Home!

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind three days since we arrived home on Tuesday morning. We had a lovely welcoming party at the airport with lots of family and friends coming to greet us; it was especially awesome to have Michelle, Louisa, and Kristy all in the same place at the same time, so we could get the triple belly photo!

Our first coffee in the country was from Vagelis on Racecourse Road, and it was great! It’s nice to be back in a country where most places that have an espresso machine actually know how to use it!

We’ve got a “to do” list that seems to get new tasks added to it faster than we can check them off, but we’ve been doing our best to keep it manageable. So far we’ve swapped my UK driver’s licence back to a Queensland one (which is much easier than going the other way around), re-enrolled in Medicare, been furniture shopping (still loads of this to do!), got new mobile numbers (e-mail me if you want them!), and started the process of changing Kristy’s name over to “Thomas”.

We got another tick today with two hospital appointments at RBH for the baby, and we were delighted with how helpful the staff were. Kudos to the Australian medical system, and especially our midwife “Meg” who, when asked, “When should we come into hospital after labour has begun?”, replied with, “Well, it all depends how you’re crackin’ on, really”. “Cracking on” then came up a number of times in conversation after that. Gold.

We also saw our new home for the first time on Tuesday afternoon, and we love it! The puppies were even there to greet us! I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rooms are a bit bigger than I had imagined, and the yard is miles bigger than I had imagined! Mom and Dad have done an amazing job bringing the place up to scratch, with loads of yard work, painting, tidying, and fixing happening in the months before we moved. We’ll have to come up with something amazing to pay them back – suggestions welcome!

Most of our stuff which has been living underneath our collective parents’ houses for the last 6 years has also been transported over to our new house. It’s going to take us quite a while to work through all the boxes!

It’s been funny to find some of the things that at least one of us must have thought that we’d want to keep. After opening about seven boxes, I think we’ve opted to keep about two of them, donate about three, and at least two of them are rubbish. I don’t know if our poor taste is to blame for keeping so much junk; though as Kristy’s Dad pointed out, since we left in such a hurry, sorting through everything probably wasn’t near the top of our priority list.

And, even though there’s a lot of junk in there, it’s been exciting to rediscover the cool possessions which we had forgotten about! It’s kind-of like an early Christmas – boy, do we own some awesome coffee mugs!

More photos of the house to come, but in the mean time, here’s some photos from our holiday in Cornwall, and our three days in Hong Kong. Enjoy!

View the Cornwall album on Picasa or on Facebook.

View the Hong Kong album on Picasa or on Facebook.