On the road again…

After about a month at home, we finally pulled the trigger and bought airline tickets to New Zealand.

Our First Stop in New Zealand

I’ll refresh your memory. We had been in Australia for almost two weeks and had some family take a trip to the hospital in North Carolina. We flew there and spent a little over a week there. Dan was dying to get home for Thanksgiving since we were so close by (relatively), so we hopped a flight and got there late the night before.

Being home was a …different… dynamic than usual. Since Dan’s sister is settled in our house so we didn’t want to go there and disrupt the flow. Fortunately, we have plenty of family that was able and willing to host us. We had spent some good quality time with my Mom and my sister in North Carolina the previous week, so we opted to stay with Dan’s parents.

Pukey Baby Lily

We crammed tons and tons of family and friend visits into the week following Thanksgiving. We had plans for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. We didn’t even have an opportunity to eat the leftovers we brought home, because there wasn’t time to get hungry! We even got to make it to a friend’s wedding that we weren’t expecting to be able to attend 🙂

Frank & Sasha’s Wedding

It was incredibly humbling to have so many people reach out and want to see us while there was an opportunity. And we had only been gone for a month and a half! It was great feeling, and we feel the same way about each and every one of you in return.

Most importantly, we got to go shopping for all of our family christmas trees, and even decorate them too. It was so strangely warm that we went from cutting a tree to the beach.

Christmas Trees & The Beach

We got in some much needed puppy and kitty time too. Don’t tell woof and poof… but Dad let’s them on the bed when Mom is sleeping.

Puppies

But somehow, a week turned into a month… and enough was enough. There was always a reason to stay. There was an issue with the house, the weather was nice, there were more peeople we didn’t get to visit with just yet, Christmas was SO close! But we had decided before we left Australia that we would commit to continuing our journey. So we did.

On a Friday, we bought plane tickets for the following Tuesday and were off to New Zealand. We packed so many last visits into those couple of days. It was fun, and it was exhausting.

It was so nice to see everyone, and it was so nice to be back. Special thanks to Nancy and Charlie for putting us up for a month. Special thanks to my mom and sister for offering to put us up, and for providing a change of scenery when we needed it.

The hardest part is saying good bye. We’ve done it twice now and that’s  enough. Hopefully, next time we come home – we’ll be home for good.