Well, Dennis and I are back home in Thailand.  We got in to Bangkok
late on Tuesday, so we spent the night with my friend Elsa, then drove
home yesterday morning.
Vino was soooo happy to see us, he purred non stop all day!  He was
very impressed with the new litterbox we brought him from Canada and
also with the cans of food.
We had terrible jet lag and ended up going to bed at 8 pm, to which
Vino had no objections.  He was also very happy when we woke up at 3
am this morning.  We weren't so happy about waking up that early
though!  Will have to try to stay up later tonight.
Our trip home was good, in Calgary, we got to see our 13 year old
niece, 22 month old nephew (who we saw last when he was only 6 weeks
old) and brand new 2 week old nephew.  Unfortunately, it took us
almost a week to realize that Dennis' sister has a baby monitor in the
basement where we were sleeping.  We just figured the house has really
bad acoustics when we could hear the baby crying.  LOL!  We never
claimed to be smart ;-)
We also met with Susan M in Calgary.  She very kindly invited us over
to her house and we had some excellent cappuccinos and home baked
cookies.  We had a great chat with her and went for a walk in the
park.  I have the we met pics and will post them when I've had a
chance to get them off my camera.
We spent a few days in Vancouver where we met with many old friends
and got stuff out of our storage locker.  I'm so excited to have all
my good pots and pans with me now.  It's been hell cooking on a gas
stove with thin aluminium pots for the past 3.5 years.  One friend we
visited has a new cat since we saw her last.  Stella is a beautiful
long haired calico, absolutely adorable.  But she's a total monkey and
climbs the walls and opens cupboards, etc.  The drywall in their brand
new house is totally scratched up from her antics.  Sometimes I'm
quite thankful that Vino isn't all that smart!
In Victoria we spent almost a week with my parents and all my old
friends some of whom I've known since we were 10 years old.  Most of
them have a ton of kids and it seems that our lives are drifting off
in different directions, but it was nice to catch up on each other's
lives.  We're hoping that in a few more years when their kids are all
a bit older, they will visit us in Australia.
All in all, we're happy to be home though.  Thailand definitely seems
more like home to us now than Canada, but we are also getting very
excited about moving to Australia and building our house and
"nesting".  Our visa application is in and things are moving along,
but it will be the better part of a year until we know if we got in.
I've got 4270 messages to catch up on, so for now I'll just offer
purrs, headbutts and meatloaf meditations to anyone who needs it.