The Home Stretch

It is 1:45am. I have 45 minutes before I have to wake the children up. I don't think there's any point sleeping. So a blogging I will go!

It has been a full day. On top of work, and taking the children to swimming classes, there were meetings with the builders, basins to be selected, electrical plans to check, garage doors to be fixed, paperwork to be completed for the banks, a certain GPS with European maps to be located and a necessary visit to the bank to acquire ourselves some Euros! We made it just in time before the banks closed. Luckily for us, the person at the bank seemed to have taken a liking to Malcolm's Egyptian T-shirt. She waived the $15 fee for our travel card. Bonus.

An even bigger bonus were our parents. Both sets had arrived whilst I was picking up the children from school and were seemingly having a party. However, they made themselves very useful...when we came back from swimming, they had taken in and folded my washing, emptied the swimming bag and hung out the wet stuff, mended Malcolm's most treasured travelling pants, and had dinner prepared on the table. On the menu tonight was Peking duck accompanied by wonton soup. My parents were worried that we might miss good Chinese food while we were away. I wasn't about to complain. Between our parents, they washed up after dinner, cleared out our fridge, cleaned our kitchen and took our excess rubbish away in their car. The list of useful things they did continued...bathing the children, putting them to bed, and my father volunteering to drive us to the airport at 3am! We really would have been in big desperate doo doo if not for both sets parents. We've also received an offer from our dear friend to collect our mail while we are away. God is good!

Peking Duck for dinner

Wonton soup

Unfortunately, there were some things that had to be left undone. Tours and transfers that were meant to be booked didn't happen. We nearly forgot to check in for our flights! For the first time in a long time, we will be winging parts of our trip. There are probably a few other things I have forgotten, but I'm past the point of caring. I am just glad that it is finally time to go.

Au revoir!

Playing "match the lock and key" and "remember the code" past midnight was not  an easy task!

All packed and ready to go. 3 suitcases and 5 carry ons.