Surprise! The boys are back in town

Well, we were a wee bit sneaky and managed to arrive in Canada 2 weeks earlier than we had told our family.  This allowed us to pull of a couple of surprises.  Here's the story:

Family photos (at long last) of the Kiwi gang.

 Watching the All-Blacks first rugby game of the season

Family dinner with special pavlova with chocolate hearts!

We picked the boys up from school on Wed. June 12th and headed straight to the airport for afternoon tea and prepared to board the plane.   There's no extra security here for the domestic flight, so we chatted with family and friends until the boarding call, then walked out to the airplane. 

and waved a blurry and tearful goodbye to the friends and family from the deck!

 Parting shots of Nelson city, the port, past the boys school and out to Cable Bay

Arrived in Auckland with only a short gap before our long flight, but stopped to chat with Mark Gungor.  We had just finished his "Laugh your way to a Better Marriage" video study with our Annesbrook Life Group.  Cool!  (No photos or autographs to prove it though)

 

This is how our boys travel on the big black airplane.   So entralled by the TV's that I practically had to spoonfeed them to eat.  Actually, I had to PAUSE the video. 

 

We did pay a bit extra for the Sky Couch on our Auckland to LA  (11.5 hour overnight flight) and it worked to our advantage.  Boys slept for two good chunks of 3 hours each with about an hour in the middle (around 1am) where I had to convince them that it was still sleeping time and that they couldn't use the TV's even if the guy across the aisle was watching a movie . . . 

 A couple of hours in the LA airport (mostly waiting in lines, going through security and rechecking luggage) saw us stretching our legs and eating pizza.  The last flight was about 6 hours and since it was daytime, the boys were thrilled that they had a TV screen that pulled out of their armrest.  It was peaceful. 

Touched down in Toronto around 11:30pm and as we were still being towed into the gate, Jackson claps his hands and asks "When can we go on our next trip??"    Seriously, we hadn't even stepped onto Canadian soil yet.  

 Waiting for luggage in Toronto, then we were met by Grandpa who drove us the hour or so home to St. Catharines.  Convincing the boys to go to sleep (even though it was 2am) was a challenge because of the jet lag, but we made it through to the morning on about 6 hours of sleep, they opened a letter that had arrived from Nana and Poppa with a colourful souvenir book and then the boys and I had a lovely afternoon nap together.

A brief walk to get reacquainted with the Canadian geese goslings at Happy Rolph's on Lake Ontario rounded out our first day.

The next morning we surprised cousin Rachel for her birthday . . .

 

and hung out with buddies, Nolan, Carson, Jordan and Ethan for the afternoon! (The Wii)

 Xavier even got to play in his first Jr. Rookie Ball game - he's on the Tigers!

And then the main event:  Surprising my sister-in-law Laura for her 30th birthday party!  It was great.  Lovely to catch up with so many people at the same time. 

So, after a weekend of parties, swimming and  Father's Day and a year of retirement, Dave headed back to work today.  :-)  Our year of amazing overseas adventure appears to coming to an end, but God's mercies are new every morning and we are looking forward to the next chapter in our journey.  Perhaps not as frequently, but I'll keep you posted as we live life raising kiwis! 

Aerial View

 

Dave's family was kind enough to get him a flying lesson for his birthday with the local aero club.  It was a 4 seater, so he was keen to take the boys up with him.  Quite an adventure for them!  There was a wee delay of about half an hour once we arrived since there had been a frost overnight and we had to wait for the frost to melt off the wings of the plane. 

 

The boys view from their camera up in the air!

 
 
 
This is the boulder bank from above.  See my last post for a close up view!


My view from the ground for the 20 minutes = Ducks on the local golf course next to the airport.  LOVE this funny sign just over the fence meant to keep people off of the airfield. 

 Landing! 

Good flight, everybody back safely - now Dave would like to get his private pilot's license, so there may be more of this in the future.  (Bit scary when you're family is up in the air without you  . . .  )

 

Lucky Dave - since he's not working, I wanted to be sure he enjoyed chaperoning a class trip - to the mudflats of course with Xavier's class.  Good thing we had gumboots  (aka rainboots).  This is low tide at the estuary.  They were looking for creatures and shells etc. 

   Up at the scenic lookout in Nelson (Princes Dr.), where the wealthy people live and we visit and sit on the public bench.  

  
Family dinner at Styx, a restaurant near Port Nelson - they had pork ribs with a jack daniels sauce.  

Jackson was super happy with buffalo chicken pizza and Xavier had hot dogs and chips (aka fries).

Oh, and we managed to dress them "handsomely"

It's soon time to say our goodbyes to friends and family here in New Zealand and we are looking forward to returning to St. Catharines before the end of the month.   It'll be very hard to leave though, the boys are quite settled with their friends from school and church (and rugby!); besides the scenery is outstanding.   We have been up and down the country, (albeit leaving a few corners untouched - saving them for next time!) and truly haven't found a lovelier place to call home. 

To quote Dave, Nelson is the best because  "God lives here". 

We found a local artist who painted a nautical Nelson scene on canvas that will hide itself away in our suitcases in the near future to bring a piece of the majestic home. 

 (argh, trying not to think about squeezing our lives back into suitcases again, it's going to take a valiant effort I think!)