Leaving is the worst part of our U.S. visits - it never gets any easier but this year we had a fun surprise when we saw Uncle Will at the airport as we checked in!!
I had high hopes of seamless travel - after all we'd already had a complication on the way to Florida (the 4 am taxi that never came) so I thought we'd be good as gold.
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| Everyone looks happy right? |
Unfortunately on our first flight once we got above 35,000 feet Meggie was crying and in terrible pain. She had used a nasal decongestant before we took off but it didn't seem to help and her ears and jaw were hurting her terribly. I gave her some ibuprofen and we hoped for the best, but it wasn't enough to relieve the pain and the next flight (from Dallas to L.A.) was no better.
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| Waiting to collect our bags in L.A. |
I was so worried about the long flight to Auckland from LA that I texted my good friend Anne-Marie in New Zealand who is also a pharmacist and asked how many combinations of drugs I could give Meggie. We settled on the nasal decongestant, an oral decongestant, pain medication and a sleeping pill. I don't know if it was that, or the fact that our long-haul flight didn't go as high, but Meggie survived the flight comfortably and we made it back to Wellington happy but tired. Dugald as always was waiting with flowers to take us to breakfast and then home.
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| The animals all missed us too. |
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| Not happy to be photographed. |
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| It was very nice to all be together again and we spent a lazy Sunday soon after just playing games before school started again. |
Soon enough we were back into it - Katie and her team went to the Hip Hop Nationals.
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| Katie in the middle looking fierce. |
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| Silver!! |
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| Elise, Lottie and V came to watch them perform. |
Then it was Careers Night at Marsden and Meggie got to meet her lovely second-cousin Emma Lattey who was speaking about Physiotherapy.
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| Two gorgeous red heads. |
