Carolina Christmas

After our adventures in Hawaii, we made it back to North Carolina to spend the holidays with our family and friends. It was a whirlwind trip, but that always seems to be the case with these visits!

We arrived on Friday, December 20th and found out that afternoon that we would, in fact, officially be moving home on April 1st instead of August 1st!! Merry Christmas to us!! Long story short, Drew's boss from Raleigh had requested that he be part of an audit team for a huge new client and their schedule required his presence a few months early. Obviously, this is a huge career opportunity for him, and even though I will be very sad to leave New Zealand for good, we are both extremely excited about all that awaits us back home! So after we got that great news, we had dinner with Drew's parents and Megan and Drew got in some quality bonding time with Raleigh.

The next day we got up early and went house hunting! It was already on our schedule, but with our new moving date we decided to look a little more seriously. My parents came over and Becky decided to join us as well and we saw some great houses. The second house we saw was one I found online a few months back and kept my fingers crossed that it wouldn't get sold. It must have been fate because we saw the rest of the houses and then went back to the favorite and knew that it was meant to be. We took a break to have lunch and our friends, Kurt & Haley, joined us on their way through town which was great!


We put in our offer and 2 hours later our realtor called me and said 'you'll never believe this, but the sellers accepted your offer AS IS!' We got through the rest of the paperwork and then got to tell everyone we bought a house!



That night, we had a family dinner with everyone to celebrate my birthday and Charlie's and it was a great time all around.

We headed to Greensboro the next day and got to tell my parents our great news--obviously they were very excited! We got to eat at some of our favorite restaurants, do some shopping, see the Christmas lights and relax with all of our puppies! On Monday, I got to have coffee and catch up with an old high school friend, Margot, that I literally haven't seen in a decade. It was so great to catch up with her--although an hour was definitely not long enough to catch up on ten years apart! While I was waiting for her, I also ran into my old church buddy, Fil Anderson, and got to chat with him for a bit. Gotta love small town Greensboro!



Christmas Eve, we headed back to Raleigh and took Drew's parents to our church for their Christmas Eve service. It was great...as usual...and they even had a snow machine outside for the kids (and adults) to play in--so cool! Afterwards, we stopped by Catey & Ken's house for a bit and met up with Nick & Megan to head to dinner at Fleming's. Drew was still not feeling well so he opted to go home and rest instead--to his dismay, no one told him the alarm had been set at the house so he was great with that and couldn't figure out how to turn it off...oops! After dinner, we headed home and watched 'The Night They Saved Christmas'--not my favorite tradition, but Drew loves it so we suffer through it :)




On Christmas, all the Peters gang headed over and we opened gifts and a delicious lunch. Then we did our White Elephant swap with everyone and had lots of yummy desserts. After that, Drew & I headed to Greensboro again to surprise my family who thought we weren't coming until the next day. We exchanged gifts with everyone there and then opted for Chinese food since it was the only place open. Turns out that was a horrible decision because they food was barely edible--oh well!




We spent the next two days in Greensboro hanging out with the fam, eating too much, and taking 'Cards Against Humanity' on a test drive which was hysterical.



Then on Friday we took Leigh back to the airport in Raleigh and headed to the Carolina Hurricanes game with the Peters clan.
 


That weekend, Drew was finally feeling better and I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I stayed in bed all day while Drew lounged around the house and snuggled with his dog. We just took it easy the rest of the weekend before things picked up again on Monday. We got the inspection done on our house which yielded great results and my friend, Zandy, came by to help with decoration ideas. (She has her own design company in Raleigh--AO2 Designs--and does a great job if you're interested!)

We were supposed to go to the UNC/UNCW basketball game on New Year's Eve, but it didn't work out between not feeling well and my dad's crazy work deadlines. So we ended up going to Catey & Ken's with the rest of Drew's siblings and had a great, cozy NYE celebration at home.

The next day we got everything together and my parents came over to have dinner with everyone before it was time for us to head off. Drew got his second illness of the trip late on NYE and was completely out of commission for 3 days--poor guy! Luckily, our trip back to Auckland was smooth and easy and once Drew woke up on the plane, he was feeling better.

So between the driving, the presents, the food, the shopping, the family dinners, buying a house, signing papers, looking at furniture and paint colors, test driving cars, and everything else--those two weeks at home absolutely flew by! It's still hard to believe that we have just over two months left in New Zealand before we're home for good. Stay tuned for my next blog post about my final thoughts for the past year...

Cheers,