Home again

Here I am, sitting in sunny - yet cold - Petone. It is very nice to be here, helped a great deal by the new skylight in our kitchen, which makes the place so beautiful I can barely express my joy. Now I want skylights in all the rooms, and trips to the Sunshine Coast while they're installed.

Lessons learned on holiday:

• Don't catch the 6am flight with children. You will be up ridiculously early, and then arrive in Austalia at 7am, ready for a very, very long day. One child may even develop a dramatic temperature, which will get you through customs in only 2 hours. It isn't worth it though.
• Don't hire a cheap car. It will be older than you, not have central locking, and make you look like a bogan.
• Don't listen to ginger ponytailed Australians talk about snakes and spiders, and how they live in your ceilings and shoes and live in the water and bite you TO DEATH - until you leave the country. This kind of discussion upon arrival could seriously limit your relaxation.
• Speaking of relaxation - travel with small children doesn't involve relaxation. Accept this early, and just go for it and enjoy Dreamworld.
• Crows are probably Satan.

I don't want to sound negative, because we had probably the best holiday ever. It was warm, warm and warm. We got lots of handy household items from Ikea, and then enjoyed parks, beaches and pools like they're going out of fashion.

And now I'm going to look at the sky, through my skylight. It doesn't get better than that.