Abducted and Held Hostage

By Gnomes. Yup. That's what happened. That's why we haven't updated this blog. For three months. True story.

Karl, Hudson and my uncles gnome collection. (Bamberg, Germany)

Ok, not exactly.

What did actually happen was that we decided to cut our travels a little short. Instead of coming "home" on the 3rd of September we returned to Canada on the 20th of July. We had spent the last 6 weeks of our trip zig zagging between Austria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany, visiting my relatives and childhood friends. We had a great time, and I promise to go back, post more photos and tell lots more stories about our time there.

We came back to Canada at the end of July for two reasons:

1. Hudson's grandparents were missing him like mad. He isn't yet able to convey it, but we are pretty sure he was missing them, too. When we decided to take time off from our jobs and our "normal" life, we did so mainly so that we could spend lots of time with our son. We did manage to do that and loved each and every minute of it, however we also inadvertently managed to deprive our parents of their time with their only grandchild (Yup, Hudson is the only grandchild on both sides of the family). For the past month and a half, we have been trying to make up for their time apart from each other.

 

2. As it turns out, two unemployed bums (one of us is actually on a leave of absence) can still qualify for a mortgage. When we compared the cost of renting to a mortgage at current rates, they were pretty close. We tried buying a house from overseas because ..well, yes, we are THAT crazy, but in the end that ended up being a pretty major fail. If we stood any chance of buying a home and actually moving in before Karl has to put on a shirt and tie again, we knew mid July was as late as we could push it.

Visiting family and house buying has been keeping us pretty busy, so that's my fairly bland excuse for not blogging for the past three months.

The good news, however, is that we get the keys to our new home tomorrow!

I have been spent the past few nights sorting and organizing all our photos. We have over 7500. That's the edited count, there were originally many many more. As I was going through them all, I realized just how much I wanted to keep this blog going even though we are no longer on the road. There are some many stories we did not get a chance to share, and it would be a real shame to forget them.

My laptop is almost out of batteries and I need to be up in a few hours so that Karl and I can start loading the moving truck, but I promise to start returning to this blog again. Join me?

Cheers,
M

Wordless Wednesday

Here, There.... all over Thailand!

Sorry to go so long between posts again. We've been so busy hopping around Thailand I have not had the time. And when I've had time - I did not have the internet.

So, a quick run down of some of the highlights since our last post:

1. We spent a few more "beach free" days in Hua Hin. Our second week there, we discovered the fantastic Black Mountain Water Park.  Hudson and I went there on a Sunday, and then we brought Karl along again later on in the week. On our second day we got to the park a little past 10 AM (they open at 10) and aside from the staff we were the only ones there! Another Canadian family came a few minutes after us, then a Swedish couple.... then a group of about 4 Thai guys... and that was pretty much it. It was like having the park all to our selves. We had a fantastic time! The staff would turn on the wave pool for us whenever we felt like it, we soaked in a ginormous hot tub, we floated lazily down their lazy river, we rode the slides over and over and over and over.... you get the idea.

Hudson and mommy's "private" wave pool

Wheeeeeee!

Hudson really loved the slides

2. We rode the train. A lot. And tuk tuks. Mostly because we are starting to be pretty cheap when it comes to transportation (and there are no flights between Bangkok and Hua Hin)  - we rode the train from Hua Hin to Bangkok (5+ hours) and then from Bangkok to Phitsanoulok (5+hours) and then took a tuk tuk to Sukhothai......So that we could be picked up by a car and driven to BLES ... which took another almost 2 hours. We split the journey up into 3 days (Day one to get to Bangkok, day two to Sukhothai, Day 3 to BLES), but it was a lot of traveling. And a lot of waiting. It seems that the word "schedule" is pretty loosely interpreted by the Thai people to mean something like - the train will come/get there. Eventually. Oh well.

Hudson, I decided, should be given the "easiest toddler to travel with" award - at least for this leg of our journey. He really has been great about the lengthy wait times and the bumpy rides. He even managed to fall asleep in the back of a tuk tuk barreling down the highway at about 80km's an hour, and gave us no fuss about it what so ever. 

3. We spent 3 amazing nights and days at BLES - an elephant sanctuary near Sukhothai, Thailand.

I will try to write a separate post about our time there because it really was that amazing!

4. We took the train back to Bangkok, and then flew to Krabi so that we may enjoy the sunshine, beaches and swimming pools for one last week before we head off to Europe. It seems we arrived just as the monsoon did : (

Good news -I now have lots of time to write posts. Bad news - the internet is kind of patchy, so I may or may not be able to publish them....

Cheers,
M