What an awesome birthday I had! I told Kim that I wanted to spend the night away somewhere for my birthday. Kim secretly asked our dear friends Trevor and Val, who had offered to let us stay at their beach house a while back, if it would be available. It was and what a wonderful time we had! Look at this charming beach house – and it was so nice on the inside, too. My favorite part was the remote controlled fire place. This is about 1.5 hours north of Auckland near Whangarei. 
Here’s the view from the deck.
At low tide the girls and I went looking for sea monsters.
With some ambivalence, I report that we didn’t find any.
We stayed for ~ 3 days which gave us some nice opportunities to explore the area. We found what is probably my 4th favorite beach, Ocean Beach (Karikari, Matapouri, and Omaha would be my top 3 – no, wait. Ocean beach is no. 3 and Omaha is no. 4).
Kim and the kids are circled in this pic.
It doesn’t look like there was anyone else on the beach because there wasn’t.
Did this beach have a blue lagoon? Of course.
Here’s daddy showing the girls how to…I’m not sure what I was doing. 
Here’s the view from the deck.At low tide the girls and I went looking for sea monsters. With some ambivalence, I report that we didn’t find any. We stayed for ~ 3 days which gave us some nice opportunities to explore the area. We found what is probably my 4th favorite beach, Ocean Beach (Karikari, Matapouri, and Omaha would be my top 3 – no, wait. Ocean beach is no. 3 and Omaha is no. 4). Kim and the kids are circled in this pic.It doesn’t look like there was anyone else on the beach because there wasn’t. Did this beach have a blue lagoon? Of course.Here’s daddy showing the girls how to…I’m not sure what I was doing. 
Of all the fun we had on the trip, I think this might have been my favorite part.
