The Ostrom Family Adventures

Our good friend Noël came to New Zealand and it did all of our hearts good to see her. She had 2 weeks off of Chemo and is a rockstar and expert traveler so had some adventures of her own and spent a lot of time with us also.

We stayed 1 night in a gorgeous boutique hotel on Lake Rotorua and spent the evening drinking wine, talking about all the things and then went to the Polynesian Spa for the evening.

The hot mineral water was so soothing and these are some of the earliest pools in NZ apparently! It was amazing!

She had some more adventures, including a dolphin swim off the East coat out of Tauranga and came back to us Saturday night, so we all went out in Hamilton. We had incredible Tapas at Mr. Pickles and then went to the Nivara lounge and heard Kim Churchill and Johnny “Dusty” Boots play. It was an awesome show with guitar, Saxaphone and harmonica. Leif’s and my favorite song by Kim is “Hobbies.”

The next day, we drove down through the Waitomo area further southwest than we have been so far and made it to Waikawau beach, which is this gorgeous beach through a long tunnel and has the blackest sand we have seen so far.

And we made a driftwood Christmas Tree!

What’s Next??????

Well, since so many of our loved ones said, “You guys are going to stay longer.” I did not want to be predicable. 😏.

However, ya’ll called it. We are staying longer. We decided to apply for a year long extension in October, but were recommended to wait until November to submit it. We truly didn’t know if it would be approved or not until this week when we got my work visa back from Immigration New Zealand, approved through January 2027. We expect Mason and Leif’s to be approved soon as well.

Thus, we moved houses to get in Zone for Leif to attend Hamilton Boy’s High in February for year 9. Am I ready for him to be in High School? No!! I am definitely not. It’s ridiculous and terrible how fast this time has gone – both Leif’s little boyhood and this past year in Aotearoa. But, here we are, and this is such an incredible high school, we have to try it out for him.