So anyway ...

... we left Dunedin on Saturday 20 January at 3.30 in the afternoon. We were supposed to leave around 10.00am, but the pile of "stuff we would just pack in the back of the car" grew and grew and grew with every room we thought we had already emptied until it took up most of a single garage. The the hard work really began ...

I really want to thank S and R who went so far above and beyond the call of duty ... thank you guys for helping the MOTH with all the stuff he wanted to do but couldn't ("I don't care how not-broken your other arm is, no, you cannot do heavy lifting with one arm !!!"), thank you for taking the leftover rubbish to the tip, thank you for taking the clothes and household stuff we couldn't take with us to the Salvation Army shop, thank you for returning the keys to the property manager ... thank you for EVERYTHING !!!

We spent Saturday night with my folks in Oamaru. Will be the last time the rugrats see their Gran and Pop in a while, although K has convinced me he will be quite capable of flying down to see them "all by himself" when he's 12. Three years will zip past before we know it ...

Sunday was the road-trip I was dreading. OK, so I drove the entire way to Dunedin when we moved down. But we took ten days. And I was following the MOTH. And somehow, it felt quite scary and serious all of a sudden that it was up to me to ensure that we made it home to the other end of the country safely. It's ridiculous ... I'm thirty-("mumble") years old, I have two kids, I should be used to responsibility by now !!!

Anyway ... Sunday we drove Oamaru to Picton to catch the ferry we had already booked and paid for prior to the MOTH's accident. The kids were quite content in the back with their DVD player, traffic was pretty good, it wasn't raining, and with the couple of decent stops we made (Christchurch for lunch and Kaikoura for a quick paddle in the ocean, a power nap and an icecream) it was no where near as scary as I was dreading. I'm not a huge fan of long distance driving, and planning to share the task is a lot different from knowing it was all up to me ...

Monday morning in Wellington we met Lisa for coffee (trim mochaccinos all around), who has already posted about it far more articulately than I could ever hope to. It was fantastic to meet her. I count myself truly fortunate that I have never had a bad experience meeting anyone face to face whom I have come to know online ... it has honestly been one of the best parts of this strange world we inhabit.

Driving Wellington to Taupo on Monday was almost anti-climactic after the day before, and then driving Taupo to Orewa on Tuesday was an even shorter distance. By the time we got to Wednesday, the two hours from Orewa to Whangarei were nothing but a hop-skip-and-jump ... and the Dome Valley which I have always hated driving through is nothing compared to some of the winding roads around the coastline near Kaikoura. I may get used to this long distance driving yet ...

So now we're home. Camping out on mattresses on the floor until our stuff arrives, doing laundry every two days because we only have three changes of clothing, sitting on camp chairs in the lounge until we find an affordable lounge suite we like, drinking out of plastic cups because all our glasses are packed into our chest of drawers, but we're home ...