It almost doesn't seem real now... we had lived in Blenheim for 4 years. We moved there in August 2007. We knew nobody when we arrived, but being a member of the church meant we had an instant network of friends. We moved there initially for Tane's work and thought we would stay a year or two at the most. But the longer we stayed the more friends we made and the more comfortable we became. We bought a house... and I started working at the hospital.
We have really enjoyed living in Blenheim... most of all the great friends that we have made. We are really glad we made the move as there are some awesome people that we would never have had the chance to meet had we never moved there.
But now it is time for our family to move on to another adventure. We have goals of paying off our student debt so that we can spend the money we earn on our growing family rather than debt.
I am currently relaxing after a few extremely busy weeks... hence the absence of blog posts for a while.
I was working the evening before we were due to leave Blenheim. It had been a difficult few weeks living in a house that was slowly being depleted of all its furniture and possessions.
Baby had become increasingly irritable as her option of things to play with had dwindled. Also the whole country had a cold snap during the earlier part of the week with snow widespread across the country including Auckland. The Desert rd was especially affected and had been closed for most of the week
On Friday morning I got up early and got to work packing up our remaining items into either taking or getting rid of piles. I then set about about scrubbing the remaining walls... stripping them of the brunt family trademarks. By the time it got to 10am I was starting to be worried as there was so much to do and time was running out.
I said a prayer that someone would come and help as I knew I needed help. Then shortly after a neighbour came over and asked if we needed help. I asked him to take about 7 boxes of rubbish to the dump/goods to a seconda hand shop. That was a great help... I continued to scub walls. Then Tane arrived home, followed by a friend of ours from school and a couple from church. Between the 5 adults we managed to pack the car, post off stuff to Australia, scrub, vaccum and completely have the house clean and empty within 2 hours. It was such a blessing to have that help. We were truely grateful.
It meant we were able to leave on time for the ferry... although we almost could not find the cat. We managed to find him under the house at the last minute.
When we got to the ferry I was dismayed to see that the crossing would be 'heavy' which did not bode well for me as I usually get sea sick with 'moderate' crossings. I gave anti-nausea meds to myself and the kids and we went through the gates to queue but were told the ferry was going to be at least an hour late... so the hour waiting for the ferry was not a comfotable one...
The car was loaded from bottom to top and every nook and cranny in between, I had boxes under my feet and the car box on my lap.
I took the kids outside (in the freezing cold) to use up some energy as they had been sitting for ages. When we finally saw the cars coming off the ferry we loaded up the kids back into the car and when we tried to start the car... the battery was flat (GREAT!!) The kids started panicking and Tane got out the car to look for someone with jumper leads. Joshua suggested we say a prayer... which we did. As we said 'amen' Tane was on his way back with a car to jump start us... and in a few moments we were on our way onto the ferry. Hurray.
After a 3 hour ferry trip which felt like forever... and no sickness (yay!!), we arrived in Wellington. A quick drive-thru at McDonalds for dinner and we were on our way... I think we started driving at about 11.30pm... We made a few phone calls to land transport to find out the status on the Desert Rd... it was open at that point so we headed stright there. It was snowing as we got there at approx 2.30am. We wanted to get through there before the temperature dropped enough to freeze the snow to ice.
Tane drove most of the way, with me cat-napping but I took over at Taupo and drove to for an few hours... when I made a food stop Tane swapped over and drove the rest of the way home.
We must have arrived at mum and dads at about 9am saturday morning... and we were so relieved to have made it safely. And so the adventure begins....
No comments:
Post a Comment