It seems lately I am a very sporadic blogger. It’s been a year since I last wrote. Wow what a year it has been. Yes, we are all aware of most of it.

For Todd and I, we started the year off by taking a cruise from Sydney around New Zealand. The cruise was two weeks long and we were gone for almost all of February. As soon as we returned, everything changed. So we were lucky to get that bit of traveling in prior to the Pandemic.

When we arrived in Sydney, the fires had been raging for a long time. However, we brought loads of rain with us. In fact, the first day we were there was the most rain from any storm in years. We were able to walk a bit across town to visit Britt and her daughter Emily. Britt lived with my family for a year in high school as an exchange student. She is from Denmark and they happened to be visiting at the same time. See the video below.

The next day we awoke to a beautiful day. We were able to take a ferry to Manly Beach and meet up with Britt and Emily again. We enjoyed seeing the Opera House with our own eyes for the first time. See the video below.

Our third day we departed Sydney for our two week sail around New Zealand. The departure from Sydney Harbor was the best we’ve ever been on. Watch it below.

After two sea days, we were in Milford Sound on the South Island of New Zealand. The area is beautiful as you can see from our video below.

I was also able to get a time lapse from our balcony.

That night however, Todd starting having severe back pain. We ended up going down to the medical center on the ship. They concluded that he probably had kidney stones. They gave him some medication and recommended that we go have a scan done at one of our stops in New Zealand.

Todd felt a bit better the next day and we were off for a 4×4 adventure on the Ortago Peninsular. As you can tell in our video below, the ride was quite amazing.

That evening Todd starting hurting quite a bit again and the next day he opted to stay on the ship while I ventured out to Christchurch.

Todd continued to feel poor so we arranged to have a scan completed in Wellington. The hospital process was very easy. He ended up having a CT Scan. The Scan showed that he had a 6 centimeter stone. They were not sure if it would pass on it’s own. We decided to continue on and take care of it when we arrived back in the states. All total, it only costs us about $500 to visit the ER and have a scan completed.

We made several other stops in New Zealand including Tauranga and the Bay of Islands. In Tauranga, we walked to a beach and in the Bay of Islands we sailed around various Islands on a catamaran. I still need to make videos on those two places. I’ll get right on that.

We stayed another two days on the return to Sydney in which we walked down to the botanical gardens.

Todd passed the stone without any pain the day after we arrived back in Ohio.

Since then, we’ve been doing our best to stay a safe distance from others. In June we did travel by car over to Cobscook Bay in northeastern Maine. We camped for five days and had a great time. I will post pictures shortly.

Recently though, things have been very difficult. Todd’s mother passed away on September 2nd. The funeral was last Tuesday. I created a memorial video to his mother. You can watch it below.

I have missed blogging and keeping up with everyone on here. My goal is to continue sharing our lives, photos and travels with all of you.

Thanks for reading!