Back in Canada Week 2

We're getting there. BigC and I are getting in to the groove of his morning routine. He was early to school 3 mornings this week, exactly on time once and had to get a late slip once. Considering I am aiming at a slim 10 minute drop off window (8:29 is too early , 8:30-8:39 is early and at 8:41 it's all over) I figure we're not doing too badly.

In the first two weeks we've gotten kids signed up for pizza programs, field trips, and even some extra curriculars.

 It's possible that I completed a skating excursion permission form at a red light this week. Whatever man.

 Monkey left his ski helmet, helmet liner, goggles and face mask at his ski club LAST WEEK and we didn't figure it out until this week. All but the goggles have turned up.

We're getting there. My car is back and currently runs. The key fobs for Dave's car work sometimes. We still don't have a functioning chest freezer, but the temperatures have stayed well below freezing so this continues to be at the bottom of the list. The hot water tank quit yesterday (third time in 5 months) but came back on with a system reset. The powder room toilet doesn't flush worth...well, you get the idea.

I said possibly the least Canadian phrase this week at Canadian Tire. I swear the dude helping me almost took my passport.

We have mounted 15 feet worth of ladders to the basement ceiling to use as monkey bars. When I was at Canadian Tire buying strapping the clerk suggested that we wrap the parts under the strapping with hockey tape to reduce noise. I looked at him, and before I could even think, I said "do you sell hockey tape here?" My uncle has worked for Canadian Tire for like 40 years and would have likely laughed his head off if he'd heard this stupidity!

My (slightly longer than a year) term as a domestic goddess will be coming to an abrupt an final end in a few days. This means that our final stage of reintegration will be complete. Our lives will be normal and no longer blog worthy.  We will retreat in to the anonymity of being normal.  It's been fun sharing this journey with so many of you from this side of the keyboard. From here on in if you want to know how things are going, you'll need to hang out with us.

Canadian Return day something or other

Week 2 of our return to the great white north. How is it going?

There is SO MUCH TO DO. It seems to not end! We've been triaging things that need to be addressed. An example of this would be the freezer. We discovered that it is broken upond our return home. No easy fix seems to be imminent. This is not something that an Ottawa family needs to address with any real urgency in January or February. We've set 3 Rubbermaid totes out on the back step. Last night I set out some pre-packed lunch portions to freeze and it snowed on them!

January in Ottawa means a return to winter running for me. I slapped some tape on my kicks to block out the wind and slush 

and pulled my layers out of storage. The weather has been nice and mild as I've been breaking myself in. It's possible that I'm doing the Polar Hero obstacle course race this weekend. Why not?

Driving is getting easier and easier. I don't have to think very hard any more to stay in the correct lane. I do still need to focus before signaling or turning on the windshield wipers!!

The boys are adapting well to school and are getting caught up.  Today marks the last of the catch up medical appointments. We saw their pediatrician and the dentist this arvo afternoon.

Our trips

For those of you coming after us who would like to know about the trips that we took, here you go. The links will take you to our full itineraries.  You can search back through the blog for the corresponding write ups.

First school break-Tasmania and Melbourne

Second School Break trip: Queensland

Third School Break: Darwin

Christmas Holiday: New Zealand 

Return to Ottawa Day 3 and 4

Driving.

We went through a step learning curve when we went to Australia. We are now having to remember how to drive in North America! I am back to turning on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal and trying to remember to look for oncoming traffic in the correct spot. It makes my head hurt!!

I have mistaken two way streets for one way streets based on the location of oncoming traffic. I have had to chant to myself "remember, driver in the middle of the road, driver in the middle of the road".

I have flashed my high beams in the middle of the day at random, while trying to squirt windshield washer fluid.

I have asked myself questions about what I left in the car. I found old parking stubs, random tissues...and a head lamp. A head lamp? What on earth did I need that for in the car? And why did I leave it in there for the year?

Both cars needed new batteries after spending such a long time outside without any long road trips. Dave's car had been stored in the garage at our place, but the Australian exchange family damaged it in storage and said they would continue to damage it further if we didn't move it.

Dave's key fobs, bluetooth and such are still not responding as they should be. My car is happy as a clam with her new battery. She recognizes my key fob and the Bluetooth synced seamlessly as soon as I got in the car.  I've always loved my car!

Driving is getting easier with each passing day. I've had to do it a lot as I've had a tonne of errands to do with the kids as we get ourselves organized.

Return to Ottawa Day One

We got a couple of hours sleep our first night. My mom awesomely offered to bring us breakfast, which we graciously accepted.

The boys were over the moon to get pemeal back for the first time in a year, while Dave and I swooned over the frittata and Montreal style bagels. Thanks so much mom!

The first order of business was to get the cars registered with the province again. Mom dropped me off to do that while going to get ski boots for Monkey.

I put the sticker on my plate only to have it immediately fall off. It is winter in Ottawa after all! Getting the faulty sticker replaced was a 2+ hour ordeal. We clearly need a new system!!  A sticker won't stick to a cold metal license plate people!!  It isn't reasonable. I am keeping the replacement sticker in my purse for now. I'm waiting for the first warmish day to put that sucker on!!

