Good to be home...

First of all, I want to wish everyone a belated Happy New Year and I hope 2008 has found you safe and well.

Secondly, an update on the last month. We are back in NZ after our 'Not-so-NZ-adventure'.

Malcesine Castle

Here's a brief rundown on our itinerary:
We left home on Thursday 20th December and flew from Palmy to Auckland, had an overnight in Auckland before boarding our Cathay Pacific flight to Heathrow via (a 9 hour stop) in Hong Kong.
We arrived in Heathrow morning of Saturday 22nd December and spent Christmas in Essex with my family.
We then flew up to Glasgow on Friday 28th December where we caught up with Graeme's family and spent Hogmanay.
On Wednesday 2nd January we flew across to Milan Bergamo in Italy with Graeme's Mum and met my Mum there. We then spent a full day in Malcesine (pronounced Mal-chesney!) looking at the place where we plan to marry in 2009 (see photo above).
From Italy we said goodbye to Graeme's Mum who was flying back to Bristol and my Mum and us flew back to Stansted on Friday 4th January. We then had all day on the Saturday in Essex before departing Heathrow on Sunday headed for Hong Kong.
We met my Dad and his wife in Hong Kong on arrival on Monday 7th January and stayed there until Thursday 10th when we flew down to Phuket in Thailand.
We had an overnight in Phuket before ferrying down to Koh Lanta (in the Krabi province of Thailand) for our friends' wedding. We left Koh Lanta on Monday 14th, had another overnight in Phuket, flew to Hong Kong where we had an awesome overnight at Novotel Citygate (complete with free upgrade on our room - woo-hoo!) and then left Hong Kong on Wednesday 16th January, arriving back in Auckland morning of the 17th.
We then got a flight down to Palmy and we were home by 1.30pm.

So there you go...it's no wonder we are both sleeping and eating at strange times and that we both have colds!
Picked the dog up from the kennels on Thursday evening and it was a joyous reunion - apparently he was the life and soul of the kennels and everyone (humans and dogs) loved it. It's good to know. Of course, I have been fussing over him heaps since he got home because I really missed him.

And so now we are back and it feels like home. I didn't realise before but I was worried it wouldn't feel like home.
The agapanthus are in full bloom (I'll try and get a picture and post it), the sun is shining and the house was clean and tidy (for the 1st time ever...I'm so grateful for the effort we put into tidying before we left now!).
And I don't go back to work until Tuesday so I still have a relaxing couple of days left.

I will try and post more soon...
Ta ta for now, K x