Welcome [bleh] to [huck] Canada!

It's great to have visitors from home, lucky for them they didn't 'get any on them' when our whole family (me excluded) started puking everywhere. Seriously, Jasmine got a stomach bug on Thursday and had Friday home from school. Then over the weekend Jo, Abbie and Cam picked up where Jazz left off.

On Friday the boys from work and I took an early day and headed off down to North York where a pub was showing the India Sri Lanka world cup match live. After the game, and Shyam almost getting beaten up by some irate Indian fans (well maybe not, they were pretty drunk, would have been lucky to hit the ground), I headed off to the airport to pick up the Reeves (Anth, Shane and 18 mo Josh) who were arriving from Melbourne to stay with us. Overnight Jo caught the bug and by lunchtime Abs had copped a dose herself. Our guests had picked a great time to roll up, by the evening Cam was down for the count too.

This was a pretty nasty one, really opening up the sluice gates at both ends [insert appropriate mental image]. Lucky for me my afternoon diet of beer, while watching Australia vs South Africa, appeared to keep the nasty bug at bay and I spent the day running the healthy kids to birthday parties and chuck-bowls to the rest of the family. Sunday had Jo and the kids if not out for the count then certainly still down so I drove Anth, Shane and Josh into Toronto and we hit the Eaton Center for some shopping. Sadly the poor weather prevented them from seeing the CN Tower, it's main deck hidden in the thick low cloud.

Yesterday our guests departed for a jaunt 'up the lake' to Ottawa, Montreal and perhaps Quebec City (dependent on how Josh likes/hates the 1600km round trip). At least they're away from our house of doom and don't appear to have caught anything from us while they were here. We'll see them at the end of the week, hopefully play some golf on the weekend and head over the border to the US for some bargain shopping at a massive factory outlet complex in New York state.

As I write this the Aussies have finished their innings against the West Indies and have posted a very nice 323/6 (Hayden slogging 158 with an SR of 110). I'm hoping to gte outa work shortly, get home and watch the 2nd innings, go aussies.

Andy, out.

From a Land Down Under

I think we're almost over our jet lag. It's pretty tough to fly half way around the world twice in two weeks and my old brain has been making me suffer. In addition to the normal time difference we came back to Toronto with daylight-savings having started, so all our clocks had to change as well. The time change was slightly in our favour jet-lag-wise so I guess we should be thankful.

I've had so many conflicting emotions over the last few weeks. It's taken me a few days to get my head back together before I could start posting anything coherent here. You can be the judge of how well I succeed.We left Toronto just before 7pm on a Wednesday, flew 5 hrs to LA and waited a couple of hours in the gate lounge for our Qantas flight to Melbourne. It was a trippy to hear all the aussie accents around us, far more aussies in one place than we'd experienced in 18 months. We chatted to various people, some returning from holidays, others in similar circumstances to ourselves and finally returning home after a long stay in North America. Our flight left on time with only one hitch, the in-flight entertainment system was on the blink meaning 15.5 hours in a confined space with little to do. In the end we had 5 seats and 4 working screens so we were better off than most. We left the kids to have working screens and Jo and I tag-teamed reading/sleeping with the other working screen. In all I think that we got an hour of so's sleep, the kids fared a little better getting several hours of kip. The sun chased us over the Pacific and won the race very slowly, dawn taking about an hour to fully break as we pushed 1,000 kph westwards. We landed in Melbourne around 9:30am Friday, having completely skipped Thursday due to the date-line, and immediately Jo and I commented on a slightly different smell in the air, not unpleasant at all, just the smell of home. Maybe it was simply due to the warm weather, we're not used to smelling too much in sub-zero temps.Customs was a hoot, I had insisted on bringing about 30+ cans of Canadian beer home with us to share with my aussie mates. Of course this was way more than the duty-free limit so I had to declare it. I knew that this was going to happen, what I didn't know was that one can had burst in the luggage and soaked some of the gifts. As soon as you declare anything you're up for a full quarantine inspection too, so every bag was x-rayed and hand searched. The kids wanted the bathroom and couldn't leave, Jo was steaming ever-so-slightly at my burst beer can and the officials were surprised to find yet another 6 pack of beer after I thought that they had everything (resulting in the need to re-calc the duty I had to pay), I was glad they believed me when I said I forgot how much beer I had and wasn't trying to get one past them.

