Serious Crunch Time

Three days from now we depart. One week from today we arrive in New Zealand. In between we hang with the rellies in California. I need to pack.

We're taking the full allowance. 2 bags per person = 8 bags. 2 of those are car seat bags, so the rest will be clothes, shoes, and other assorted stuff that we forgot to put in the container. Toys, books, appliances, etc. Hopefully it all fits.

We had a lovely going away party just before Thanksgiving. About 100 people showed up to wish us well on our move. I didn't think we knew that many people.

Our last American Thanksgiving was a traditional feast with family. Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, the works. We'll have to try to keep up the tradition in New Zealand. Maybe we'll do 2, one in November as usual, and then one in New Zealand harvest time, since really, it's a harvest celebration. You can never have too many reasons to stuff yourself silly. I hope we can get turkey there.

We have our tickets!

I've been saying for a while now that we're going in January. And just a few days ago that was still the plan. Mainly because that would enable Bic to finish her first half of the year of school here, and get us to New Zealand right before the start of their new school year. Also it would give us more time here to pack and prepare, and let us have one more white Christmas.

But then I went to go buy our plane tickets. In January, two adults, two children flying one way from Boston to Napier, with a stop over in San Fran for 2 days came to US$7330 on Air New Zealand. We like Air New Zealand the best because they have direct flights from San Francisco, where we like to stop over to visit relatives. Plus they do New Zealand domestic flights, so we wouldn't have to switch airlines at all the whole way. We could have probably found a cheaper domestic flights for both the US leg and the NZ leg, but having it all on one ticket means we can bring the max amount of luggage on all the flights. Which is 2 per person before being charged extra. Most domestic flights in the US now charge for even the first checked bag. And we're probably going to bring as much as we can.

Anyways $7330 is a lot of money. It sounds like too much. So I did some searching around, and found that if we leave in early December the price drops by over $2000. That's too much money to ignore. So I bought the tickets. We leave Boston on December 6. Leave San Francisco December 8. And arrive in New Zealand on December 10. Whohoo!

I had a mini anxiety attack when it dawned on my how close all this really is to happening. There's really no turning back now. And December is SO soon. But now I'm good with it. Better than good, really. That extra month will give us more time to find a place to live, visit schools and kindergartens, etc. before the start of the new year. It will give us more summer and less winter. It will give us Christmas and the New Year in our new home and with Aidan's family.