Landed…

Luca on one of the legs of our journey…

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind to say the least!

The Vancouver and Vancouver Island week seemed to disappear.

The first stop was at the vet to begin the 6 month process of getting Pica ready for NZ ,(if we decide to stay on), and then dropping her off to our friends. The kids were all so happy to be together again. Tara and I always marvel at how seamlessly it happens, like they never spend any time apart at all, let alone for years.

We arrived just before Halloween, it is Luca’s favorite celebration so he was very much looking forward to it. His Auntie Dawn had so much prepared to help him to do that!

In the evening Luca joined his friends for trick and treating, they had a blast 🙂

The next day we went over to the island and surprised Rich’s folks. This is a pic of them with Luca early this year, I had not seen it before, love it!

Rich reminisced with Luca over a stack of his old comics from when he was Luca’s age 🙂

The party for Rich’s Mum brought many together

Luca got to play with his second cousin for the first time…

and we all got to play “slack rope” outside in the gorgeous fall leaves 🙂

Then all too soon it was time to head over to Vancouver again and to the airport. Dawn surprised Luca with some Lego for the journey, lucky boy!!!! He was more than a little excited 🙂

We had supper with our friends and said a goodbye to Pica, so so hard but I know she will be well looked after.

We boarded at midnight and Luca was asleep before we took off 🙂

26 1/2 hours later we arrived in NZ, here we are just before we disembarked 🙂

My brother met us at the airport with our new car….

(so so helpful), and we collapsed into bed.

This is our little cottage for the next week