...But First Christmas in LA (December 22-26, 2022)

We first planned to travel to New Zealand in the summer of 2020, but during COVID New Zealand had some of the strictest lockdown protocols of anywhere in the world. It finally opened its borders as we started to make plans for Jim’s month-long sabbatical (postponed from 2020).  We thought that traveling over Rachel’s Christmas break would be our best bet at getting to travel with the girls for an extended period of time, but there were many moving parts in the week before our departure. Julia flew home the night before Rachel returned from her semester studying abroad in Budapest. During their whirlwind time in Mountain View, we introduced the girls to pickleball, had dinner with Carol, and got Rachel the next booster shot, a haircut, and a trip to the dentist.  She also visited with Jenny (from Budapest) and spent time with Ellen during her few days home. 

Julia, Jim, and I flew to LA on Thursday night, and I picked Rachel up at the airport Friday morning (she had stayed in MV to go to the annual choir concert the night before).  Allyson, Rachel, and I joined Jim, Julia, Mike, Lila and Otis for a full day at Disneyland -- a real treat, mostly for Jim.

Mike, Jim, and Lila stayed well into the night, while the rest of us headed home before dinner.

Saturday we shopped, wrapped presents, and had Christmas Eve dinner with Mika. Christmas morning was present sorting and opening and bubble bread making, followed by Christmas afternoon/evening at Karin and Jim's as usual. Through all of the hecticness, I was focused on us all staying healthy, fingers crossed that everything would work out. We just needed to get on that plane Monday night.

New meese sweatshirts handstiched by Julia

So, we were horrified to discover midway through the day that we hadn’t filled out the travel visa form that we needed.  The messaging from New Zealand was that it would take up to 72 hours to get processed — and not to try to fly without it. After all of the worry about the travel and COVID and everything that could go wrong, I never thought it would be an error we made that would keep us from getting on the plane. I felt sick about it, and so did Jim, but the girls kept a great attitude (they were positive, but still didn’t believe we would actually fly out). We ended up going to the airport four hours early (Julia’s dream timing!) and what we had convinced ourselves would ruin our trip turned out to be no big deal at all. The guy at the check-in counter was actually happy to find that we had already filled out the forms at all — I guess many people get to the airport not knowing they needed to complete this step.  He did however make us buy a ticket to leave New Zealand before he would check us in.  Jim and I had planned to play it by ear after the girls returned home, but that isn’t allowed when traveling to New Zealand — they won’t let you come in unless they know when you plan to leave.  We stood to the side and bought refundable tickets from Queenstown to Sydney and everything was fine!

We realized though that in our rush to get to the airport, Rachel had forgotten her sunglasses at Mike’s, which was a huge bummer. Thankfully, because we had so much time, Mike was able to drive them to us — which was a huge ask and Rachel feels deeply indebted.  

Our final Christmas surprise for the girls was that we upgraded our seats to the Economy Sky Couch — not quite business class or even economy plus, but a nice feature where you can lie two people across three seats. It is quite a tight arrangement, but the girls were able to settle into their seats after a while. There was no chance that Jim and I were going to make that work — I felt far too claustrophobic. We settled for Jim sitting up in the window and me making the couch out of the two other seats.

We agreed that we’d all watch The Hobbit before landing in New Zealand and going to Hobbiton — and the girls and Jim made good on that promise. I watched the first half hour and just couldn’t stay awake. Apparently, I declared it a terrible movie before my Nyquil Zzzzz's kicked in, but at least I saw the Hobbit land that we will be seeing later this week.