My Friend Jacqui

My friend Jacqui came in from New Zealand! We had a wonderful visit. My family picked her up from the airport two weeks ago. When we got there we were hoping we were in the right place. I went over and was talking to a security guard and Megan goes, “mom there she is”. She saw us jumping up and down and started walking really fast towards us. We hugged and cried and it was the most amazing thing. We thought we would never see each other after 6th grade and there she was 32 years later. We stayed up and talked for a long time the first night.

Since I am still recovering from surgery I was pretty limited to what we could do but we did end up going out with the help of my family because I couldn‘t drive. My mom took us on our first shopping trip and we had so much fun. I used the carts they have in the stores so I didn’t have to walk. We also went to the zoo and to Frankenmuth and Megan pushed me around in a wheelchair.

One night I planned a get together at the local bar for all the “kids” in the neighborhood she knew. It was so much fun. She got to see everyone and we all had such great memories of when she lived here.   We also had a get together and had a fire in the back yard and she had her first s’more!  I told her she had to take that tradition back to New Zealand with her. She didn’t know what a graham cracker was but she thinks she can find something similar in the store.

Everything is so much cheaper. It was hard for her to walk in a store and not buy something because of the price. She came with 2 suit cases but one was empty. When she left both were full and we had to weigh them to make sure she wasn’t over the limit for the plane because she shopped so much.

Another thing is the food. She tasted a Nacho Cheese Chalupa from Taco Bell and said…”this is beautiful!” Can you imagine no Taco Bell?

My family enjoyed her so much. She fit right in with us. She is the most amazing person. There was not one uncomfortable moment between us. Jeff said yesterday evening that he already misses her. He had so much fun with her. He said he is going to really miss not having her here.

We took her to the airport yesterday at 12:15. It was really hard to say goodbye. We cried at the fact that we really don’tknow if we will ever see each other again. When we talked about how sad it would be to say goodbye she said, “let’s just be thankful for the time we have now,” which is so true. I am so glad she made this trip. She traveled for a whole day just to be here and I will never forget the fun we had.

I am tracking her plane and it is landing in New Zealand in 6 minutes. I know she is going to be so excited to see her family. She is going to have so many stories to tell them. We developed all of her pictures on Saturday so she could show them to her family as soon as she got home.

We had such a nice visit. I hope I can go to New Zealand one day.

Her plane just landed in New Zealand!! She is probably running to see her family.  :)