We're off to NZ!

We weren't intending to go to NZ for a good few years, having been there multiple times over the past few years, between the milestone birthdays of my grandparents as well as their respective funerals. But we had an offer too good to refuse.

First a bit of backstory. My cousin K lives in Christchurch with her partner G, and two young sons. She's had an, um, interesting twelve months (in the sense of the ancient curse: May you live in interesting times).

First, there was the quake on 4 September 2010, which fortunately did little damage ("Mum, why is a dragon trying to land on the roof?"). Then a fortnight later, K had a seizure resulting in the discovery of a serious, but mercifully benign, brain tumour. Surgery was able to remove most of it, and other than the instability caused by the wobble-inducing anti-seizure meds and the frequent aftershocks, things weren't too bad.

K had a post-surgery MRI to assess progress on 21 Feb. However, a deadly and destructive quake struck Christchurch the next day, 22 February 2011 (which meant that K's scan didn't get formally read until early April). Oh, and a week before, Dad managed to go arse over tit over the handlebars of his mountain bike, resulting in some impressive injuries which meant he couldn't do the farm stuff (mowing, pruning, digging etc).

So the folks brought K & G and their boys over to Oz: G (a landscape gardener) did the farm stuff that Dad couldn't, and they all got a couple of weeks' break from living in a disaster zone (no power, no running water, no sewerage, no schools, few navigable roads, and the odd nearby cliff threatening to fall off).

Anyway, the folks had organised tickets for the four of them to come back over the ditch for another fortnight or so of R&R, starting 20 July. However, that would mean delaying the second round of K's surgery, necessary to remove the remaining bit of tumour that couldn't be got last time. Instead they have chosen to schedule K's surgery for June, which means she can't fly for a good few months afterwards. So rather than let the flight lapse (cheapie flight so no refunds), Dad has transferred the booking into our names.

TL:DR - we're off to Queenstown in mid-July to go skiing for a week, flying back CHC-MEL on 20Jul11, because my cousin has had a shit year and can't.