Life can be weird sometimes...

Well, here it is December already and November was kinda... quick, hectic and surreal,  you’ll see what I mean?!...

From Rarotonga

Yay!! Finally the container has arrived.  The kids have a few thoughts which I forced them to write down and here they are:

Morganne - It was fantastic! It was spantudieus! I almost cried for happiness that day! That is all. >;)

Tere - When the container got here, I was happy.  I finally found my Bionicle.  My room is a mess now.

Alina - Packing the container wasn't fun, and neither was waiting for it.  When it arrived, it was fun again... then we had to unpack it. =(

Connor - Hmmm.... it was a mixture of emotions, aheh. For the most part, there was a relieved sort of happiness, (it didn't wind up in the ocean, yay!), accompanied by a small sense of dread, (that's a lot of boxes to unpack).

I was glad when the container arrived as well.  Now we could finally starting making our rental place feel like home.  However, there was the added pressure of trying to locate the gear Ina needed for work.  We had about 5 days from when the container arrived at our place until the day Ina flew out.  Fortunately, all the lists that Alina and I had made came into play and we were able to find everything.  We unloaded the BBQ and Ina's big leather chair in the first day.  By the end of day two the container was unloaded and the house and carport were full of boxes, bins and packages.  It looked like home!!  We slowly worked our way through everything and Connor made the comment that every time he came back from work, it looked more like home.  Ina flew out on Saturday and the living room was pretty much set up.  By the end of last week, (25th Nov), Alina and I had all the boxes unpacked in the house.  The room that is to be Connor's is full and the carport isn't as spacious as it was.  Looks like we'll have to rent storage space so Connor gets his room back.  Alina and I have IKEA furniture left to assemble and a few more boxes from Connor's room to unpack.  It is definitely feeling more like home.  Next thing will be the Christmas decorating before Ina gets home.  Things are slowly moving ahead.

P.S.  The other day we had a problem with the oven when we were trying to make a banana cake so we used the BBQ instead and it tasted great!!  It only took 1/2 an hour too! We're going to try brownies next. Amazing how quickly you think of things once you have batter in a pan and no oven to cook in.

From Canada

You might have guessed from the previous paragraph that I’m back in Canada working right now?!.  We have a couple of major family functions coming up in New Zealand in March so took the opportunity to go make some extra money.  Continuing to work away from home to make this move and our house in Atiu happen, has always been a part of the plan but now that we’re at that stage... it’s a little surreal.  Whoever said dreams are free is right, but making them happen... well, that’s something else altogether.

It’s always hard leaving family but the big plus this time was seeing family.  Stopped in with Mark, Sharleen, Cameron and Caitlyn and that was cool.  Cameron showed me his room after redecorating with flags from Rugby World Cup countries.  They had recently returned from 2011 RWC in New Zealand where Cameron made it his mission to get as many flags as he could from where ever they visited...

Anyways, I’ll see them again on my way home for Christmas.

Being away from family is never easy, life isn’t easy either sometimes... but then, if it was and you never had to work to achieve anything... what would be the point?

Nuff said for now