hot pool to another, and then back again. Next day we drove down to Christchurch and spent the day preparing for Lee's arrival. We found a hotel room with three beds. We went to the supermarket and stocked up on Tim Tams. Then we explored a bit ourselves. The last thing we did before Lee arrived was attend a food show, where we saw the famous Alison Holst, and ate ourselves sick from the hundreds of sample booths.

The heads play scrabble
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When Lee finally did arrive, we were all exhausted so we stayed up until 4 am playing Scrabble and drinking feijoa wine. When we eventually woke up the next day, we explored the town, enjoying a most delicious brunch at the Honeypot Cafe and generally being in awe of our surroundings (we were in a city again and Lee was extremely jet lagged). Lee of course brought Mousehead (the original) with her, but she also brought Albino Mousehead and Pighead. Ben & Jenny's (a.k.a. SE Asian) Mousehead was really happy to see these other heads, and they spent most of the day just catching up. At night we made our own somewhat non-traditional Passover Seder, complete with peanut charoset and water cracker matzoh. We didn't have Manischewitz, but we did have box wine which tastes just about the same.

The Loons, next to a sign for a restaurant
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On our way out of town, we visited the little town of Lyttelton which was closer than we thought, and then we came right back to Chch to have some Hell Pizza. We stopped at the Cookie Time factory, which was more like a store, but we insisted on treating it like a factory and so walked very slowly around and took pictures of anything we could. We also bought some cookies. Then we washed those down with some wine at the Giesen winery, and made it just in time to Ashburton to visit the art/craft village of Ashford, where we bought enough stuff to fill all of Lee's suitcase and force her to eventually buy another. When looking for a place to stay the night in Timaru, we came across one lovely holiday park where we could have slept inside of a shoebox, but unfortunately the key they gave us opened all of their shoeboxes, not just ours, and that made us feel a little funny. We found a much nicer motel where they let us watch their DVDs and didn't mind when we set their microwave on fire, and we ate takeout from the most popular Chinese restaurant in the town. We know that because the one other person in town that night was also eating there.