Home and Hosed

Seriously, I need a vacation. How can I say that after two weeks in Australia? Too easily I'm afraid. Don't get me wrong, we had a great time, for which we have heaps of people to thank, but don't get the idea that we relaxed much. Throughout the trip we had Cam almost floored with allergies and a broken wrist, Jazz got toncilitis, Abbie a bad tummy bug and Jo a cold. I survived in good health until we arrived back here in Canada and now I have a cold myself [sigh].

Anyways, enough complaining ffs. We went back home to Australia for two weeks and it was great! We left on Monday 22nd and after flying to LA we boarded Qantas' new A380 for the trip to Melbourne. The new aircraft is impressive to look at, larger than a 747 and very sleek. There have been reports of it being too quiet if you can believe it, the cabin noise apparently so low that people can hear each other talk from many rows away, removing the sense of privacy you feel with the roar of jets in your ears. I can say that the jet is quiet, much quieter than any others I've flown, but the steady drone of the engines is still there and load enough to mask conversations etc. The most disconcerting part of flying it is the take off when I was expecting the engines to spool up and make a real noise, they didn't really, the plane just accelerated forward with little increase in noise, a bit weird. Sadly with the economic downturn IBM has mandated coach travel even though we qualified for Business Class, so we didn't get to enjoy the new luxury appointments of the AirBus. But coach was still nice in a brand new plane, no wear and tear and spanking new touch wide-screen LCD's in each seat back showing heaps of entertainment on-demand. The last time we flew home the plane got straight to cruising altitude and they immediately served dinner (despite it being after midnight LA time) so we didn't feed the kids in LAX. But due to turbulence the cabin crew didn't serve any food until about 3 hours into the flight. This left the kids hungry and tired, so although I was able to scrounge some snacks for them we had to keep them awake longer than we would have liked.The 15 hour flight passed like 15 hours of watching grass grow, although a few VB's helped me through the pain. We all got a few hours sleep and I think we were all feeling pretty good by the time we touched down in Melbourne around 10am, a little late. It was nice to breeze through customs and immigration, especially after the last time :-). Marty VDB had offered to pick us up and there he was calling 'Stiffy!' as we exited customs, outstanding! That evening we had drinks with the VDB's, Hills and Flanagans, friends and cousins overjoyed at being back together finally.

Christmas Day was great, pretty much the whole Rhodes and Stiff families made it to Monbulk, the biggest gathering since Stan's 80'th a few years ago. Our local Oakville paper has a readers photos section where people take photos of themselves holding the paper in locations around the world. Bev had brought a young kangaroo that she was caring for and the kids had their photo taken with it and the front page of our Oakville local paper in hand. I've emailed the photo to the paper so hopefully the kids, and the roo, will be in the next issue. Trish and Kean put on a great spread, cleverly outsourcing the food from Kean's golf club. On Boxing Day I enjoyed watching some cricket for the first time in years and Trish and Kean headed off to a beach house for the week.Our plan was to meet up with the VDB's down at Corinella where they have a vacant lot and camp with them for a few days. We dusted off our camper, the kids helped alot with that, and we then drove down to Corinella in the Subaru. Once there Marty and I took his Rodeo back to Monbulk to pick up the camper as the Subaru doesn't have the guts to haul it. Finally we hooked up the trailer, troubleshot a tail-light/brake wiring issue and drove the camper back down to the beach. Three hour plus trips later I could finally relax. Unfortunately while the temp at Corinella was okay, in the low 20's, the wind kept blowing pretty hard keeping us off the water, and it rained each night. After a couple of days of this, and Jazz coming down with a mild case of tonsillitis, we decided to throw in the towel and break camp for New Years Eve in Monbulk.

So eventually the weather improved and we were able to hit the beach and Marty took us out on his boat for some fishing. Lots of flathead hit our hooks but only 8 or so were a good size out of our 50+ catches. The kids enjoyed the water, salt for a change :-), and we all got a little too much sun. In all we had a great trip, even though the kids had their bouts of sickness and we felt pretty tired the whole time. Thanks to our friends and family for making the trip so much fun and special thanks to Trish and Kean for really going out of their way to make us feel at home and working their butts off during their own holidays to make sure we were pointing in the right direction on a daily basis. We can't thank you guys enough.Now we're back in Canada and it's cold, we're getting more snow so far this year than we've had in any previous year. I used Eriks snow blower the other day and I have to admit it's much nicer than my shovel :-). Today I'm in Winnipeg again for another Mon-Thurs gig at Canadian Wheat Board. Thank goodness that it's not minus 49 this week, last week was tough to take as you might have seen from my tweets. Anyway we're back into it and all finally feeling well and in our normal routines. Next week we head off to Mt Tremblant for 3 days of skiing the big hill, can't wait for it!

Andy, out.