September 6, 2012

  • Thursday 6th September

     

     

     

    I thought I would have trouble getting the children up and moving this morning after their long day yesterday.

    But they were all up soon after 6:30am!

    We were packed and out the door and down the road by 8:30am.

    Mahalia was the only one with a cell phone that worked that was free to do some essential jobs for me.

    So I dropped her off outside Nelson Tailors with Azzan's suit pants just before 9am with all the instructions written down as to what I needed done.

    She also had Shanni's phone to take to Vodafone to try and find out why it wouldn't work on the new system.

    The rest of us arrived at Nelson Beauty just in on 9am.

    Shanni & I both had appointments there.

    Julie was happy for Azzan to set up my laptop in the spare room so he was able to skype his GO teacher from there.

    When Mahalia arrived she came into visit with me for a bit and then she spent the rest of the time on my laptop after Tim arrived to collect Azzan.

    The guys had haircuts scheduled at 11am with our lovely Welsh friend Sandy at Monaco Hair Salon.

    After Shanni finished she went off belt hunting.

    When I was all done Mahalia & I met up with Shanni.

    The girls went off to get hot potatoes for lunch and I met Mandy at Des Pierres and had a nice plate of salads.

    They did a very tasty assortment - I chose the risotto salad and the broccoli with curry sauce - very tasty.

    I had to run then as we had a 1pm appointment.

    Tim and Azzan arrived a few minutes late.

    Azzan was proudly sporting a flash bright purple haircut.

    He and Sandy had been having way too much fun methinks laughing

     

    The kids sat in the Terrano while Tim & I had our meeting.

    Nathan was in town too so we had a chat with him before heading off to do the last of our chores.

    I picked up the guys pants from the tailors then whizzed in to The Warehouse to pick up a photo frame.
    Shanni found a pair of shoes so she was happy.

    Mahalia is still not feeling at all well so she chose to stay in the car most of the time.

    I flew back to Starbucks to get a frappacino to go and we raced on to the airport.

    I dropped the girls and our bags there.

    They sat out in the sunshine and waited for us to return.

    I picked up Sasha from work then drove out to Richmond to meet Tim at her place.

    He finally turned up.

    We loaded ourselves into the Terrano.

    Left the truck parked up there.

    Got back to the airport and organised all our luggage.

    Said goodby to Sasha and she took the Terrano home.

    We had limited ourselves to two bags of checked in luggage and the rest was carry on.

    We didn't have too long a wait until we boarded our flight to Auckland.

    The flight was fairly uneventful.

    I was across the isle from this bunch of rabble winky

    Shanni got loose with my camera cuz it was more accessible than her own.

    Not hard to tell who's daughter she is eh?

    When we were starting to descend the hostess told Azzan that seeing as he was such a polite young man she would love him to pass the sweets around the cabin.

    He did an excellent job - and was rewarded with a coffee cup full of them.

    I thanked the hostess very much and told her it was so lovely of her to give him so many when we would have to live with the after effects of all the excess sugar  shocked

     

    The setting sun was absolutely glorious on the clouds so Shanni took heaps of photos.

    These are just a small selection of the better ones.

    It was 6:30pm when we landed.

    Jesika & Evan had flown in 3 hours before us and picked up the rental car.

    Lots of big sister hugs all round.

    The waited over at the nearby shopping centre and then swung by and loaded us all on once we had our luggage.

    We had a bit of fun leaving the area as we had to fuel up the rental car and because we missed the turn off into the fuel station we had to go around a few extra blocks and roundabouts.

    Eventually we got back there, got fuel and water and then Jesika drove us to the city centre with me navigating.

    Finally arrived.

    Met up with Sunni & Mat.

    More hugs all round.

    Unloaded Jesika & Evan and then I took the wheel.

    It is an 8 seater people mover - a bit daunting as it is a very different vehicle from what I am used to driving, but I manged fine and we soon arrived at Kohimarama where we are staying the weekend with Tim & Lee.

    They had dinner waiting and we fell on it with great voracity as we were starving hungry.

    Mahalia was first into bed looking decidedly unwell.

    The other two were soon settled too.

    We sat upstairs and chatted with Tim & Lee for a while and now have crashed out for the night.