The Land of Aus

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How good it was to be home again! I'm sure Adam was apprehensive about the long flight ahead as he watched his very overtired wife become increasingly hyperactive and over-excited at the very thought of boarding the plane to carry them home! I was however on my best behaviour for the flight, entertaining myself (while managing not to drive Adam too nuts) for the entire 23 hour journey.

The touchdown at Sydney was magic...coming out of the arrival gates to our family waiting...priceless. And while we arrived back to tales of the pitiful summer had by all, and witnessed first hand the torrential down pours arriving at random, followed by the wind and then eventually sunshine again, it was still so wonderful to be back where the air is warm and smells like rain and cut grass, where the sky is blue and the sun does shine, and where all our friends and family are!

In our whirlwind 18 sleeps back home, we travelled between Sydney, Newcastle and Tamworth...We saw coast and bush and dirt and big city skyscrapers. We ate pumpkin and meat pies and caramello koalas and drank good aussie wine, beer and many many cups of chai!We celebrated our third wedding anniversary right back where it all began...feasting on an enormous sefood platter and feeling pretty lucky to be 'home' in that moment in time.

Best of all though, we saw so many of the people we love and got to share in so much of the good stuff...our friends becoming parents and the joys of babies having arrived into the world (and those still on their way!)...saw how much the children of our friends have grown (which of course could only make us feel old as we remembered holding them as newly arrived infants!)...heard news of new jobs and uni successes...watched 'for sale' signs coming down on houses as our friends created their 'first homes'...celebrated all the missed events of the past 12 months with dinner dates and chai dates and beers and cheers on a sunny Sunday afternoon. What a great life we're living!!!

Flying out again after such a wonderful visit was, of course, a cause for tears. Adam held up well, largly because he was preoccupied with a very emotional wife who cried big fat silent tears from the moment we arived at the boarding gate through the first hour of the flight. Hmm...it never gets easier! But consolation came from what our visit confirmed (and what we've always known)...that we have an amazing home to return to...one day. Til next time xxx

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