Going Home

I admit that I'd planned and thought through the beginning of the trip and really hadn't done as good of job with the last 2 days and the travel home.  And we paid the price for that.  Oh well, we survived.  

Coming we'd taken only 1 flight per day and that had been really very manageable.  But going home we had 3 flights totally 15 1/2 hours of flying time and 15 hours of layovers so we were literally traveling over 30 hours straight.  Yikes!!!

We left our Christchurch hotel at 9am and flew out at 12:30.  We got to Auckland by 2:00 and got ourselves all checked in and bags re-dropped off.  Then had 5 more hours to kill before our flight.  The original plan was to take a taxi to a nearby mini golf/arcade place but with Ethan still not feeling well we opted to just hang at the airport.  

We found lots of fun statues to pose in front of like good tourists.

And thankfully there was a small kids area for the littles to play on.  We ate lunch, hung out, and after more than 48 hours of Ethan of Ethan having the flu and then just never really recovering, Taylor gave him a blessing and miraculously once we absolutely couldn't wait any longer and had to go through security and board our plane, he was fine.  At the time I didn't realize it (I got distracted by details and other kids) but looking back it was an amazing blessing.  If he hadn't started eating and sleeping and feeling better I'm not sure how we could have dragged him and Isla and our other tired kids as well as bags and stuff for another 24 hours.

So funny story.  On the domestic New Zealand flights, we weren't required to do anything at security except walk through a metal detector- no shoes off, no lap tops out, no problem with liquids.  So I didn't exactly assume it would be the same on our international flight, I just didn't really think.  So I filled up the kids water bottles BEFORE going through security and when the rather intense security lady called me on it I honestly thought.  "Woops" but no big deal.  Apparently it was a VERY big deal and my only option was to drink all the water bottles- right then, right there, myself only, all 3 of them.  What???  Luckily a much nicer security guy came over and seeing what was going on said "oh but I'm sure that's purified water for the baby who is under 2 year old (wink, wink), right?"  To which I replied "Absolutely- all 3 bottles are purified and for her bottles later on the plane (big smile).  The security lady tried to protest but we packed up and booked it out of there before she could stop us.  Phew!  That's crazy they wouldn't just let me dump the water.  I even suggested that I was fine with them just tossing the water, and even at one point just tossing ALL the bottles with the water in them.  Apparently that is somehow a security risk for me to leave behind random water or bottles.  But not a security risk to make a lady drink 3 bottles by herself while her 4 small children run around and touch random things in security.  Taylor had a good laugh.  When we flew through London for Arty's wedding the security people made me taste all of Miles' baby food and even drink his formula to make sure it was safe.  Why do I always get pegged as the problem person?
But we made it on the plane just fine and all settled in.  The flight back, though 1 hour shorter was not as easy as coming had been.  We were all a little more exhausted and for some reason the cooling system on the plane didn't work for the first 8 hours.  I literally stripped the kids down to their undies and myself to as little as I could.  I've never taken my socks off in a plane before and felt bad doing it here knowing my feet were stinky from a full day of planes and layovers, but it was HOT.  And hard to sleep.  Once the AC kicked on we all passed out but just for a few hours.

Then we were landing in San Francisco and had another 7 hour layover before we could finally fly back to Salt Lake.  Poor Isla was so tired she just gave up and slept on our lunch table.  Ethan thankfully was feeling much better and actually acting like his normal happy self.  We were all zombies but we made it.  And somehow after 30+ hours of traveling straight we made it home safely with all our bags and all our littles and all our amazing memories.