Somehow 1 year 8 months and 18 days passed in the DMV without me and Jon. I am not sure how it got to be such a long time, but I am so glad I had a rare decisive moment and insisted on returning for Christmas 2016.

We left Melbourne at 11:30 am 17 Dec AEDT and got to my mom’s house in Bowie at 8 pm 18 Dec AEDT/4 am 18 Dec EST — 32.5 hours elapsed time, 16.5 hours on the clock. It wasn’t a quick, comfortable or smooth journey, but it was 1000% worth it. Randomly, we shared the last leg with Jason Werth and a former coworker of mine from Excella. When we got to my mom’s there was a Welcome home sign on the door and more welcome signs inside which made me feel so happy (and welcome!). We spent our first day in America trying to stop feeling upside down, feasting on foods we’d been missing – biscuits, my mom’s enchiladas and more.

Here are some highlights from the trip…

FAMILY! We keep in touch with family via Skype which is fantastic, but getting to catch up with family in person is even better especially because you can’t play Mario Kart on Skype, can you Adam?!

We spent lots of time with the Matys/Fishers.

I loved getting back to our holiday traditions after spending last year feeling homesick at Christmas time. Jon and I quickly remembered how to play Mario Kart and then proceeded to play for hours on end with everyone but my mom getting sucked into the non-stop action.

We took time out from Karting to eat lots more food – fondue for Christmas Eve and a roast on Christmas and tons and tons of cookies, of course.

We got to celebrate Jon’s 40th (belatedly) and my still not 40th with the family. For Jon’s birthday we checked out the new MGM Grand which is quite a spectacle to behold. Somehow there are so many people who can “afford” to gamble for $25/hand that the minimums quickly shot up to $50/hand. Waaay to rich for my risk averse self! Instead, we had a blast playing the penny slots. Since I’m not so old, we opted for the younger person activity of brunch and a movie, Rogue One – the 3D version, possibly a first for me since Captain EO (which may be dating me – oops), for my birthday.

We spent a few days in Raleigh, NC with the Handels, gathering some important insights into kids these days by spending time with Jon’s sister, Natasha, 18, — applying to college is still painful, but exciting — and brother, Nick, 13 — teenage boys love tanks or maybe that’s just Nick 😉 We also got the latest on the snowbird farmer set from Jon’s Uncle Don and his partner Dana — everyone should winter in Florida – happy hour starts at 4. Jon’s dad and stepmom are doing amazing work running the food bank at their church and we welcomed the chance to help out a bit during our visit.

FRIENDS! We miss our American mates and really enjoyed getting to catch up with so many friends (unfortunately we didn’t get to see everyone!). Our only Australia visitors, Mike and Katy, were our first stop since they were jetting off to Paris after Christmas. We dined at Ray’s the Steaks, an old neighborhood favorite and our usual spot for Jon’s birthday celebrations. It still holds up as a fantastic steak place. Jon’s been missing American Chinese food, specifically General Tsos and the Cubellos came through by ordering an enormous amount of it for him. After we visited the Cubellos, my nephew Adam asked how I knew Zach and Tyler’s mom, so I recounted the time Amanda’s (aka Zach and Tyler’s mom) mom accosted me as I biked around my new neighborhood just before the start of 5th grade. Adam was very impressed that I’m still friends with someone I met when I was his age. I am impressed too – much love Amanda! And a shout out to her fantastic husband and loyal blog reader Kris for suggesting the addition of a like button.

The Herionimi joined us for our night at the MGM Grand and to ring in 2017 with the Braly’s in Irvington, VA. Note to self, the 6 kid to 6 adult ratio doesn’t work all that well when some, not saying who, of the 6 adults should count as kids. Chris, Jon and Rich attempted to set the town on fire and Jon did some real life Mario Karting around the Braly’s backyard in their golf cart while the serious adults, Becky, Holly and I, dissected and gossiped about the latest Gilmore Girl episodes. Good times.

It was great to see the Cutlers, including Mason, who is still a cutie even though he insisted on wearing that hideous Hokie jersey, and the latest addition Chase who we hope will have less affinity for Hokie flair.

My book club ladies are still going strong and have put in a good effort toward the next gen book club with two lovely baby daughters born since I left. It’s great to get to pretend I am on par with their intellect and smarts when we get together.

I spent a lot of time at the start of the trip worried that I would get sick since that is all anyone seemed to be talking about. I managed to avoid it until the last week of the trip, but I hadn’t had a chance to see one of my oldest pals. Luckily, it worked out that I got to grab dinner with Jessica and somehow several hours flew by without us even talking about so many things that came to mind after we met. (I can’t believe I didn’t even ask how your brother is doing!)

Jon was a champ, driving all over Northern Virginia to get to see Erik, Amir, Popowich, Drew and Colin. I wasn’t there so I can’t share any heartfelt memories of the visits, but I’m sure there were many touching moments.

It’s always hard to answer the question of what it was like to be America and what’s different about it from being in Australia, but some top things I enjoyed while being there are…

1. Not having anyone comment on my “accent”
2. Getting to eat all my favorite foods (Kashi, please start exporting to Australia!)
3. Cheap beer and lots of it
4. Insulation – yes it was colder, no I wasn’t freezing
5. Driving on the right side of the road

But of course, the main things aren’t things at all, but people – FAMILY and FRIENDS – we loved getting to see you, miss you much and hope to see you again soon.

Another weekend, another boondoggle.  Sara was headed up to Canberra for 3 days of training, so I used more of my credit card bonus Qantas miles to secure an award flight up there.  I considered driving the 6+ hours, but decided against it.

I headed up after work on Friday and met Sara at our fancy hotel that was in the CBD and a short distance from a nice trail on the lake.  That night we headed to a Brewpub, Bent Spoke Brewing Company, and had some great beer and dinner.  I had a chili that was probably an 11 on the Australian spice scale (would be medium hot in the US).  Sara had a fancy lamb burger.

We’ve been trying to ramp up our distances a bit in running, so this weekend was scheduled to be our first 8 miler in a while.  Luckily we were near a very scenic trail on the lake – making the longer distance easier to deal with.  We woke up and headed right to the trail early-ish on Saturday.

After that we checked out Floriade, which is *famous* in Canberra.  Tulips, tulips and more tulips!  Canberra is not a very large city, it seemed like everyone in town must be at this event.

We then walked over to the war memorial, which was very large and elaborate.  There were dioramas of the various battlefields.  We found the frank language about the utter waste of World War 1 very interesting for a museum.

Sara’s co-worker who lives in Canberra had invited us over for dinner / BBQ so that afternoon we headed out to the burbs for some wonderful grilled meat and company.

Sunday we explored the Parliament – you can actually go into the Senate and House chambers and see where they work.

The also let you up on the roof which has nice views over the lake back towards the War Memorial.

Also, there are close up views of the super-crazy “flagpole” that you can see from all over Canberra.

Our flight didn’t leave until 9pm that night, so after our self tour of Parliament and a stop for lunch we headed out to a national park to for a nice bushwalk.  Very scenic, no snakes!

On the way back we had our first Kangaroo inside a Kangaroo experience.  Priceless!