My daughter and her boyfriend emigrated to New Zealand on 27 November 2006. They spent the Christmas unpacking and arranging their home in Sumner Bay.
Christchurch, New Zealand we had the web cams set up for the family get together but Christmas was not the same without my little girl, we all missed her infectious laugh and craziness so we were determined to save all our pennies and go to New Zealand for the 2007 Christmas. My son who was going on a gap year rearranged his destinations so we could all meet up in New Zealand for this very special day. It was not long before my husband Nigel and my other daughter Kylie with her husband Lee and my two grandsons Kieran and Charlie aged 3 and 18 months respectively were on the train leaving from Exeter for Gatwick Airport our first leg of the epic journey. We all very excited if not a little dubious of the journey and how the two children would cope! We changed at Reading caught our connecting train to Gatwick no problems then we caught the free shuttle train onto Gatwic, we checked in and found a place to eat and wait for the flight. Which actually didn't take too long, we boarded the plane and the two children fell asleep almost instantly 6 hours later we arrived at Dubai Airport then we caught another flight from Dubai to Bangkok this was 14 hours again the boys were really good and fell asleep we couldn't believe our luck on how good the boys were being. When we arrived at Bangkok there were notices up everywhere telling us where to go, which was fantastic unlike Dubai! by the time we got to the other side of the airport the plane was boarding for our next stage of the journey to Sydney we had a fantastic view of Sydney Opera House before we landed, we caught our last aeroplane to Aucland where Zoe & Mark met us by now we were jet lagged but excited to see Zoe and Mark and glad we didn't have to get on another aeroplane!
