February 2016 - New Zealand - Fox Glacier & Lake Matheson

Our time in Fox Glacier was a total miracle.

As mentioned in the previous post, we were woken up in the wee hours by David, which meant we got on the road super early. We called the helicopter place, and found out there was heavy rain in the forecast. So, we booked it to Fox Glacier in the hopes that we could possibly get on a helicopter going up on the mountain earlier.

It worked!
We were able to get the last booking on an afternoon helicopter ride around 2pm.
We grabbed a bite, changed, and were ready to go.

We had the most thrilling, exhilarating ride up onto the Fox Glacier. It was completely magical!
As we flew back down, the pilot told us that was the last flight that would make it out for the day with the clouds coming in. That was it. And as it turned out, it poured with rain there the next day. We never would have been able to go if we had kept our original reservation.

Things work out!
And, we absolutely felt Heavenly Father's hand helping us to have that incredible experience!

The ride was amazing! Such a thrill!

David wasn't quite as sure if it was thrilling or terrifying, but he did great!

The boys were SO excited to see snow! It had been so long! 

Beau especially had been over the moon to get to see snow. In Singapore, he talked all the time about how much he missed snow. The funny thing is that he was our one who always got freezing and came in after 5 minutes! 

Landing on the glacier was so, so cool! 

We all hopped out and just had about 10 minutes or so to play and enjoy the snow, throw snowballs, make snow angels, run around, and get cold!!!

David stayed in Mike's arms.
He wasn't so sure about this white stuff he had never seen before!

Sure enough, within 5 minutes, Beau was freezing!!!
(And he was the only one who owned a coat!)

Here's our view on the way down.

Definitely a surreal, magical experience! Totally worth it! 

After that, we headed over to Lake Matheson. We did a gorgeous walk through lush, green, mossy woods. The lake was not still enough for us to see the incredible reflections that it sometimes gets of the glacier, but it was so pretty, nonetheless. 

These mossy walls along the path were amazing.
It was like we were walking through a fairy tale!

We have a bit of a soft spot for our glacier!

Here are some shots of the boys in their bed above the cabin in the camper. On my goodness...they loved sleeping up there so much! Just the older boys. We can't wait to do this again when David is old enough to sleep up there too!