Well, we made it. Can you believe it, ladies and gentlemen? We’ll have a quick post here to wrap up the end of the year’s adventures, and then up next will be a post all about our thoughts and reflections from the past 6 months. This one’ll be quick as a lot of you reading are also folks that we’ve seen since we returned, so you already know some of what we’ve been up to!

Last Sunday, Brian worked on his blog post all day. We were delighted to have a “home” for a few days at our dear friends Tom and Juliana’s place. It was unfortunate that they were leaving town for Christmas right when we arrived but it was great to see them for a little while. Our first family-related visit was back to mum’s. Brian shot a video of our return to see how the animals would react. The dogs didn’t disappoint but surprisingly it was Coco who seemed the most elated to see us! How sweet. After we were able to push our way past our adoring fans, we got through to see some human family too. Mum had prepared a lovely roast beef dinner which Tom and Kassie came over to enjoy with us. It was great to catch up and give hugs and share stories from both sides about the things that we’d each missed out on in each others’ lives over the past half a year. And of course, the food was delicious. Later in the evening we headed back to Tom and Juliana’s to have Maddison over… and to spend some time with the cats. Such fun!

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On Monday morning we decided it was finally time to do something with our unruly hair! Brian assisted me in trimming up the back of my hair, as the mullet was getting a little old. It was nerve-wracking giving Brian a pair of scissors and the freedom to snip where I couldn’t see. Thankfully it paid off. I proceeded to bleach my hair a little bit and Brian trimmed up his bushy beard. I gave him a few tidying up snips in return and we resembled members of a civilized society once again! We spent the rest of the day making our rounds and visiting some other family members – Brian’s brother Jason first, and his two younger children who were at home with him at the time. Next we were off to visit his sister Carla and her family who were in the process of working on the location of her new business (super exciting! Find it here). We stopped by Dad & Dave’s and stayed there for a good few hours, regaling them with tales and catching up on all kinds of topics that we haven’t had a chance to discuss since our departure. It was great being back and, of course, seeing yet another excited dog who was ecstatic to see us!

Tuesday was mostly a lazy day until the evening. As it was Christmas Eve we were due to go to Bill and Denise’s for games and soups and white elephant! Brian and I were glad to finally stop carrying our white elephant gifts around. They’d travelled quite a way with us on the road. Again we got to see more family members who we’d been missing and it was lovely to catch up! Great food with great people and great fun, as always. Plus, I think everyone ended up with a white elephant gift they liked! What a success!

On Christmas morning we were up earlier than we have been for MONTHS to see Aiden and Liam open their presents. It was a weird but warm feeling to see a tree with a pile of presents stuffed underneath, reminiscent of childhood christmases gone by, and to not feel that excitement and urge to start ripping into all the packages immediately! Instead the excitement was for the little guys whose turn it was now to work their way through the gifts, occasionally passing one off to a parent or grandparent or sibling on their course for total gift-wrap destruction. They did pretty well if you ask me. We ate some delicious breakfast bake and synonym rolls while the boys did their thing. Soon it was time to go back to our “home” for the moment so we could shower and make ourselves presentable for the rest of the day’s festivities (surely you didn’t think we had done that before leaving the house at 7am?) We visited Brian’s family and were severely tempted to stay and jump on the trampoline that Chris was putting together in the back yard…but perhaps another time! It was time to head back to the dads’ house for a Christmas dinner spectacular. We were the first to arrive…and ultimately the last to leave, as we pretty much are the party 😄 It was a lovely afternoon of delicious food, pretty piano tunes, games with family, long talks, and a successful secret Santa gift exchange. We’re so glad we were able to make it home in time for Christmas and are incredibly grateful for the warm reception we got on our return. Love you guys!

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I won’t go into the rest of the week in any great detail – the important parts were reunifications and holidays, after all. The rest of the week went pretty much as follows: spent time with lots of friends, new and old; learned what a kendama is, and how addicting they are; went ginger again; helped with construction of several pieces of IKEA furniture; visited places we’ve been to lots of times and places in town that we’ve never been to before; and Brian ate his first ever slice of Banoffee pie (which I made for the first time ever!) I was a bit surprised by how quickly we’ve slotted right back into a routine and sense of normalcy and feeling “at home” again. Sometimes it feels like we never left, but of course this blog proves otherwise. We’ll be staying with mum for the time being until we find a place to live. Along with finding a new job (for me) and going back to the office again (for Brian), this will be our goal as soon as possible now that the new year is here – time to get back to business, unfortunately! Stay tuned for the final post about our closing thoughts and messages. Until then, it’s TTFN ❤️

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