Just When Life Couldn’t Get Busier – A quick trip home!!

As mentioned earlier, it has been excessively busy in the world of Jen & Joep for the last few months. However we both took solace in the fact that I had 1 month of vacation in July meaning we could cease weekend flights for a few weeks and enjoy some quality time together!

As with most plans in life, they were changed a bit. I hadn’t been back to Australia in far too long and when you are planning a wedding that your parents are kind enough to do on your behalf, at some point you need to get a bit involved and help out! And so it came about that for 10 days of the month in SoCal I was heading to Perth for a bit of quality time with the Delany’s! Alas Joep couldn’t join because his vacation days are needed for our wedding / honeymoon at the end of this year so I went solo.

The first week in SoCal began on July 1 which meant that we missed this years Canada Day celebrations. This was pretty depressing because Prince William and Princess Kate were in town and I have developed a bit of an obsession with them of late … that being said, perhaps it was best that we WEREN’T in town for their visit. The consolation however was that we were in the US for the 4th of July! Joep’s colleague very kindly invited us to his place for a bbq with his awesome fiancé Cara. The day was then spent party hopping between various neighbourhood bbq’s in Costa Mesa and it was quite lovely! The partying was not as crazy as the other country equivalents we have been involved in (Australia Day, Canada Day, St Patricks Day, Queens Day) but the fireworks were a lot of fun and we definitely enjoyed ourselves.

The rest of the week was spent relishing the fact that we got to see each other every evening! My planned vacation was a little bit hindered by a bit of work but it was manageable and lets face it, working from your balcony in the sunshine is a vacation no matter what!

The week flew by and before I knew it I was on a flight to Perth! It is heavenly to live a bit closer now so that the commute involves only 1 stopover. What is strange though is that you cross the time line so I left SoCal on Sunday night and landed in Perth on Tuesday afternoon even though I had only been in transit for about 24hours! Yes, I lost 15 hours in the time difference! Nuts.

The 10 days home were far too short but it was soooooo nice to be back with the family. Even nicer was that the parentals had arranged a weekend trip down south! Sheenz, me, and the parental unit hit road on Friday morning making it to Margaret River in the afternoon where we proceeded to chill out and enjoy a few drinks and laughs. On Saturday we had arranged a tasting for the wedding at the winery (it was delicious by the way!) and we did the usual tour around all the winerys. By Sunday we were sufficiently over-fed and relaxed and so we headed back up to Perth. I am spoiled!

The remainder of the week was spent catching up with some old favourites and having serious family quality time. Content sigh. There is nothing like being home.

Sadly before I knew it I was back on a flight returning to LAX – The upside of this, naturally, was that I got to be reunited with the Joepinator! This is clearly a big plus!!

We then settled back in for another SoCal week together! The good weather, the good food, the tennis matches and the relaxation were exactly what the doctor ordered! We even managed to make a few new friends and attended the launch of a friends company … all in all we are extraordinarily content!

Bring on September & October for more of this quality time!!