Travelling through life's ups and downs

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I can't quite believe it’s been almost 2 years since we returned home after our 27 month trip around the world which we liked to think of as our honeymoon (although we're not sure how many other newlyweds end up in bunk-bedded dorms on their honeymoon!) This isn't a traditional ‘travelblog’ in the sense that it doesn’t really involve us visiting anywhere new and exciting.

Where do we start? Well, we rented our house out whilst we were away and, when we returned, our tenants wanted to stay on a couple more months. This suited us pretty well giving us time to find jobs and start to fill up our much drained bank account. Mark's sister and her husband kindly offered to put us up for a few weeks in their home in the beautiful Peak District town of Buxton. This was fantastic as it not only allowed us to spend some much longed for time with close family (not to mention our niece Lauren who'd arrived whilst we were away), it also meant we were close enough to Manchester to job hunt and catch up with old friends.

Over the first few weeks back in England we visited as many friends and family as we could, catching up on all we'd missed when we were away - weddings, births (another gorgeous niece Miranda), etc, etc. We had really missed everyone and it was amazing to catch up after such a long time apart. When getting back from a long trip, you always wonder how long it will be before you wish you were out on the road again. We'd been away for so long though that we didn't really get the travel bug again until months later. We were just revelling in seeing our nearest and dearest and loving sleeping in the same bed for more than 1 or 2 nights.

Having worried that the financial and employment crisis that had hit the world while we were swanning around it would cause us trouble getting back into our careers, we both settled quite quickly into new jobs. By October were back in our old home and in some ways felt we'd never been away. It's amazing just how quickly you become accustomed to the daily trials and tribulations of life at home.

On April 29th (the Royal Wedding Day) this year we welcomed the gorgeous Clara Louise into our lives. She truly is the most amazing thing to have ever happened to us and we can't wait to share the rest of our lives with our very special daughter.

With all this going on we haven't had the chance to do much in the way of travel, aside from visits to family and a last week away to Yorkshire before two became three. We have holidays planned within the UK in the next few months and hope to start Clara on the road to travel as soon as we can so that she can be inspired, as we have been, with the amazing experiences that this World of ours has to offer.

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