I'm SOOOOO Excited

One of my favorite places in all the world is Cairns, Australia.  There is just something perfect about its  tropical-climate-meets-first-world beauty.  You get the gorgeous tropical flowers and trees.  The lush green everywhere.  The BEACH!  The warm weather (I am so not a cold-weather person).  But also the shops, the restaurants, the Esplanade.  I could go on! =)

Over the past 8 1/2 or so years of my life I have spent almost an entire year living in this beautiful place.  Of course, almost every moment of those months has been when I have been in my monstrous, 9 1/2 months pregnant state, or else with a brand new baby.

So I looked like this:

And felt like this for most of the time:

Ok, so I never was THIS cute, but I like the 'so exhausted that he just crashed on the desk' picture!

 But now (in 13 days, 11 hours or so) I will be arriving in Cairns for 10 wonderful days! Can I just say, if I had no restraint, like Julianne for example, I'd be jumping up and down or wiggling non-stop in my chair out of excitement!

Granted, amidst all the excitement of looking forward to a holiday in Cairns, I must admit I do have moments where I feel like an awful parent.  "Why?"  You might ask.  Well, because while I am in Cairns, 3 of my 5 kiddos will still be here in Ukarumpa.  Matt and I will only be taking the 2 littlest ones with us.  Because of school, and because of how much it would cost to take everyone along, Kaitlyn, Nathan and Justin will be staying with several dear friends during the 10 days we are away.  I feel guilty because I have never left my kids for this long before.  Or if I have left them, they've been with Matt for the time I was away.  Never with non-family members.  And unlike taking a holiday back home, I will be in an entirely different country!  So, my overactive imagination sometimes gets going on all the "what ifs" of what could possibly go wrong.

But lately, I've really been feeling the need for a holiday.  There have been a lot of stresses in the recent months:  the stresses of homeschooling challenging kids in the village, the frustrations of having several thefts recently, sickness after sickness in our family.  So the thought of 10 days in Cairns is wonderful!  I know I'll still have the two little ones with me, but hey, when it's only two kids, when I'm used to having five around all the time, well, that in itself sounds like a holiday to me!

While I'm busy holiday-ing (read:  swimming, shopping, swimming, eating ice cream, swimming, hanging out with friends, reading books, swimming.......) Matt is actually NOT going there for a holiday.  Monday - Friday, he'll be sitting in a conference room, learning all about how to typeset (basically, how to take the translated scripture portions/New Testaments and get them from the translated stage to the printed form).  Poor guy.  He'll come home every day to hear stories of my adventures with the kids.  I'm sure he'll be jealous about the playing, but he'd much prefer sitting in a conference room to shopping for everything on my list!

Matt will have a weekend on either end that we can play though!  We're hoping that 'The Hobbit' will still be in theaters so that we could get out to a movie one evening.  And of course, we're looking forward to the chance to eat out at a restaurant.  And oh, boy!  Have I been dreaming about ice cream.  I honestly can't quite remember when I had ice cream last.  It's been a while.  Oh, I can't wait!  Maybe I can convince the family to just skip dinner and we can have an ice cream cone for dinner every night!  Well, I guess that wouldn't be all that healthy, but it would be yummy!

And hopefully the kiddos won't get too sick of me dragging them around to the shops!  My shopping list grows by the day!  But living in a country where shopping is rare, and conditions are hard on shoes and clothes especially, well, I'm looking forward to a chance to re-stock for the next 1 1/2 years of our term in PNG.

Well, now I'm down to about 13 days, 10 hours or so until the plane touches down! I can't wait!