Christmas times

I'm aware I haven't blogged for a while, but things have been busy! If you are wondering what has been happening, let me enlighten you.

Gem and I are currently in London, visiting my family and will be spending Christmas over here. Outside, there is currently a layer of snow on the ground and we're hoping that it stays till Friday so we can have a white Christmas. We shall see.

The other main reason that we came back was to have another church service and reception to celebrate our marriage with all the people who couldn't make it to Sydney last year (read: everyone). The service turned into a thanksgiving service as it fell on the day before our one year anniversary, so we were able to have a sermon preached and we got up in front of people and reaffirmed our vows (because it had been soooo long since we last did them). The service was great and loads of friends and family came along, so it was wonderful to see them all. The reception in the evening was good fun too, which we had at Alexandra Palace in London (in a room with enormous paintings of semi-naked greco-romanesque men on the walls - very fancy!). We did all the cliche things - a conga line, silly dancing, first dance (to a song that neither of us knew!!). All in all a great night.

Then we went to Italy for a 'second honeymoon'. We flew into Pisa and saw the leaning tower. It really leans. How sad, to be remembered for a piece of really bad architecture! Then disaster struck. On the way to Florence (I was driving - note to those reading - NEVER drive in Italy. They are maniacs.), I started to feel ill and upon arriving in Florence, I had to pull over outside a random hotel where I passed out in the car. Not all that fun. We managed to get to our hotel and I was ill for a day and a half. So we lost a day in Florence. We did manage to get out and see most of Florence and found we had allowed too much time - we took half a day and had allowed 1 and a half days! We then trained to Rome and the day after we arrived Gem started feeling ill and spent a day in bed too - she had caught some sort of 24hr virus, so we lost another day! We managed to salvage the remaining day and a half in Rome and saw all the sights. It really is a remarkable city - so ancient and grandiose. We had one last upset on the way home - our flight got delayed for 4.5 hours! When we finally got back to the UK, we found out that it was because of intense snow storms. People have been trapped in the Eurostar for over a day, so we counted ourselves lucky. All in all a good/memorable trip.

We are now back at home, resting and recovering after a really busy couple of weeks. Looking forward to Christmas. Presents are bought (but not yert wrapped) and mince pies (not meat) are being eaten. Good times.

I'll try to post some pics of the snow and of Rome soon and if I don't post before Friday - Happy Christmas!!

Luke