Home Again!!

Hello All,

It is Wednesday evening at 11:27 pm in Atlanta.........it has been Wednesday for us for a very long time! Hopefully this last blog finds you all well.........no matter what country you live in!!

After flying from Christchurch to Auckland, we had a long but uneventful flight on Air New Zealand from Auckland to Los Angeles. Interesting how you have to move from one terminal to another in a lot of these cities if you are going from a domestic flight to an international flight. We were so thankful for the smart carts (well they call them that in Atlanta) to put our luggage on as we had to make about a 10 minute walk between terminals in Auckland to get on an international flight and then when we got to LA we had to do the same after going through customs and picking up our bags to get to the domestic terminal to board a Delta flight home.

Ron, Ken and Whitney met us at the airport and we stopped for a Starbucks on the way home. Upon arriving at our house Duff got his big surprise! While we were gone Ken oversaw a project I had requested. We have a new sprinkler system and a new lawn. They relocated a tree for us and now we just pray that the new lawn will not die before 'taking root'!! Atlanta is going thru a real drought and the county had threatened to turn off our water due to the sprinkling. (I guess a neighbor reported us while we were gone) However, there is an ordinance that new landscaping can water for a period of time.....who knew my timing would be soooo bad!

Our other surprise was all the work our daughters-in-law had done here. We had a welcome home basket and the essentials of food in the house and it is decorated for fall! Sweet welcome home signs everywhere and Michelle had cleaned the garage and by giving away some of our furniture from the basement (with our permission) we now have room to walk around down there. Looks like someone did up the laundry that was dirty when we left!
We are really blessed to have the family we do! Philip just called and they will be by tomorrow.

We cannot put into words how wonderful our trip was...........hopefully you have enjoyed it along with us and just ask us....we have pictures!!
Mary and Jim