Our departure from NZ was at the end of 7-8 harried months of sanding puttying painting and all the other mad crazy stuff we had to do to get our house extension finished before we left! We drove out of Greytown after putting the last paint on the windowsills :)
The sense of relief at finally finishing was very quickly replaced with anxiety about leaving! We picked the kids up from school on our way out, so had a heartwrenching bunch of goodbyes in the playground... I was pushed to the edge by Alex saying goodbye to his buddy William (still makes me feel all teary!), and Owen saying goodbye to Reuben pushed me over the edge... We tore ourself away and drove up to Napier for a weekend with the Wos' clan.
We stayed with Annia - boys in a double bed (very exciting!) and Amelia in the most gorgeous little rainbow bed :) It was great to catch up with everyone - including our friends Adrian and Angela and their kids. Matt flew out to work on Sunday night (boo) and we stayed an extra day to hang out with Babica. We spent the day park hopping, wearing out the kids (and Babcia) finishing up back at Annias for a final meal together.
The next day with heavy hearts we set off for Whakatane. The kids travelled beautifully and we made it to Narnies place in plenty of time. We spent our time ducking out to the farm for a play and lunch with Great Gran, then back into town to play with the big cousins. Again we had a fantastic time, tinged with sadness at the impending departure. One of the things I did was plant three trees - an Alex , and Owen and an Amelia tree. Lyle and I selected (found) three lovely little Kahikatea trees sprouting in Great Gran's garden. We dug them out and planted them up on the hill by the bush. Their cousin Theo's kauri tree stands next to them :) We had to build a protective structure around them to stop the deer getting at them, which took most of two days to do, but it was great to spend the time with Dad, and to watch the kids playing in the ferns along the edge of the bush.
With our roots down, it was time to go. It was heartbreaking leaving the place and the people, not knowing when we will be next be back. Great Gran came in for morning tea the day we left, and Narnie, Sarah, Suzannah, Jack and Isabella all drove over to Rotorua with us to say goodbye. We did some touristy stuff and caught up with Bruce between lunch and the flight to take our minds off the trip ahead and to hopefully wear the kids out a bit. After much tears we were on the plane and gone.We met up with Matt in Auckland and walked over to the international terminal together. We didn't have much time so it was pretty much straight on the plane and off. The first flight was the long one - 13 or so hours to Vancouver. The boys settled in to watching a movie with Matt while I wrangled with Amelia across the aisle. She flatly refused to go to sleep, so in the end I gave up and left her watching Garfield while I tried to catch a nap. I woke about half way into the trip to find everyone asleep (thank god!) so she did go to sleep at some point. She is a very twitchy sleeper however, and woke me pretty much every time she shifted position - including the time she slid off the seat onto the floor!
We had 6-7 hours on the ground in Vancouver to allow for residency processing. Again the kids were just amazing. Given how disturbed/short the sleep had been I was expecting trouble, but they were awesome. We ate dinner and hung out playing games and reading books till the flight was called and we were on our way over to Toronto. I think everyone had at least a nap on this flight too - I'm not even sure Amelia was clipped in before she conked out! 4-5 hours over to Toronto where we were all starting to look a bit red eyed and over it. We attempted breakfast - Alex golluped down his serve of Corn pops, and then ate Amelia's. Owen didn't find anything really that he wanted to eat, so ended up with a banana and some muesli bars... He burst into tears when I told him we had another plane to get on - poor wee man! I fixed the problem by handing over my phone, and he sat playing games till the flight was called.
We arrived in Halifax at about 11 on Wednesday, two nights after leaving Whakatane.... Needless to say we were all a bit zonked! Amelia took herself off to bed at 4.30 and we managed to keep the boys up till 6ish before they completely crashed. Matt kept me awake until about 9.30... I had been asleep about 10 mins when Amelia woke up ready to start the day again! We bedhopped our way thru the night with me snatching sleep where i could.. This pattern continued over the next 4-5 days, with the worst night having her waking just before midnight and not going back to sleep till after 4..... there was this tho... this is Amelia asleep on my nightstand...at 6 am. I thought she must have gone back to bed but she was still there! Told you she was twitchy....
We have spent the last week looking at cars, visiting supermarkets, getting to know the neighbours and the neighbourhood. We've done a couple of little bush walks (and have the mozzie bites to show for it) and dipped our toes in the mega supermarkets and (don't listen Dad!) even Walmart.Today we registered the kids at school. I had hoped that we would be able to meet the teachers, but of course the classes are not allocated until after late registration, so will be out at the end of this week. The school is a bit of a concrete jungle, and I miss the trees and green spaces of Greytown school. The kids seem pretty excited by the whole thing. Alex was encouraged by the size of the library (slightly smaller than the Greytown one I thought, but had more Geronimo Stilton than you could poke a stick at!) and Owen looooves the fact that it is a two story school - even though the Primary classes are on the ground floor. Grade 2 (Alex) is upstairs so I guess he will just have to go visit! I actually think the school is at least on par numbers wise with Greytown which is quite nice. Owen has been watching kids playing soccer on the field down from our house, and the neighbour is a keen ice hockey man, who has offered Alex a stick :) So far so good. Now if only this horrible humid heat would ease off (famous last word ;) )
Stuff we have noticed that is Canadian weird... The fire hydrants! awesome :) The toilets - Owen alarmed with just how much water is in the bowl (not taking a picture of that sorry!!). They don't use 'fortnight' to describe two weeks. The neighbour only knew what we were talking about because she 'did Shakespeare in school'. The bugs that sound like buzzsaws... Loving the squirrels tho - seen quite a few off our deck :)
No raccoons to date....
