Our flight home from Canada was quite long due to having to have long layovers in Toronto, Vancouver and Brisbane. We were surprised to be upgraded to first class between Toronto and Vancouver - I can't remember the last time this happened as normally there are so many who upgrade at the gate. After our four hour wait in Vancouver, Dad got our tickets for the next leg between Vancouver and Sydney. The gate passenger service agent had assigned Dad to be upgraded to first class and had assigned me to be upgraded to Premium Economy (which is kind of in between Economy and First Class - in Premium Economy, you get a much larger seat which reclines further than Economy and you get nicer meals than Economy). Dad asked the gate agent to swap it for the other way around. How thoughtful was that, eh? Once I got into First Class, I noticed that there was one seat which no one was sitting in. I asked a flight attendant if she could check if Dad could come up there since no-one was sitting there (this had happened once before when I was up front and Dad wasn't and they went back and got Dad and brought him up front). The flight attendant said it was left empty for anyof the pilots who weren't flying the plane to use (there are usually at least four pilots on this flight). I was a bit frustrated with it all when, by the end of the flight, no-one had used it and Dad could have been up there. So, next time we fly and there is only one seat up front, it will definitely be Dad's turn to take it. 😃
While we were in Brisbane, we found out that our shuttle driver (who we had been trying to contact since before we left Canada and had had no response from) had sold his business and now we didn't have a ride home from the HB airport. We contacted Robyn and not only did she offer to pick us up from the airport, but she also brought us some food for dinner (we arrived home at about 6pm on our Wednesday). We are so grateful for her friendship!
After being home and resting up for two days, it was time for me to get out of the house, so I arranged to go and hang out with Robyn for the day on the Friday (she missed me, she said 😃) I also had an iced chocolate (how I missed them in Canada) with my friend, Haidi, who has moved to Wales, but was back for a visit - it was lovely to see both of them again. Everyone was happy to see us at church and, of course, asked us how long we were going to be back for. 😃
This week started out well - a lovely facial for me and dinner with Robyn and the missionaries and then another iced chocolate with my teacher friends. Then, on Tuesday, I came down with a nasty cold - I hate being sick - so, since I was supposed to be babysitting two little girls on the Thursday, I took myself off to bed to rest up for two days. I felt better by Thursday, but didn't want to pass the germs on to the girls (who have 3 month old twin sisters), so I just took another day off and rested up. Dad took good care of me making meals for me. 😃
Friday, I met up with the Relief Society presidency in my ward to discuss this year's Relief Society activities. Robyn, the Relief Society president, decided we would go with just 6 activities this year to see if we could get more sisters coming out to them. Fortunately, I had already worked on 12 for the year, so I now have six done for this year and 6 sorted out for next year. After our meeting, we all went out for lunch which was really nice as we got to chat with each other and catch up with each other about what we had been doing over the holidays since everyone had gone to various places for Christmas.
On Saturday, I met up with some other teacher friends and had a good long catch-up with them - about 3 hours - and another iced chocolate. Life sure is hard here in Hervey Bay. 😃😃
Our big news since we got back, though, is that we have booked a cruise - we are so excited! We were hoping to go on a cruise to Fiji this month, but they were all booked up. We hummed and hahed about going camping (too hot and too many people since it's school vacation), flying to Tasmania and renting a car there and driving around the island for two weeks (many places booked up due to school holidays) or just staying home. We decided to check out other cruise lines besides 'Princess' who we preferred to sail on. We really didn't care where we cruised to by this point, we just wanted to go on a cruise. We found a really good deal online for a balcony cabin on 'Royal Caribbean' which we couldn't pass up. The cruise starts in Auckland, New Zealand, so we are flying there a few days before the cruise begins to spend some time looking around that city - we stopped there for one day on our cruise down in 2009 and really loved the city, so we thought we would take some time and check it out some more. We set sail from Auckland on the 17th of January for two weeks - we hit a number of cities in New Zealand and then a few in Australia before landing in Sydney on the 31st of January. We will fly back to Hervey Bay that day. We are not sure when Dad will start working again for this year, but the courses usually start in February, so we figure we will have a few days rest before he starts up again.
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