Sunday 31 August

Dylan

Caitlin

Daniel

Eden

Finlay

Darcy

Liam

Marcel

What a great feeling it is to be home again and to finally catch up with our children grandchildren, friends and colleagues. This has been a trip of a lifetime-everything about it has been great-the educational learning, the time with Dallas, the companionship of Maurie and Leigh, meeting friends and family overseas, all of the great places w have visited, and all with the accompaniment of great, warm(hot) weather.

Cameron met us at the airport with Finlay this morning as we decided to take advantage of them being in Auckland to take our overweight bags back to Tauranga since Air NZ is getting fussy about a few kilos overweight on its local flights. Funny how it is neve a problem until you get home.

It was great to see Cameron and Finlay at the airport-Finlay has grown noticeably while I have been away and he is now walking quite confidently.

Said goodbye to Leigh and Maurie. I was going to say that it is amazing how Maurie and I have been travelling together for almost 7 weeks and got on so well, but not amazing, just a really good person to travel with-witty, thoughtful and a lot of fun. He has been a great traveling companion, and together with leigh, Dallas and i have had a great time in their company traveling to Liverpool, Italy and Singapore.

We caught the plane back to Tauranga. I was quickly brought back to the reality of school by the air stewardess who recognized me and told me how much she and her daughter had enjoyed the open evening at school and her daughter was looking forward to starting next year.

Fran picked us up from the Tauranga airport, again lovely to see another of the family. We had to detour back to her place to pick up the house keys she had forgotten and the finally back home to be met by Simon and Rana and the boys. Man, it is so good to see them all again-we have such a neat family.

Time to catch up and listen to the boys and their stories-Liam enjoying school, Marcel's soccer team is cleaning up the opposition, Darcy is still being Darcy, Simon is about to move into the new offices his firm has just completed, Fran enjoying being next year's Year 9 dean and enrolling for 09 going well, Dylan's looking for a job, Kate's dropped Music for Japanese etc etc...love to hear all this stuff.

Later in the afternoon Maria, Cameron, Eden and Finlay arrived from Auckland and stayed on for dinner. Then, an early night.