Home again, home again

(thumbs up to you if you are thinking "jiggety jig" right now)

So, we made it home from Japan safe and sound today. Now begins the nasty chore of readjusting our body clocks. We left Tokyo at 7 pm on May 30th, and arrived in Vancouver at noon on May 30th. Calum and I managed to get a couple of hours of sorta-kinda rest on the plane, and amazingly, he did a great job of coping with this broken sleep. He woke up when breakfast was served, ate it, and spent the next few hours acting as awake and chipper as usual. This was a far better experience than the last time I flew overnight with him, after which I ended up hauling a very heavy lead weight of four-year-old boy through the endless corridors of Gatwick airport.

We had a few mishaps getting out of the airport, but eventually we met up with our friend who picked us up and we made it out of there with all of our bags. Each of us has coped with jet lag in our own way; my goal was to get into bed immediately and take a couple of hours nap, while the kids were keen to get on with their favourite leisure activities. I managed to stop Calum before he had turned on the Xbox, got him into pajamas and told him to get into bed. Amazingly, he did fall asleep even though he seemed determined to play with his magnadoodle all afternoon. Megan, on the other hand, was climbing the walls in her eagerness to join her pals at the shopping mall for their regular Friday meetup. She tried really hard to negotiate her way out of the two hour nap that I insisted on before she could leave the house, but eventually did get some sleep. Unfortunately, I didn't plan very well so she had to wake me up asking for bus fare and allowance money, which cut my nap short. Also the cat has been rather insistent on making up for three weeks of attention from me. This means that she has been following me around the house like a dog, purring madly, and meowing so much that we want to tie a hanky around her cute furry little face.

Oh and Jeff? Jeff's primary goal when we got home, it seemed, was to work off a huge burst of enthusiasm for home maintenance. Before our friend had said her goodbyes and helped us make sure we got everything into the house, he dragged the extension cord out of the storage room and went out back to mow the lawn. Admittedly, the grass was ridiculously long - it looked more like a wheat field than a lawn - but I have to say I have never seen anyone leap into lawn mowing the moment they get home from a three-week trip, after 15 hours of international travel. Takes all kinds, and it appears I managed to pick a rather unique kind. :-D

Right now I am trying unsuccessfully to coax the guys out of bed so they can be up for the evening and then go back to sleep at a more normal hour. I'm contemplating the lack of food in our home and wondering if I could order pizza for dinner even if nobody else ends up eating it except for me. I'm also drinking a bottle of cold green tea that I bought at the gate in Narita airport, enjoying a last taste of Japan while I think about all the wonderful adventures that we had over the past month. Over the next week I am going to try and finish up writing about those adventures and also I am hoping to upload some photos here or on flickr. Stay tuned!