When we landed in Auckland Josie wasn't quite awake and had a bit of a meltdown as I urged her to gather her things as quickly as she could - but we were all rather laden down with more carry-ons than is legal so I couldn't help her at all. She managed to get it together and we raced to the first checkpoint well ahead of most of the other passengers. We presented our passports without issue (unlike our arrival in the U.S.) and whizzed down to baggage claim to collect our many bags - double the number we left with! We grabbed three luggage carts and stood waiting for our luggage to appear - then I got paged. I headed to baggage services and they told me that one of our bags hadn't made the flight and would be coming in the next morning. The girl who gave me this dire news misunderstood my question and led me to believe that we were going to have to stay in Auckland to take the bag through customs ourselves the next day. I was frantic thinking about the implications of that news, but I went back to the baggage carousel to collect the bags that had arrived. Thankfully I had learned my lesson from our move here (when the airlines lost all of our luggage) and had written down a description of every bag and what it contained.
Once we had collected all the other bags I got back in the baggage services line to let them know which bag was missing. While I was doing that the lovely concierge from our Air New Zealand flight was watching the children and our bags for me - I really love Air New Zealand, they are very good to us! I filled out my paperwork and asked what to do about our flight to Wellington - at which point the girl looked at her watch and told me to follow her. We all followed her, with our bags, to the front of the customs line, she escorted us through (and assured me that we could leave and our missing bag would be delivered later), then she walked us to the front of security (concierge lady is with us too, and she hands me her card in case the bag doesn't turn up when expected and tells me to contact her if I need help), then she walks us into the terminal where Uncle Hamish was waiting (for a LONG time) to greet us, he joins our entourage over to the Domestic Transfer desk and she makes the man there check us in to our next flight and check our bags (despite it being less than an hour until our flight). I mean seriously, we were well-looked after!
Once all was checked in and we were sure we'd make our fight, if we hurried, Hamish walked with us from the International Terminal over to the Domestic Terminal and directed us to security and our gate there. It was great to have a 15-minute catch-up with him and lovely of him to get up so early to help this sleep-deprived mama get where she needed to be!
Dugald was in Wellington with flowers to pick us up - so good to see him and be reunited!! We managed, just barely, to fit our things into the van and I realized again that it was a blessing in disguise that we were missing a suitcase because if we'd had it some of us would have had to ride in a taxi home. And, thankfully, the missing suitcase contained gifts and sleeping bags but nothing urgent.
We've been so warmly welcomed back this week - we've had lovely, unseasonably warm weather, our friends have been more than generous and we've slowly but surely gotten over our jetlag. We arrived home Sunday morning and on Monday afternoon we had a lovely tea with Fleur and Alison and children complete with a sign to welcome us home, a cake and balloons! On Thursday when we arrived at swimming two of the "big girls" had made us a cake that said "Welcome Home". We've been blessed with dinner with friends both Friday and Saturday nights and just now (Sunday) we're off to Palmerston North to catch up with Margaret and Hugh.
I wish I had my camera with me for all of the above-mentioned festivities, I'll do better now that we are mostly unpacked and I know where things are.
Lots of love from all of us!! Come see us in New Zealand!!
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