2025 Memories

We have actually had a quiet holiday season here, so it's given me a chance to reflect and be thankful for the events of 2025.  

The first big event of 2025 was the birth of our 4th grandchild - a son born to Rebecca and Joseph.  I got to be there for the delivery and those first special days as they became a family of five!  

Then in March, Terry and I celebrated our 35th anniversary with a long-anticipated camping trip to New Zealand.  We had three weeks of living in a tiny van and having a great adventure seeing some gorgeous sites.  Also lived through a wreck with a tractor trailer and had our return flight unexpectedly leave a day early without us!  

2025 also brought the purchase of Scott and Ann's lake house on Melton Hill Lake.  It's such a beautiful spot and we are very blessed. We hosted the Schaefer clan there for a week in July and had a blast.  I wasn't sure we could top the reunion of 2022, but I think we did!  

We also hosted our immediate family at the lake house over Thanksgiving.

Though it's just 25 minutes away, our current plan is not to move out there but to continue to run it as an AirBnB and just stay out there occasionally.  It has kept us quite busy as we decided to manage it ourselves.  It's been a fun project, and we have reminded ourselves several times of how we used to dream of owning a Bed & Breakfast someday.  

We sold several rental properties in order to buy the lake house, but we have a few other rentals that Terry maintains.  I am still doing dyslexia therapy and really enjoying my students this year.  

We didn't do any big travels after NZ, but we have a trip to Portugal planned in early 2026.  We also found out we have another grandbaby due in July (thanks, Caleb and Meredith, for that Christmas news!).  

2026 Superlatives:

Best moment - birth of grandbaby #4 in February

Best book - Green Dolphin Street (set in 1800s NZ and surprisingly inspirational)

Best movie - Freakier Friday 

Best food - Montanaro pizza with pistachio sour cream in Queenstown, NZ

Best date - Hobbiton in New Zealand

Best hike - Roy's Peak near Wanaka, NZ

Reunion 2025

In 2022, we gathered with my sisters and their families here in Knoxville for a week-long reunion at the lake!  We had so much fun that we decided to do it again this year.  It is quite an undertaking.  There were 40 of us - including 17 grandkids.  

Lots of planning went into our time - spreadsheets for food, games and activities planned.  This year’s event included a big family history Kahoot and a talent show.  And trips to see fireworks on the water.  All in addition to lots of time spent swimming, tubing, skiing, paddle boarding, riding the air chair etc.

We also had the requisite photo shoot with our designated family photographer, Rebecca.

Queenstown, Glenorchy, and Paradise

Queenstown was a gorgeous and fun little town.  By far the best view of Queenstown was to take the hike to Ben Lomond Peak, and we did that on our first day there.  This was our most intense hike so far and perhaps the most intense hike of the trip because we were trying to walk fast in order to get back and watch Arkansas play in a March Madness game.  

This hike starts with a trip on a lift, so that helped with some of the elevation gain.  Here's when I got my first view of where we were going.  A little intimating!

And here's the view back towards Queenstown

Those mountains behind us are called "The Remarkables"  

This next photo was taken on the way back down when the task had already been accomplished

After the hike, we went exploring in Queenstown for dinner options.  We both had a healthy appetite and there were so many options.  We ended up at a gourmet pizza place and were not disappointed.  We even returned here on our way back through town later in our trip.  I just didn't know if I'd ever get pizza like this again.  It was truly the best pizza I've ever had in my life!

Here's the menu.  Our favorite was the Montanara but everything we tried was delicious!  Turns out sauces for the top of your pizza really take it to another level. 

Mount Cook Hike

This was one my favorite hikes of the trip.  We arrived late in the day (our campsite was right next to the trail head) and rushed to take the hike before dark because the weather forecast was calling for rain the next day. This was a relatively easy hike so we got a lot of bang for our buck!  

The next morning I woke up to a gorgeous sunrise.  I put on my shoes and went out to see all the glory!

After this, clouds rolled in pretty quickly, so we didn't take the other hike we had planned to take in the area.  I guess that just means we need to go back!

LOTR Sites on the South Island

The LOTR sites we saw on NZ's South Island were all really big!  We saw the locations for Edoras, Isengard, Pelennor Fields, The Dead Marshes and the river used in several shots from Fellowship of the Ring.  We did watch all the movies again right before our trip, which was a lot of fun!  We also read a lot of blogs about filming locations and even watched a few YouTube videos on the subject, which were very helpful.  Some of the prettiest locations are only reached by helicopter, unfortunately.    

Our favorite spot on the South Island was Edoras - filmed on Mt. Sunday.  It's a long way down a dirt road, and we had the place to ourselves.  Terry had fun finding anchors in rocks that were used when the hilltop village was built for the movie.  The hike itself was quite easy.   We are so glad we didn't skip this one, which we considered doing when we had a wreck the day before and were a little behind schedule.

looking towards Helm's Deep

The fictional location of Isengard is near Paradise, NZ.  It's about an hour's drive from Queenstown (a very scenic drive!). There isn't an exact spot shown, and we know that in some cases mirror image shots were used, so we didn't want to use too much of a beautiful day trying to pin down an exact location.  Here's the general area.  

And we also saw the filming site for the Battle of Pelennor Fields.  Google Maps actually leads you to a spot.   We did hear that almost everyone who lives in the town of Twizel was an extra in the movie.  

And when we were the very furthest south that we went on our trip (and the furthest south we have ever been in our life), we saw the river where many of the river scenes from Fellowship of the Rings were filmed.  We took a long hike near there, and if we're ever back, we'd love to float this river.

While on our hike on the Kepler Track, we saw a marshy area very like the Dead Marshes.  We don't know if it's the exact same location, but we do know this scene was filmed in the "Kepler Mire" - so it's somewhere close and probably looks a lot like this.   

LOTR Sites on the North Island

We certainly couldn't see ALL the Lord of the Rings sites in NZ, but we did see a lot on both the north and south islands, and I've put them all the ones on the North Island in this one post - except Hobbiton, which gets its own post!

One of our stops was the Weta Workshop (in both Wellington and Aukland) where the props were made for these and many other movies.  We took a "behind the scenes tour" in Wellington.  

 

Gollum's Pool (aka Tawhai Falls in Tongariro National Park)

Mt. Doom - aka Mount Ngauruhoe (Tongariro National Park):

It is an active volcano, and there were evacuation instructions at our campground.  Luckily, we did not need them. 

 

 

The Gates of Mordor (Whakapapa Ski Field):

 

 

And the spot where the hobbits hid from the black riders (a city park in Wellington):

We know this is the right spot because of a plaque, but let's just say that this scene was heavily edited. so I felt pretty stupid hiding from the Black Riders here.  But the forest did have a bit of a creepy feel.