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Felicity launching the O'pen Bic for Monday night racing, Nepean Sailing Club
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Wow! There's a reason those space capsules burst into a ball of flame when they come hurtling through the atmosphere to return to their home planet. Yes, I know, it's friction. Perhaps the subsequent hard landing would be a better metaphor: we forgot to deploy our parachutes. Either way, mind and body have had a bit of a hard time making sense of it all. It might not have helped that our easy-peasy direct Swoop flight home turned into a cancelled Swoop flight, a re-booked, re-directed WestJet flight through Toronto, landing at 1am instead of 4pm. What trip would be complete without a final disrupted air travel anecdote?
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Home, almost, late at night. No more plush rental cars
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Our last few days in Edmonton with the Nameth's was a lovely way to finish the trip. Playgrounds, leisure centre swimming pools, bowling alleys, communal meals and a splash of diy all adding up to good times, with Lucky the dog on hand for additional fun.
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Leaving the Nameth's
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A final packing session, that unnecessarily long flight home and a foreshortened night's rest saw us waking up to a splendid and typically warm July Ottawa morning. Booking a doctor's appointment for the morning after the return seemed sensible when we were landing at 4pm, less so in light of the delay. There was also a cottage viewing on hand because, we must never stand still, and, less facetiously, if this is to be the year that we finally take the plunge, we would rather spend the summer working through the process than have all that overlapping the beginning of the school year. More on this later, or not.
The first two-and-a-half weeks we house sat for Dave and Amanda, which makes it sound like we were doing them a favour rather than them providing us free accommodation which is the real truth. This allowed our tenants to move out, our floor re-finishers to move in, do their thing and move out, and our movers (me and Crystal) to move in. Before the floor people could come, we needed to haul out the last remaining carpet and pull up all the quarter round. That was a solid weekend's work but nothing compared to move in.
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One million nails in our stairs, all in need of removal
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In the meantime, the kids were in camp, Felicity doing her CANSail level 1 over a couple of weeks and Toby doing survivor camp at Fortune, and a week of hockey at Carleton. Felicity thrived in the sailing and was one of only a few to pass at the end of the fortnight. They sailed O'pen Bics and spent a lot of time capsizing. Grandma and Nonno got down to watch her from the peninsula at Nepean Sailing Club and I followed suit. For the rest of the season the club has initiated a Monday night intro to racing. Felicity won one of the four races and finished fourth out of six in the first week. Meanwhile Toby got to show us his shelter when we dropped in on him at Fortune and we were able to see his end of camp hockey game complete with announcer and all the razzmatazz of the hockey world.
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Toby's group's shelter at survivor camp
 | We didn't want to pay for the proper copy of Toby on the summer luge at Fortune, but it looks like he is enjoying it
 | Allison's photo of Felicity at work
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 | Toby, skating
 | A brief celebration picnic in the Arboretum on our way to Toby's hockey tournament
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 | Felicity playing soccer at Westwood Park
 | Toby at soccer
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The kids got a sleepover with Grandma and Nonno and we attended to the admin of life while Crystal struggled through an untimely cold. We then set about procuring a borrowed nail gun for the not-insignificant task of replacing 70+ pieces of quarter round (after sanding and painting the little buggers - I'm not jaded, honest...)
Once we had cast iron assurance from what we now consider to be our flooring wizards, we booked the 26 foot Uhaul for Monday 18th. Despite a day of torrential rain, we did prevail. The entire contents of our home, hitherto stored in one half (and a bit) of the giant Paoliello garage, was duly loaded into 26 feet of moving truck and subsequently unloaded into the kitchen, garage, and, as we ran of room, bathroom of Black Friars. Every effort was made to avoid setting foot on our as yet not fully cured floors, save for the deposit of the couch and a few mattresses courtesy of some invaluable heavy lifting help from Darius during the afternoon "power hour".
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Before and After
 | After and Before
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Sab waving a cheery goodbye to our junk, and, almost there
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I already look defeated and we are still loading
 | It's raining
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Painting the baseboards will be an ongoing effort but by the following Sunday we had places to sleep, eat, cook and attend to the functions of daily living and so spent our first night at Home. The circle is not quite fully completed but it's pretty close and we have more or less navigated back to the same grid reference that we set sail from some 12 or 15 months ago, depending on your definition of our casting off date.
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Hopefully for the final time for many, many years
 | Memories of quarter round fitting
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A common question (apart from the ubiquitous "what was your favourite part?") has been "how does it feel to be back?". My immediate reaction is that it feels as if we never went away. We left an empty house in a sweat of packing and cleaning on a hot summer's day and we have landed back in an empty house in a sweat of packing (and less cleaning) on another hot summer's day. The time warp of the year of feasting on adventures and experiences too innumerable to remember has been lost in the bright light of wild familiarity of that fireball of re-entry. My comfort lies in knowing I have the blog that will be a pilot light to ignite the sensations of a year of wonder. It will be a welcome salve between the crests of the all absorbing wave of our busy, stressful but satisfying lives once again washing over us.
As I write this, three nights into our return to our house, Crystal has gone to bike the Petit Train du Nord (too much energy!) with Catherine, Francine is horizontal, eyes closed, the kids have spent the day playing lego, listening to the radio, eating, scootering the dog walk, and, I believe, savouring the stasis. I am. For now.
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Crystal and Catherine on the Petit Train du Nord
 | Felicity and Toby letting rip in the workshop
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And a few scenes from our renewed old life in the subsequent days of early August:
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