We have spent a tremendous amount of time unpacking and trying to locate all of our stuff. The house was wonderfully clean when I got home, which was awesome! I then took many of the boxes and bins of stored items and overturned them so I could sort through them.

This is an excellent opportunity to organize everything since NOTHING is in the correct spot at this point.

Aside from finding some of my stored Lululemon items in one of the upstairs bedroom closets (where the teenaged daughter had stayed) our stored items seemed to be as we had left them.

Having anticipated that our cupboards might be bare when we got home, mom was back again at dinner time with Mac and cheese, more pemeal bacon and lava cakes. Awesome! Thanks so much mom!

The first full night that we were home we were each up for a few hours in the middle of the night. I was starving at 3am!

Unpacking has caused me to ask myself quite a few questions about the things that I packed up a year ago. Like, why did I store all of the children's teeth? It's creepy! They are not even all in the same place. There were quite literally 8-10 different places that I've found teeth. If I had died and someone else had unpacked this stuff they would have some serious questions about just what the hell I was up to.

The Return Trip

I've been asked to document our return and re-integration. Time had been at a premium the last few days, but I'll start getting them up now :)

We knew that we were close to our luggage allowance on all fronts and so we spent the day of departure weighing and re-packing as best we could. 

When we got to the airport in Auckland there was an airport scale for the public to use-score!! We got every bag right up to he limit of 23kg. When the attendant checked us in each was slightly over and I suspect we got an extra 1kg smuggled on across all of the bags-winning!!

 We flew Air New Zealand from Auckland to Vancouver. It was a great flight and was uneventful. We took some meds to help us sleep and each got a few hours of rest.

In Vancouver we had 5 hours to clear customs and grab some Timmies. It was delicious and we felt very patriotic as we consumed it!

 Vancouver to Ottawa was with Air Canada. What a difference from Air NZ! Terrible service and surly staff. Just as I remember them.

 Suddenly we were flying over the Vimy Bridge!

 We had a number of friends who offered to pick us up at the airport but my parents insisted on being at the airport whether they were driving us home or not. I think they were a bit eager to get their hands on those boys!!!

I of course, was very excited to be home in an Ottawa winter and wrapped in a nice warm jacket.

Or not that...

NZ day 32-Auckland

The plan for today was to accomplish very little. We mostly pulled it off.

I brought BigC down to the beach so he could play in the sand and I could do a quick workout. 

I found this cute little cove with some good sized rocks to work out with. 

The tide was slowly coming in while we were there. By the end I was doing push ups and lunges with the water lapping my feet. It felt great...until I became aware of an intense pain on the top of my foot. It didn't quit so I finally took a look. Sure enough there was a little jellyfish attached to my foot. Jerk.

 Five minutes later as we were wading back out of there I bashed the same foot on a rock. The photo below shows the tiny spot where the jellyfish kissed me. The rest of the marks were all rock related.

 Later in the day this window FELL OFF the side of the place where we are staying.

 Amazingly it didn't smash!

 We fly home tomorrow. We have emptied the back of the car and are busily packing up and weighing bags. We have a strict 23kg and 1 bag allowance per passenger before carry on. Extra weight or an extra bag will cost $200. It all matters at this stage!!

NZ Day 30 - Auckland - Rainbow's End

If you don't know that Monkey is  roller coaster fiend then I am not even sure why you are checking this blog...to say that he was excited for this day to come is one of the single most understated things on this blog.

 First ride of the day and we got the front row!!

 Of course we had to try the back row as well...

Look, I'm not suggesting that this park is the cause of the hole in the ozone layer...but we burned a lot of fuel riding race cars, lapping cars and bumper boats. At points in the day I felt a bit fuzzy in my head from the gas we'd been inadvertently huffing. 

 BigC was the surprise race winner most of the races that we did.

I don't have a video (since I was on the course at the time laughing and shaking my head) but the biggest child (like the really tall one, not the medium sized one) may have been trying to pass the shortest one and spun him out causing the yellow flags to wave while the attendants had to come and flip the 9 year old's car back the right way.

There is a race track and a just driving track where you are not allowed to pass (apparently passing can cause problems, who knew...)

You get to do two laps, if you're really slow they pull you over after one lap and let everyone pass you. Monkey got pulled over!!!  He was horrified! We laughed our heads off. He's getting *better* at rolling with such laughter.

So there is this ride that lifts you up high, spins all the riders around in a big circle and then spins the pairs around in circles as well. Or something like that. It was fun-once.

Oh bumper boats. It's bumper cars but with more gas huffing. Look, I wore a skirt to the park. Oh how very Britney Spears of me. Nubs and bobs all over the place. I had to grab the jumper from my bag and use it as a visual shield.

There is no way to do this ride and not get soaked.

Every time I was just starting to feel the my backside was almost dry one of this children would decide we should return to bumper boats. Bless. 

When the effects of gas huffing were wearing down we would be back on the race cars.

 And so on.

Tomorrow we intend to accomplish nothing. We know that the next few weeks will be absolutely nuts, so we plan to take it easy.