Back home..... Final Big trip blog - For now!!!

You've probably all guessed, from the absence of blogs, that I am HOME!!!
If you're thinking that the reason I haven't been blogging is because I have been busying myself with cleaning the caravan and putting everything away then you are dreadfully mistaken.
No, I only wish it were so. Since being back I have busied myself doing anything and everything BUT cleaning the caravan and putting all the washing away. It has gotten so bad that my mum is coming over tomorrow for a 'cleaning intervention'. Rather than have an early night tonight, as my mum suggested, so I can be ready and raring to go at the crack of dawn, I have wisely decided to stay up late and write some of my blog.
I have been so busy lately that I don't know what day it is or what I am supposed to be doing. Can you believe that THREE QUARTERS of my children have birthdays between now and Christmas??? Those of you who know how OTT I go with my kids birthday parties will understand my panic. I have been frantically ordering costumes for Diddy's first birthday (nursery rhyme themed and fancy dress), Figuring out how on earth I am going to make a cake that incorporates Smurfs and Surfboards for Kylah's birthday (I am thinking of a surfboard cake with Smurfs on top and 'Smurfs Up Dudes' written on it) and organising a pony party for Jazzy. This is on top of all the present buying and organising that I have to do for Christmas. I am also heading off on a road trip to Sydney in Nov to be Godmother for my BFF's baby girl. So you can see how unpacking from our travels has managed to take a back seat.
I have written my final blog from the trip in my head about 6 times (it went nothing like this) but have never managed to find 5 minutes to sit down at a computer so the words can spew out of my fingers. There were a few things I wanted to write about. The first was a list of things I found useful on my trip and a list of things I found completely useless. So here goes:
Useful List:
1. The most useful thing I took on my trip was my 20Ltr bucket that has a toilet seat for a lid. You put a garbage bag in it and do your business. There are a number of disposal methods for getting rid of the 'business'... which I won't discuss here. None of them are particularly offensive but I am trying not to talk so much about toilets on my blog so I will refrain. It was a life saver, especially when you need to go to the loo in the middle of the desert and there are no tree's to hide behind. Much nicer than a portable toilet because you can get rid of your waste immediately and a lot nicer than traipsing through prickly things and ants to find somewhere to dig a hole.
2. Coming in a close second was my toweling dressing gown and microfiber towels. It is so easy to go to the showers with just some soap in the pocket of your dressing gown, rather than carting all your nice clean clothes over there and having to try to delicately dress yourself, making sure none of your clothes touch anything in the dirty bathroom.
3. Vacuum sealed meals. These were sooooooo handy. It was wonderful not to have to cook most nights and made things so much easier.

Useless things:
1. Topping my list of useless things would have to be the 6 books I took with me. They really didn't have a home and I only got time to read two pages of 1 of the books. I prefer to snooze in the car over reading and when we weren't driving there was no time for reading and relaxation.
2. Yoga Mat and Boxing gloves. Yes, Kristy was right. The boxing gloves were used on the first night and then spent the rest of the trip being shoved from one cupboard to another (I think maybe I did use them briefly one other night). The yoga mat was used only once - and not for it's intended purpose. It was used it as a play mat for Kobber and Diddy at Buley Rockhole - Litchfield National Park.
3. All of the tinned food I took. What a complete waste of space. What on Earth was I thinking? I took enough rubbish tinned food to keep us alive for a year... had a meteorite plunged into the Earth and caused a dust cloud that completely blocked the Sun and caused mass famine - then my family would have been safe from starvation for a long time!!! However, you CAN buy food in the outback!!! Surprise, surprise they have shops!!!! There was NEVER one meal where I thought to myself - "oh I had better go and open one of those tins of baked beans". We had fresh salad on our crackers for lunch EVERY day and not once did we have to resort to tinned carrots to accompany our dinner (although we did try instant mash one night just for the hell of it - it was ok, kind of similar to eating that paste we used in kindergarten). There were only two nights were my kids ate 2 minute noodles for dinner (and then it was only because they saw other kids doing it and wanted them for a treat). So I now have a cupboard full of tinned goods that will probably never get eaten. Actually, I take that back. I sent a lot of it to Fraser Island with Ben and I have the rest earmarked for him and the kids to eat on nights when I am going to one of my 'committee meetings'. (committee meetings are nights when a bunch of my friends and I get together to organise homeschooling activities and spend most of the night eating cake and talking).
4. My hair straightener. I have no idea what I was thinking taking this with me. It did not get used once. I briefly considered using it one night but then realised I had not packed a hair dryer and you can not do it on wet hair. So there went that idea. This probably should rank as the #1 most useless thing I took!!!
Gosh I could keep going on all night writing about the useless things I took!!! In reality you don't need much. I took waaaay too many clothes for the kids and myself. We could have survived with a lot less.

For those of you who were worried about my iq box (or was it just me???), you will be pleased to know that it did it's job and I came home to 99 hours of prime tv viewing. When I haven't been party planning, catching up with friends, visiting relatives etc... my butt has been firmly placed on my favourite reclining lounge catching up on what has been happening on Jersey Shore and Australia's Next Top Model.

My efforts at the gym have been extremely poor since I came home. I have been too busy and it is really sad to go there and see how far my fitness levels have regressed after spending 6 weeks primarily sitting on my arse. I have been so distraught about how much my fitness levels have declined that I have been forced to comfort eat to perk myself up!!!

Oh yeah... another thing that hindered my unpacking was the extremely sensible decision to rearrange the furniture upstairs ON THE NIGHT WE ARRIVED HOME!!!! I made the upstairs of my house so unbearable to be in that I..... can not bear to be there. Every time I go up there to survey the damage and try to work out a plan to fix it, I end up so overwhelmed by the shear enormity of the mess that I race back downstairs to the comfort of my recliner (and a jar of nutella + diet coke).

But it is my mission that by this time tomorrow night, everything will be cleaned, sorted and straightened. I will let you all know how I go!!!!

xx