beginning to feel like home

We can now seriously start to move back in our house; all the rooms are freshly, or at least recently, painted and the rugs have been cleaned or well vacuumed. Xandie has outgrown her Ikea bunk bed (low bed with a reading loft) and now has a beautiful new daybed in her very blue room. I can finally move back into my home office and the living/music room is ready for company/students.  My mantra seems to be, "keep unpacking, keep unpacking, keep unpacking"...

Home sweet home

front patio

We're back!
Arrived July 8 @ 9a.m. one hour before we left Wellington, NZ. After a fairly flawless flight we arrived minus 1/2 of our luggage. The airline reassured us it would be sent out to our house as soon as it arrived (eventually) and so we hired a shuttle van to take us, the luggage that successfully made the trip, and the bicycle back home to Claremont. Then we slept.

Later in the day we were semi-functional and managed to take stock of what we needed to do to get our basic needs covered: food, shower/towels, bedding, etc. The upside of leasing a semi-furnished house is that the kitchen was provisioned and we had all the basic furniture in the house. We also had to go rent a car for 5 days.

Four days in ~

• All luggage was recovered and delivered
• Grocery shopping at Traders & Von's
• Car shopping successful (bought a Toyota)
• Unpacking slow but sure
• Found a painter to re-do 2 rooms before we totally unpack
• Kitties happy :~)

Not bad and looking forward to another day.

the final countdown

silver fern suspended ball in Welly

Tomorrow we have much to do. First return the car we've been leasing from our first landlady in Chch. to her half-bro here in Welly, then pick up a cargo van rental (to hold 3 people, our luggage and Geoff's bike box) to take us to the airport Friday, then a final run to the Sally Army with yet more donations, buy a few groceries to tide us over, and "ta-da", a final clean up of the house before we take off way too early on Friday a.m. to fly to L.A., USA via Brisbane, AUS via Wellington, NZ. Wow, 3 countries in less than 24 hours!