So it was almost 11am by the time we got out of the airport and met up with my sister Trish, bro-in-law Kean and our favourite niece Ciara. The kids were really happy to see each other and we met our newest nephew Liam fore the first time, he being born while we were away. He's a sensation, just grinning away at us like he knew instinctively we were family.

I hadn't posted anything on the blog regarding our trip home and that might have left some of you wondering why. Jo's school girlfriends had organised a weekend away down at Ocean Grove and we thought it would be nice to surprise them by having Jo simply turn up unannounced. There were heaps of emails over the last several months that Jo received and had to reply 'Wish I could be there, have a glass of red for me', all the while knowing that she was going to turn up for that glass in person. So we headed for Burwood and Jo's parents where we'd quickly visit Stan and Barb, then leave Jo to be picked up by Fran (the only girlfriend who knew she was coming). The kids and I then headed back home to Monbulk and Jo scooted off down the coast for a few nights.Coming home was going to be pretty weird not matter what, the garden was looking great despite the drought, but everything had grown a lot. Inside looked more familiar but naturally Bill and Jess had some of their own stuff so it wasn't completely familiar, leaving me feeling a bit bewildered to mix with my exhaustion. Our good friends the van den Bergs dropped in to see us and Trish, Ciara and Liam turned up with the rest of our luggage. A few beers, fish and chips and an interupted nights sleep closed out the first day.

Now I'm not going to relate the entire 10 or so days, that's going to bore you to death, I think it's enough to say that our trip was in no way a holiday. There were so many people to catch up with, so many things to try to get done. In the end we still didn't get to see everyone we would have liked to, so if we didn't get to see you we're really sorry, there was only so much we could fit into a short trip. It was barbie after barbie, we made it to the beach once which was nice. In all I'd say that we arrived back in Toronto both sad to have left our home and glad to be back at home simultaneously (I told you it was a weird feeling). The cold weather is coming to an end, albeit slowly, and summer is on the horizon.

We don't know how much longer we'll be in Canada, but whether it's a month or another year we do know one thing for sure. It's something that I think everyone who travels for an extended period would agree with, this trip has made us fall in love with Canada and only made us love Australia more.

Andy, out.

Survivor : Pacific Crossing

It's a big ocean but we made it, we're now safely tucked away in our home-away-from-home in Oakville again, after 29 hours in transit, door-to-door. Not much to report other than the house is still standing, something was left in the bin that stank (quickly pushed through an airlock and replaced by vanilla flavoured air) and naturally kids/parents are tired and getting silly/snappy respectively. Hopefully should get a chance to d/l all the photos tomorrow and will put up a decent post. This is mostly to confirm that, while obviously far too big to fly, planes have been known to jaunt half way around the planet anyway (aviophobes be damned).See... that's what you get when I fly 16,000+ klms and then sit down in front of a keyboard...

Andy, out (like a light)

Peter Allen anyone?

We didn't arrive to the strains of "I Still Call Australia Home" but perhaps we should have. Some of you knew we were coming home for a visit but we wanted to keep it a secret from some of Jo's school friends as she appeared by surprise at a girly weekend away they had organised down at Ocean Grove yesterday afternoon. This leaves the rest of us now back home in Monbulk catching up with family and friends and settling into our house again for the first time in 18 months.

The flight across the pacific was long, 15 hours long, and although the kids were great (as usual) nothing is going to make crossing the worlds biggest ocean more than barely comfortable. To add to the challenge the entertainment system was on the blink and not everyone had access to the in-seat video on demand system. We were luckier than most, while only about 1 in 5 had a working set we had 4 between the 5 of us and only had to tag team one set. I got an hours or so's sleep, Jo about the same and the kids a few hours more each and we arrived tired but excited yesterday (Friday) around 9:45 in the morning. Customs was a drag, mostly due to the fact that I had packed about 30+ cans of Canadian beer that put us over the duty-free limit. I knew it was going to happen and was happy to pay the extra duty, just wasn't counting on such a delay at the airport while a) the duty was calculated and b) qaurantine went through everything with a fine tooth comb. One of the beer cans had burst and sprayed right through one of the suitcases, soaking some of the gifts and all the clothes and this made Jo more than a little annoyed with me. I told her this would make the beer taste even better knowing the effort and sacrifice involved in getting it here, frankly I don't think she was too amused.

Anyway that's enough for now, I'll upload some photos as soon as I can but I don't have an internet connection at home (I'm writting this on my dads system). Time for lunch with the folks on a warm 36 degree day and then perhaps some swimming and a BBQ later tonight just to get back into the groove.

Andy, out.