Home away from home

3 months of travelling have just vanished and today we found ourselves back on the farm at the house which we moved into 11 and a half months ago. Before leaving Geraldine this morning we emptied and filled up our van's water and waste for the last time. This included using small bowls under the grey waste pipe to ensure we got every drop of waste water out that we could. We arrived back at the house at around 11 and headed over to see Bruce, Candy and the girls. It was so good to see them but also great how both girls didn't seem to be affected by the time we'd been away and still took to me like they always had which was quite reassuring. Bruce's mum had come to stay so we sat on the lounge floor talking about how our travels went. After catching up we went and collected our car which had been victim to quite a few birds since we left from the workshop, so our first job was to give it a good hose down. Luckily we have so many high pressure hoses on farm! After emptying our car we decided to head down to Timaru to do our first big shop in what feels like a lifetime. We ended up deciding to buy a TV for our room. Although we don't mind sharing a house with Jono he's not always great at sharing the lounge TV. I don't think it's intentional but we do get little say in what we watch. We had a TV and DVD player at our second farm and found the library had a great array of series and films to watch. We managed to find a Samsung one in a second hand shop and got given a random $10 off the price. We went and selected probably way too many DVDs, seeing as you can only loan them for 1 month maximum, but it feels good knowing that we will have our room to escape to if we just need some space. We spent way too much money in tbe supermarket after that and probably have enough food for a month but it felt exciting to be able to not plan every day's meal exactly as we have been having to do in the campervan to avoid waste. Bruce also got our house a new fridge which is huge compared to the one we had last year so we can buy even more things to freeze and store in there which will save on petrol going to the shops all the time. We treated ourselves to some Pak'n'save pizzas which are similar to the homemade style pizzas you get made in Asda back home. It's become our treat meal for whenever we need a pick me up or are celebrating something like coming back to the farm. By the time we got back it was quite late anyway so it was nice to just chuck pizzas in the oven knowing we had so little to do cooking wise. Jono has bought an Xbox 1 in our time away so Nick wasted no time trying that out with him and I can see both of them will be spending a lot of time on that console. We're a little unhappy with the bedding provided, our bedding from last year has been used elsewhere, so I think we will be buying ourselves a new duvet when we head up to Christchurch to take the van back. With it being winter we definitely want to be warm here. I still can't believe that we are back. Time has flown by and it feels strange knowing we will be working again so soon. We don't have start dates yet but hopefully it won't be too long until we're back into the swing of working life. We miss routine!Read more