Breaking Radio Silence

Thanks for the welcome back comments. I’ve been too tired and exhausted to reply to you all, unfortunately. I have to admit that I felt very, very low when we first arrived back in South Africa. The jetlag, combined with a bad cold and really not wanting to leave Australia all contributed.

I’m feeling much better now, both physically and emotionally. I really do have the best husband in the world.  For most of last week he would come home for lunch and then send me to bed to rest for an hour or so.

I didn’t realise how much I missed just being in Australia until we arrived.  I got teary watching the galahs feeding in the gum trees. There is so much that Gorgeous Man and I take for granted that Gorgeous Girl is missing out on. Not to mention the fact that she is growing up removed from our friends and her grandparents and cousins.

Speaking of which, I’m not sure how the family would feel about being plastered all over my blog, so I’ve chosen some photos which show our experience without violating their privacy 🙂

Gorgeous Girl travelled really well. She had to sit on Gorgeous Man’s lap the entire way from Cape Town to Johannesberg.

She was so good that we were complimented on her behaviour by our (male) seat companion.

The plane from Johannesberg to Perth was the emptiest I’ve every been on. Every single person in economy class had at least one spare seat next to them. We had 4 seats between the three of us. Gorgeous Girl slept for about 4 – 4.5 hours of the 9 hour flight. The flight crew on this trip were great.

It rained the entire week we were in Perth, except for one day. We took advantage of that day to visit the wildlife park where my brother works. Gorgeous Girl got to feed kangaroos and pat a koala. (I made the jumper/sweater she is wearing).

Gorgeous Girl also had her first ever train ride in Perth (trains here aren’t really safe for travel). She was very taken with the train.

We also spent a night with Kerin. It was great to see her. She made us some beautiful scrapbooking pages for Gorgeous Girl, but they deserve their own post. It was also really good to sit with her and watch her work on scrapbooking pages because I’ve been interested in it for a while but haven’t quite known what to do. There may have been purchasing of supplies at a store that had 50% off everything in the store, but I’m not admitting to anything…

After Perth, we flew to Brisbane (we will not discuss this flight with an overtired child who only fell asleep on landing). We then drove to Grafton on the north coast of New South Wales to see Gorgeous Man’s father.

Gorgeous Girl had an awesome time.

She fed the wallaby.

This little female is wild, but comes up to the house twice a day for some bread. She is the second (at least) generation to do this. Her mother brought her when she was just a joey. She had a juvenile with her and a baby in her pouch. This is not normal in Australia, Gorgeous Man’s father and his wife live on quite a large rural property.

Gorgeous Girl also got to feed the chooks (chickens).

Pick mandarins off the tree and ride in the billy cart that Grandpa made.

Are you bored yet?

After Grafton, we headed back to Brisbane to spend some time with Gorgeous Man’s sister and her family and to see our friends. It was great catching up with everybody, but a lot of running around.

One last picture from the trip home.

Making use of the free eye mask 🙂

We nearly missed our connecting flight from Johannesberg to Cape Town due to some of our luggage not appearing and Gorgeous Man having to hunt it down. We literally had to run for the plane and were the last people to board. Not a situation I like being in…

Since this is still a craft blog I’m going to leave you with some pictures of some finished objects. First is a scarf made from the first three ply I spun. I gifted this to my step-mother-in-law. I had trouble photographing this.

This is another three-ply that I spun before we left but didn’t wash and set until I got back. This is in the pre-washed form.

So no yardage or wraps per inch yet.

I’ve gotten back in to card making and so will have some of them and some scapbooking pages to show in the next post.

We are also very excited because we’ve found a company that we can purchase a box of locally grown, seasonal organic food from. You order the box and get what they put in it. We get our first one tomorrow.

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