Much to cheer about in news during 2012

After a year of the usual doom and gloom, eternal optimist went in search of stories to lift the heart from 2012.

Cyclones, snow and volcanoes aside, 2012 was not all about bad news.

It offered tales of love, victory, adventure, and a heartwarming reunion with a lost pet.

Good news even came out of the Marmite shortage crisis.

On matters of the heart, Marlborough’s hospice saw a surprise proposal between a couple who had been together for 30 years.

It took a while, but Blenheim man Des Barson eventually got around to asking Kaki Manuera to marry him.

Mr Barson, a cancer patient at the centre, was telling a nurse about how long he and Ms Manuera had been together (but never married), when the nurse told him there was a marriage celebrant on site.

Mr Barson went to Ms Manuera and asked: ‘‘How would you like to get married on Wednesday?’’ She accepted, telling Mr Barson he had ‘‘better hang in there until then’’.

They got married in the hospice garden in early December.

On a grander scale, sports stars also felt the love, as New Zealanders took our athletes to heart during the London Olympics.

One was swimmer Sophie Pascoe, who brought six medals home from the Paralympics.

Pascoe, who lost her legs below the knee in a lawnmower accident when she was 2, added three golds and three silvers to the three Olympic golds and a silver she won in Beijing in 2008, and a slew of world championship medals she has won in-between.

The Cantabrian emerged a hero from the pool, finishing no worse than second in all 12 of her races – six heats and six finals.

Another hero from the London Games proved himself to be a hero on land later in the year.

As a Dutch tourist Vincent Vos lay bleeding and shaking from shock after falling down a steep scoria slope on Mt Ngauruhoe, Olympic rowing gold medallist Mahe Drysdale came to the rescue.

The single sculls champion was doing the Tongariro Crossing with his partner, Juliette Haigh, and two other rowers when they came across Mr Vos.

‘‘He was in a real bad way,’’ Drysdale said later.

‘‘He looked like he had put his back out. He couldn’t move to get down off the mountain. He was shaking and getting cold.’’ Drysdale called emergency services on his cellphone and stayed with Mr Vos until the rescue helicopter arrived.

If that was a lucky break for Mr Vos, a lucky break of another sort saw a sweet reunion between a police detective and his family’s dog.

Detective Sergeant Rex Barnett stopped at a North Canterbury house with a search warrant, and there was his golden retriever, Ka Pai.

‘‘I think I said ‘I don’t believe it’,’’ Mr Barnett later recalled.

‘‘She was all excited and wagging her tail.’’ The man who had the dog said he had found her wandering the streets, and had looked after her well but had made no attempt to identify or return her.

Ka Pai later ran up to Mr Barnett’s wife and straight into her arms.

The Marmite shortage, which started when Sanitarium’s Christchurch factory shut down because of earthquake damage, saw a heart-warming response for autistic Temuka 4-year-old Kaden Gamblin.

Kaden’s disorder means he has a restricted diet, which involves Marmite sandwiches for lunch every day.

His mum asked the community for jars of the spread, and dozens of people donated to him.

She said the overwhelming response meant she would be able to give some of the Marmite to other families whose members had the same disorder.

And in the capital, a mischievous spirit of adventure prevailed when two schoolgirls took on an undercover mission to infiltrate Wellington College, a boy’s school.

A lack of body odour was the only thing that sparked suspicion as Tess Norquay and Julia Holden turned up in Wellington College uniforms to see how long they could go unnoticed.

The only risky moment during the operation, part of a journalism project, was when Julia was picked up and hauled off the football field – but it was because she was a junior, not because she was a girl.

Stories from across the world to warm the heart: Royal baby Royal fanatics would have been delighted when Prince William and his wife, Kate, announced in December they were having a baby. The internet was soon ablaze with speculation of baby names and the possibility of twins.

Happy birthday Prince Charles Prince Charles celebrated his 64th birthday in Wellington, with 64 New Zealanders whose birthdays fell on the same day. They dined on 64 mini cakes and Prince Charles, who was visiting New Zealand as part of the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations, hummed a few beats to the Beatles’ classic When I’m Sixty-Four.

An Oscar for Bret Mckenzie World famous in New Zealand to just plain world famous, Bret McKenzie, one-half of Flight of the Conchords, won an Oscar for his music for The Muppets film. McKenzie, musical supervisor for the film, won the award for his song Man or Muppet.

Victory for Victoria Ransom An expat Kiwi’s social media company called Wildfire sold for about US$400 million (NZ$480m). In August, United States media reported that Victoria Ransom, 36, who was raised near Bulls in the Manawatu, was selling her company to Google for a fee plus retention bonuses. Wildfire helps businesses manage campaigns on social media like Facebook.