THE GREATER YOUR STORM, THE BRIGHTER YOUR RAINBOW

This year we decided to head up to the far north to go camping as our summer family getaway. To say the kids were excited is a complete understatement. They had no idea what to expect from our camping experience but they were beyond excited to go camping with friends and I couldn’t wait to give them this experience…every child should experience the freedom and simple life that comes with camping.

Lets just say our trip didn’t start off as expected. We packed up with everything but the kitchen sink and hit the road with two kids who could barely sit still in their seats and were asking ‘are we there yet?’ 5 mins into our 4 hour drive.

Have you ever heard of the saying “The greater your storm, The brighter your rainbow”? Well I feel like that quote applies to our holiday both metaphorically and in reality. Two hours into our trip our storm started…and it wasn’t the real storm that we were expecting the following day. This is our metaphorical storm. Just out of Whangarei we heard a weird noise from the trailer as we drove along the terrible quality roads. We just thought it was a bump in the road so kept driving. Lucky I needed to stop for another toilet break (the pregnant woman always needs to pee) and thats when Ryan discovered that the boat trailer had snapped ,we were stranded in the middle of nowhere, the shops were all closed due to the holidays and we actually didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t ditch the boat and continue our drive as a lot of our gear was in the boat and there was the risk of it getting stolen. We couldn’t drive home as the trailer was too broken. We were in a bit of a pickle. We explained to the kids that it looked like we would be heading home and have to try again the next day ….that just lead to lots of tears all round. Kylan was beyond devastated, my heart broke knowing I was letting him down and there were tears flowing from all of us. But in saying that we were beyond thankful it happened the way it did. It could have been so much worse. We could have completely lost the boat or been in an accident…we were very lucky!

Anyway long story short we came up with a solution where we got the boat towed and borrowed a trailer to continue our trip up north and would deal to the boat when we were home…phew! But that took two hours of us sitting roadside in the car trying to organise.

Let me just say I was beyond thankful that I had been introduced to the Vodafone Passes prior to our trip at this stage. So a few weeks before our trip I was speaking with someone at Vodafone who told me about their passes including social, music, chat and video passes. Basically you purchase a pass and get unlimited data (within the criteria) for either social or video etc for a period of time so you don’t have to worry about getting that dreaded text saying you have used up 80% of your data. They kindly gifted me a social pass and a video pass for our trip and it really saved my ass! The kids listened to music with their earphones on the drive up there (prior to the incident) and considering they like listening to the same two or three songs on repeat this was GREAT for us! Then they watched Netflix in the car using the Video pass for the two hours we sat trying to sort out the boat to keep them safe and away from the road. This was all before we even got to our destination! I can’t imagine trying to deal with the stress of all that and not having them entertained like they were!

So that was the first storm…but we got through it, it all worked out in the end and we arrived and set up camp and made ourselves a new temporary home…temporary being that we set up at the back of the campsite away from the beach ready to ride out the storm that was forecast to hit without being so exposed to the elements. Lets just say I prepared for a storm but I didn’t prepare for what hit us. It was a couple days of constant rain which was fine. We just bunkered down in our tents, watched movies and Netflix (Thanks again Vodafone!!!) and I binged on Homeland and had some forced rest which I never would have done at home or if the weather was good! It was exactly what my exhausted preggo body needed! After a day of rain the wind picked up and OMG! I literally thought we were going to blow away. It was one of the longest nights of my life. The wind was insanely strong and persistent ALL NIGHT! Ryan was up every couple hours tightening ropes and checking the pegs and making sure we were safe, I just lay there watching the tent sway right over pooping my pants! We thought it would only last a couple hours and blow past but it went on ALL NIGHT LONG and right into the following day! Again can I get a big HALLELUJAH for the Vodafone Video Pass getting us through it with our sanity! It would have been a VERY VERY long few days without Netflix and not having to worry out running out of data meant we could literally sit in our tent watching almost all day long!

AND THEN CAME THE RAINBOW!

Once the storm had passed we began the holiday we wished and planned for. We moved our tent to our beachfront site and discovered the paradise which we had arrived in. No words for the rest of our trip really, It was worth enduring the storm, it was worth thinking we would blow away in the middle of the night, it was worth the wait!

We all grew so much from this trip, learning to trust the process, roll with what you have been handed and make the best of every situation. As you can see everything worked out for us, we even managed to get the boat trailer fixed and picked up in time to enjoy some boating for the rest of the trip.

But for me the highlight was watching Kylan experience it. He grew up so much during this week. We hardly saw him. He made new friends, was constantly playing, exploring and venturing around the campsite on his bike. He enjoyed responsibilities such as going off to the kitchen to make some toast, and washing the dishes or to take the rubbish and recycling out. We would find him off popping into our friends cabin and playing with their 1 year old and having good ole yarns about fishing with our adult mates. He didn’t want to come home and still talks about going and living there!

If you are heading out of wifi or going to find yourself in a situation where you will be using a lot of your data while out and about I highly recommend you looking into the Vodafone Passes. Its such a great idea to have endless data for your specific favourite apps…whether its for a day, a week or a month you can get the pass for whatever you need to avoid the fear of running out of data! I am so grateful to be given our social and video passes for our trip! Would have been far less enjoyable those first few days without it and I had never heard of it before so I am more than happy to spread the word!!