Home Sweet Home. Well that’s us home again after our travels. Seven weeks away from the house and my puppies for me, three weeks for Dazzle. We both had a great time, but it’s always special to get home again. So, what did we get up to in the week or so since my last journal entry? Well, more shopping (no surprise there). More eating (even less surprise there). We had to have a bit of a re-think with our sleeping arrangements. We had checked out of the hotel, and moved up to Dazzle’s folks for the last few days of the holiday, but unfortunately, our cat allergies got too much for us. Even though the poor kittie was confined to one room, the constant exposure was too much and after one night and most of the second day there we decided that we had to go back to the hotel (or A hotel) After checking round, we found that the best option was back to our last hotel, especially as they gave us our previous “extended stay” rate. So we moved all our stuff back down to the hotel again! Poor Dazzle has had more that her fair share of “flits” on this holiday, and she’s resolved that next time we’re booking our hotel, well in advance (back to this one I think!) and we will stay there for the entire time! We had our “thanksgiving” breakfast at Dazzle’s grandparents, but again we were struck down by allergies. No one had told us that the grandparents had inherited a Siamese cat, the worst trigger for our respective problems. I think we lasted 45 minutes before I was breaking out in a rash and stating to wheeze. We had to make our farewells and leave, to try and get some time to recover before heading to one of her Aunt and Uncles for the big family lunch. We had a great time at lunch, and caught up with a lot of Dazzle’s family, most of whom hadn’t seen us since Christmas. In the evening we went to the Cinema to see “Master and Commander”, which was super. We were back up to Dazzle’s parents again on the Friday, to have a family “Christmas”. We were having it early, as all her brothers and sister could be together, which is the first time that’s happened for some years now. Particularly with Dazzle living in Scotland now, and her “baby brother” being home from the US Navy. We made them a “Scottish” meal, which did seem to go down well, though I did fret about it a bit as we were ‘creating’, and then we all exchanged gifts. During the afternoon, Dazzle’s brother found that there were tickets on sale on-line for a sneak preview of the new Tom Cruise film “The Last Samurai”, so naturally we had to go for it! Hhaah. If they aren’t talking “Oscars” they should be, it was superb. (also a couple of good supporting roles for Billy Connolly and Timothy Spall, good to see from a Scot/Brits point of view!) On the final day we went to our favourite breakfast restaurant where some of the family met us again. Only twelve of us, so a relatively small gathering! Then we were off to the airport, and that was a saga in itself! What went wrong at the airport? Well, what went right at the airport would probably be easier to list! Hahaha. So lets skip over the problems with checking in, (and the fact that we later found out that the managed to mess up my credit card), trying to get seats together, having all our bags searched, being physically searched at the security (even though I didn’t beep), being told at the gate that we couldn’t sit together for the first leg, having to check in again at Detroit, having two seats in the middle for our long leg flight and go to some of the better points. Thanks to the nice gentleman that swapped seats with me so I could sit beside Dazzle on the first leg. Thanks to the cabin crew on the long leg, that got us seats either side of the aisle instead of the stupid ones we were assigned. And finally a big thanks to our usual taxi driver, who turn up at Aberdeen airport in a nice big Renault Espace that was big enough for ALL our luggage! Once we arrived back home, we decided that we were awake enough to go pick up our puppies. Boy, were they glad to see us. The tailgate opened and there was a “thud, thud, thud” as three collies hit the “dog zone” I think they were asleep before we hit the main road. We got them home after a quick pitstop for some essential groceries, and then it was bath time. We got all three dogs bathed and dried, a good fire going in the living-room and settled down. By 5:30pm we were beginning to nod off, and by 7:30pm we gave up any pretence and went to bed!
