Arrival!

The lead up to coming to NZ was very intense, we did as much research as we could from Australia in order to make the transition as smooth as possible for all of us. I'll go into more detail on the things we considered during the blog, some of which we could have done a lot more research on, but simply didn't know what we should ask, or who we should be asking.

The plane trip itself went amazingly well. All three kids had a good time and they had their icecream first at lunch time - real NZ icecream - yuuummm! We were very concerned about the flight due to our Autistic boy. I had done a scouting trip around 2 months before we moved for me to view the land and be sure we were happy to move across.

In this trip I visited 3 schools, spent almost 2 hours with the funding team for Jono's schooling, seen half a dozen houses we were interested in buying , had afternoon tea at one friends house and dinner with other friends, went to One Tree Hill, did a Harbour cruise and went up the Skytower. Yes... I was tired when I got home.

The bigger part of that trip was also to have Jonathan with me so the principal's could meet him and we could discuss options of schooling for him if he didn't get funding approval. Unfortunately Jonathan didn't make the trip.

On the scouting trip I took Jono with me to the airport, we had an early flight and I was awake around 4am, we got in the car at 5am and got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. He was happy through customs, no problems having breakfast, contented at the entry to the plane, and walked happily along the tube for around the first third of the way.

Prior to this we had done lots of stories about the plane, about the fact that it would land, about going together with Mummy, about the fun it would be... and his response was that planes are scary. I didn't realise just how scary it was for him until we were on the tube.

He froze, he panicked, he cried, he fell to the floor, the fear on his face was so intense, yet I tried to get him on the plane, I ended up bodily carrying him to the door, but he just could not do it. Rob was already in NZ, so I had to do this one myself... and we just couldn't. We got removed from the plane with our luggage as they had to leave and we had already held them up behind schedule.

After a flurry of phone calls I had babysitting for him at home, new flights for me and 4 hours to drive home, re-pack and drive back out to get on the next plane.

So was the first attempted flight... the next flight where we all came as a family we had Jono on some tablets to help calm him and then some extra tablets to sedate him. He fell asleep around 5 minutes before we were due to board and that first deep snore was pure bliss.

He actually woke up once we got him on the plane, but he didn't fight being on it and we made the rest of the trip relatively uneventfully. Fortunately we had some friends at the other end to come and pick us up, in 2 cars for all 6 bodies and their luggage as Grandma came with us to help us settle in.

When we were picking up the luggage off the turntable, we had a sniffer dog fascinated with the kids school bags, likely due to the fact they had school lunches in them the day before, and with Jono wanting to lie on the dog and the distractions from that we missed Sarah's suitcase and had to pick it up a few days later.

On arrival we spent the first few days in a hotel at Lincoln Green while our furniture and belongings cleared customs. We also finally got the chance to see in person the house we had bought to live in, which we had previously only seen on the internet. :)