Home sweet home - Part 2

Sunday at home was a lovely day where I took the girls out for a swim at the awesome Otara pools and we headed home and everything was going well until at around 6pm when the girls were playing around and all of a sudden Frankie was not happy and her arm was suspiciously swollen just above her wrist. Given Scarlett had just come out of an above elbow cast which she had on for 6 weeks we hoped for the best as we headed to East Care to get checked out. After 3 hours waiting we finally got seen and the doc confirmed what we were hoping wasn't the case - Frankie was in a cast after getting a small green stick fracture. Just what Joan needed, another girl in a cast.

We couldn't afford to be slowed down though as Monday was a big day, our annual trip to see Santa at Smith & Caugheys. After Frankie spending the day at home with me, the girls and I took the ferry into the city and managed to have enough time to call in and see some of the old crew at Stride on our way up Queen Street.

This is the last year apparently that Smith & Caughey's are doing their annual Santa photos due to their financial problems, which is a huge shame as we have always enjoyed coming in to see Santa each year with the girls. Because it is the last year and with everything else going on it was a shame that they had really noticeably scaled back the scale and quality of the famous window displays, Santa's forest and the number of Santa's available for the photos, but on the plus side Santa was a proper legend. He spoke to the girls like they were long lost friends and they were so pleased that Santa remembered them from last year. The girls were impeccably behaved, which does not happen that regularly - ha ha, so we treated ourselves to a ginormous pizza from Sal's as a treat before heading home.

I managed to sneak a cheeky 9 holes in the next day at Formosa after a trip back into the city to catch up with a few more people and get a much needed haircut from The Shortland Barber, my go to barber in the city. The golf was predictably awful after 3 months of not swinging a club at all but it didnt matter - it was just great being back playing and doing the thing I missed the most after Joan, the girls and Bella. \

The highlights of Tuesday and Wednesday were the local running races, where Frankie just did her own thing as per usual - when her first race started she ran off in the opposite direction to where she was heading to and in the second race she just sat down, which was hilarious. Wednesday was touch night where Scarlett has just started playing with a team made up of her friends locally. She was a little nervous as this was her first game back after getting her cast off but after some great words of encouragement from Coach Mark and Coach Kate she was off and running, quite literally. Scarlett scored a magnificent try from halfway out pacing everyone and scoring in the corner - it was poetry in motion, but then I am very biased - ha ha. The try on debut earned Scarlett the Sportsmanship Trophy for the week and the wee pet was so proud she slept with the trophy and then took it to school the next day for news. It was awesome.

Scarlett was so keen to take the trophy to school for news she decided that she wanted to do that rather than coming out to the airport the next day to see me off, but I was more than happy with that - it was so nice seeing how happy she was from being part of that team.

I had an absolutely amazing week at home with Joan and the girls, it was far too short, as I'm sure all my trips home will be. It was amazing to see what an incredible job Joan is doing with the girls and home life in general considering all of the other things that she is dealing with after Ernie's passing. I am so proud of her resilience and how good a Mum she is to our girls.

After a teary but determined and strong farewell with Joan at the airport, I made my way through everything hoping for another upgrade on boarding, but alas it was not to be - back to cattle class for me., and back to the sandbox.

A month or so of hard graft ahead to try and close out some big issues at work and then back to NZ again for Christmas and New Year. Counting the hours and minutes already.

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