We're off to New Zealand!

You may remember last year my lovely friend Jen, her hubby Grant and their 2 boys Daniel and Noah emigrated to New Zealand. It was really hard saying goodbye but really I knew it was more à bientôt as we said we'd try and visit sometime soon. I would have been there like yesterday but have had to be patient, it has taken a lot of organising. Firstly I had to sort out time off work, then sort out Charlie having an extra week off school after Christmas, then came searching for flights, during this time a few frantic emails were sent to Jen as they were so expensive and I was worrying we wouldn't be able to go. Thankfully Mark was surfing the internet one evening and discovered it was quite a bit cheaper to fly from Dublin! We looked into flights to Dublin and found reasonable ones. On Tuesday I rang Emirates and was sure they were going to tell me there was a mistake somewhere or that for some reason we wouldn't be allowed to fly from Dublin (yes those thoughts were going through my head, LOL!) Anyway, the lady I spoke to was ever so nice, so helpful and one thing we were a little concerned about was a 10 hour wait in Dubai. I was enquiring about a passenger lounge rather than hanging around the airport, imagine my delight when she told me we'd be entitled to a hotel room for the night! I reserved the seats on the spot, they were without obligation so we could do a little more research and today I rang back to book them :D I, as is Jen, am so excited!!
We are visiting North Island, a little south of Auckland. Jen lives in a place called Pukekohe (pronounced poo-kay-kor-he.) It looks delightful, I really enjoy reading Jen's blog of their adventures out there and I can't wait for us to share some of those adventures with them.