Right, this is great... so the day out with the American Girls was on Monday, 8 October. Amber and I squeezed in a sister's shopping trip that night. After a bit of packing in the morning, the kids and I spent part of Tuesday, 9 October hanging out with Matt and Tori at the mall (I know, I just had to pick up a few last things) and then met up with Dad for lunch!
We've got to get in as much Mexican food as possible and strangely this trip didn't see as much as usual... though that could have something to do with the fact I'm not eating wheat - which ruled out my favourite - burritos!!!
But I got around the wheat by trying other things like nachos, tamales and tacos!!! YAHOO!!! We love it!!!
Tuesday night was the big family night at the pumpkin patch (see P) and since I had finished most of my packing I did the unwise thing of staying up ridiculously late trying to finish off a series of "White Collar" and cleaning the shower til 2am! Not smart before a 20 hour travel day coming up...
Needless to say on Wednesday 10 October I was a write off... though we did go to breakfast with Dad and had lunch at Grandma's and to top it all off - since this was our LAST DAY - we had a birthday celebration for Amber!!!
YAY... so all of us were together - well most of us - for the last time.
Always a good idea to load the kids up with sugary snacks before taking a long trip across multiple time zones...
Well... this was it... so we'd hugged everyone, kissed everyone, thanked everyone, shed our tears... got to the airport... said good-bye... got on our airplane... and then... well, this was cool... my dad had a customer who was a pilot for United Airlines and though he wasn't working on this flight, he arranged for us to see the pilots and visit the cockpit.
Which of course we did with exuberance and enthusiasm!!!
And we would've stayed longer except that exuberance caused a bit of over-excitement which led to touching too many things after being asked to stop... which meant we had to go back to our seats. Anyway, while back in our seats waiting for the plane to get moving... we realised we were still waiting... and waiting... and well, it turned out that by 11:30pm (mind you we were at the airport by 8:30pm, boarded at 10:30pm) they said there were maintenance issues... then by 12:30am they said they were problems that needed more attention and the flight was cancelled! CANCELLED!!!
Huh... well, thankfully Tony answered his cellphone back in New Zealand because I could not get in touch with Mom & Dad. Thankfully, he finally got in touch with Dad and we arranged for them to come back to get us...
So by about 1:40am we're sitting on a bench outside the United gates waiting for my parents to pick us up... in their pj's they came to the curb, we hopped in with our carry on luggage (the rest had to stay) and by about 2:30am we were asleep (almost) back in Fountain Valley on the newly made bed since I'd stripped it before I left... in pajamas since I'd packed the carry ons well...
And so instead of leaving the US on 10 October - we had another day to spend with family. Though we were pretty exhausted from our ridiculously late night, we laid pretty low... Mom slept in and had breakfast with us... then Dad came home early and took us up to the Crocs shop (which we'll prioritise next time - it was way cooler than I thought) and then we got frozen yogurt to take to Amber at work. HA! And since we'd depleted our emotional stores, we actually didn't call anyone else or hang out with anyone else besides Amber's family...
One last dinner with Evan and Emilia and a bit of TV time...
And here we are... "Welcome back" the crew said as we all boarded our flight...
The kids slept like champions again... and about 14 hours later we were back in Sydney at that McDonald's playland for just half an hour before boarding our next flight...
I was so ready to be home... but... poor little Hunter was up and down to the toilet for the three hours between Australia and New Zealand... and upon arrival to Wellington we discovered that two suitcases were waiting... and after standing for probably 45minutes to an hour in the most un-organised line to go through customs we finally were reunited with Tony!!! Oh that was after I discovered my cellphone had dropped out of my bag during the security check and I had to go back in for it... PHEW!!! We were reunited... home... and that was 'zee end' of our almost one month trip to California!!!
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