Goodbye Joe

Joe is currently on his way to Korea. It was cut pretty fine as he only got his visa the day before he left after going to the Korean embassy in Wellington on three consecutive days.

Most of what he needed to do got done beforehand, we just have a few things to pack up and store and his falling apart car (which legally belongs to Paul) to be given to a friend and ownership transferred.

This is the picture of our lounge the night before taken over with Joe's things that were not going to fit in his case - in fact he had to remove 3kg worth as he was overweight at the airport.

here's the family at the airport just before his flight - Sam kindly gave us a lift there and returned later to pick up Hannah (I think he is looking forward to fewer taxi duties once he's in Auckland)

Hannah was planning to see Joe in passing at Auckland airport as she was returning from a Coldplay concert. She was due to fly back on the plane Joe was getting off - there is a 20 minute turnround time so they would literally meet in the outdoor corridor on the way to the plane.

In the end her flight was changed to an earlier one so she just crossed planes with his mid-air though and didn't get to say goodbye.

One of Hannah's friends Dale had been at the Coldplay concert too and his plane back to Christchurch was delayed so he was able to meet Joe from the Palmerston plane and have lunch with him at the airport.

Then Beth went to the airport after work and had tea with Joe. She phoned at about 9pm when he had just gone through passport control (he had 11 hours in Auckland airport to get cheap flights!)

Today the removal van is packing up Sam and Anika's flat.

We move out in just over a week so are producing lots of rubbish. I went out to the bin today though and was amazed it was almost full already when the bins were only emptied yesterday.

Then I remembered asking Lily to take the recycling to the front to be collected yesterday ........ and sure enough she had taken the recycling out to the front but had then put it into the just emptied main bin!

We have also just heard about Lily's hearing aids - Does a cost of $4,600 seem somewhat excessive?