Home Sweet Home

It's been a week since we arrived back home in Canberra. The flights were long but fine. We all managed to get some sleep and entertain ourselves with the movies and games on offer. Proving once again how small the world is, we bumped into a friend at the playground in terminal 3 at Singapore Airport who was also returning home to Canberra after a school holiday European adventure. The airbus 380 from Singapore to Sydney was a dream - so quiet and smooth plus we had the bonus of sitting all together in the middle 4 seats.

Sydney airport was also quiet which meant a record time (according to travel expert Andy) through immigration and customs before locating our hire car for the short drive to Canberra. Sydney was much warmer that expected but as we continued driving south we watched the temperature gauge slowly drop from 14ºC to 9ºC when we arrived in Canberra. Winter was truly here - grey drizzly and bitterly cold!

The girls became excited as they began to recognise familiar landmarks. Eventually they went nuts as we passed Aranda Primary School and drove into our suburb Cook! I suppose we didn't realise how much they really missed the place they call home. We were greeted by Diego and a very excited Pippa.

We were very grateful to Isa and Diego for looking after our house - it was spotless when we arrived. It only took a short time for the home to become a bomb site. Christmas had come early for the girls who discovered all their toys again spreading them everywhere along with our luggage!

Our plan was to stay up for as long as we could to avoid jet lag. Slowly we began the process of unpacking before tucking into the fresh bread and homemade italian bean soup Isa and Diego had so kindly organised. It hit the spot for us tired travellers on such a wintery day.

We'd hoped to join Belinda for her 40th birthday afternoon tea celebrations, but by 2.30pm I'd had it, deciding to have an hour cat nap. Andy's parents arrived to play with the girls while we took the hire car back to the airport. According to Andy though I couldn't be woken from my slumber so he went with his Dad.

Ella was next to crash at 4.30pm followed by Katy at 5pm and Andy making it til 5.30pm! Needless to say I was wide awake up at 2am and was beginning to wonder what I was going to do until I was interrupted by Katy who needed the toilet and an hour later by Ella. Eventually at 4.30am we were up eating breakfast.

This early morning pattern continued with the girls taking it in turns to wake up early. Finally by Friday we had our first sleep in - waking up at 5.50am!