Travel Pics

The beginning - the girls have their first Mocha at the Tampa airport:

The end - Flowers and a sign on the door from Daddy, brownies from the Sheppards:
Amen

Because it's funny. . .

Home Again

Well we've been home a week now and have settled in quite nicely from our world travels! It took us 31 hours to get from Mimi and Big Daddy's house back to ours, but all in all the girls did really, really well. I'm grateful for those of you who prayed for us!

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!!

Meggie's 10th Birthday (or why she may need counseling by 15)

As I said in an earlier post, Meggie's big present from us was to get to spend time with Clara. However, because she was in Florida on her actual birthday she also had a bit of a birthday celebration - which is only fitting as she was turning double digits. My normal policy is to offer a birthday party, a trip or some cold hard cash/big present (ie; Clara) - but never a combination.

Anyhoo - we began the day with doughnuts, delicious, American, Dunkin Donuts! Mimi even made them into a cake shape and added candles which was totally cool and celebratory!

To cap it off - she got an Ipod from Mimi and Big Daddy!! She's been wanting one for ages but was under the impression that since she'd been allowed to go to Busch Gardens to celebrate her birthday there wouldn't be any big presents - so it was an extra-sweet surprise to get her heart's desire.


Doesn't she look pleased? Later that evening we celebrated again with Lala and Mari, Aunt Ali and Uncle Stacy, Lilly, Anna and G.G.. Mimi made Meggie's favorite dinner - Mimi's spaghetti - and we had a cake too.





After dinner we took a few last pictures of the girls all together - this one of all of the big girls with their American Girl dolls from NYC.
And a group shot - thank Stacy!
But, here comes the part where she may need counseling, we also had to say our final goodbyes to Lilly, Anna, Uncle Stacy, G.G., Lala and Mari. Oh. My. Word. Heartwrenching doesn't even begin to describe the agony. AND - to top it all off - Meggie reminded me that LAST year on her birthday it was the day we gave away Rico. Somebody scrape me off the floor and award me the worst mother evah award. Seriously - could it get any worse?

This is the girls clinging to Stacy's car that had Lilly and Anna inside sobbing!
Josie getting some comfort from a visibly upset Mimi. This is the bittersweet part - we are so grateful our girls are close to their cousins, but my does it make parting such a sweet, sweet sorrow.

Busch Gardens

We had a great time at Busch Gardens while we were in Florida - Busch Gardens is like a combination zoo and amusement park and is divided into sections named after African nations.

We were advised (by Ali) to wear bathing suits and shorts because not only was it hot there, but there were also several rides that would get you totally wet. It was good advice, but more on that later!

Here we are at the entrance:

Eager to explore, the girls are off . . .
The little ones had fun in the area for younger children - here are Ellie, Josie and Anna on a ride:
Lala took Mari and Ellie on the dragons - kind of like the teacups at Disney:
Josie and Katie posing:
We saw a great show that told tales from Africa, the girls loved it and afterwards we got to meet some of the cast:

Anna on the carousel:
And Jo (they were reluctantly riding because they were deemed to short to ride the roller coaster that the bigger girls were on at the time):
Anna and Ellie in the water area:
And Lala and Mari:
We ended up having to divide and conquer since many of the rides weren't suitable for the younger girls - and Anna wasn't a big fan of the roller coasters anyway. One of the rides was called the "Tidal Wave" and involved going down a steep waterfall that sent a "tidal wave" sized splash onto the bridge where the onlookers stood. We rode the ride, but I think the girls enjoyed just standing on the bridge getting splashed even more! I attempted a picture of the splash from the deck below and this is what it looked like:
The aftermath - the girls are crouched down behind the rails of the bridge:
This is what they all looked like coming off the bridge:
Some of the cool looking wildlife we watched:
Mari and Mimi waiting to see the girls coming down the rapids:
Here they all come:
Mari and Ellie all tuckered out:
More wildlife:
Just a cute picture of our gaggle of girls:
Meggie loved seeing the beautiful Clydesdales - unfortunately I couldn't get positioned to get a great picture, but they were awesome.
Finally, a cute duck - or something like that!

Busch Gardens has some amazingly fun roller coasters and we rode several but they didn't allow you to take bags or cameras or anything else that might fall off of you as you where whipped around and upside down and sped here there and everywhere. It was fun listening to the girls on the ride home describe which ones they thought were the most fun, which were scariest and which ones they were to scared to ride this time but would surely attempt the next time they came! All in all it was a ton of fun and we Morrisons look forward to the next time we're in Florid and going again!!!

Meggie and Clara

I'm still catching up on blog posts but we did make it home yesterday after 31 hours of travel. We were exhausted but the girls did really well and we arrived minus only one bag this time - last time the airlines lost all of our checked luggage for 3 days! Of course the missing bag is the one with the gifts we brought back for people. . .

Anyhoo - when I asked Meggie what she wanted for her birthday this year she said she wanted to see her best friend Clara again. Meggie and Clara had known each other virtually all their lives in Tyler and shared a close friendship. Both are the oldest siblings of four, and Clara's brothers are just about exactly the same age as Meggie's sisters. As fate would have it Clara moved from Tyler to Colorado only a few days before we moved to New Zealand, again they had something in common.

Since I was still in the planning stages for our trip to the States it was easy to honor Meggie's desire to see Clara again - after talking with her mom, Jessica, I booked Clara a ticket to fly to Tampa and spend a few days with Meggie. She bravely flew alone and arrived the day before Ali and I got back from NYC so Mimi and Big Daddy took Meggie to pick her up and shared these pictures:

Lovely little girls at the airport seeing each other again for the first time.

They spent their first day together frolicking on Clearwater Beach (and I'm not bitter or anything, but while these lovely pictures were being taken Ali, Anna, Josie and I were sitting on the airplane on the tarmac for three hours waiting for the weather to pass so our plane could take off) - Clara loved it and mom said she built a fantastic sandcastle but the battery on mom's camera died so she couldn't get a picture.



The girls' friendship picked up right where it had left off, it was a joy to see them together again!
After Josie and I got back we all went to Busch Gardens to celebrate but I have so many pictures I'll put them in another post - sadly Clara's visit all too quickly drew to a close. I took this picture of the girls at the gate just before Clara boarded her plane back home:
Friendship is such a blessing!

The Big Apple - Part Three

I'm typing this post from the Tampa airport as we are about to board our first flight - we've just finished the first hour of our 30+ hour journey home to New Zealand.

Our third day in NYC we decided to go see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We had so much fun seeing Lady Liberty and playing in the park around her that we didn't make it to Ellis Island, that will be something to look forward to on a future trip.

I haven't actually gone to the statue before, I've only seen her from a boat circling the island and didn't fully appreciate how huge she is! The information we read about her said that she was shipped to America from France in 350 pieces place in 215 crates.
That evening we went to see "The Little Mermaid" on Broadway and it was incredible! The cast was amazing, the set design awe-inspiring and the girls thoroughly enjoyed it. Here they are all dressed up and ready to go:


After the show we walked through Times Square to get to our subway for the ride home:
We also visited the largest Toys R Us store in the world and the girls loved the Barbie section
On the way home in the subway we ran into a sorority sister of mine in Grand Central Station - so fun! Here we are at our stop before walking home: