Reflections

Wow! We’re home - home to face the bills and get back into some sort of routine, as well as to reflect on our trip. The last six weeks have gone so fast but, in a funny way, it also seems like a lifetime ago that we boarded the Qantas A380 plane (yes, Qantas were still flying then) and headed towards LA. So much has happened in that time, including:

- Liam breaking three pairs of sunglasses (including his mother’s);

- Rhiannon having photos snapped with Disney princesses on more than a dozen occasions;

- Graham only attempting to drive the RV on the wrong side of the road once and only hitting the side mirrors once against an immovable object (a major effort on his part);

- Jack purchasing more tops/t-shirts than his chest of drawers at home can hold;

- Rebecca limiting her shoe purchases to four pairs (a major effort on her part);

- Graham and Rebecca limiting the kids’ trips to MacDonalds to only three occasions in the whole six weeks (and none at all in the first three weeks);

- Jack being handed the kid’s menu in more restaurants than he will ever admit;

- and the whole family spying loads of amazing American wildlife, including one scavenging black bear, another scavenging racoon, a wandering skunk, a dolphin cruising the waves, a couple of grazing elk, a few soaring condors, several families of deer (and one on his own with mighty big antlers), even more families of prairie dogs (we have it on good authority that the ‘gopher’ like creatures that were digging up our Grand Canyon campsite are actually these little critters), mobs of seals and elephant seals, and countless squirrels.

The quote of the trip has to go to Rhiannon who, while on the plane flying home from Hawaii, asked

“How many sleeps are we at home for?”

Ahhh, maybe we need to start planning the next trip.

If only...