Have you met Raymond Luxury Yacht?

It has been some time since the last update.  Let me fill you in.

We now live in our own house, 5 minutes walk from my parents and seconds from the best boozer in town.  It's fantastic having our own space and being able to see my parents every day.  I feel fairly sure my parents may well start to impose visiting restrictions.

We went to France with the children for a week for a friend's wedding.  It was the first wedding we have done en famille and it was utterly amazing, due in no small part to the bride and groom's unbelievable organisational skills.  They even had their own website which detailed which flights were the cheapest, what time food would be served on the wedding day, a map of where everyone was staying (the groom,an old school friend was delighted to get everyone 'on site' - one of his favourite states of being) and for how long, what the facilities were like for children, I could go on.  They made it impossible to not want go.  So we spent what can only be described as an idyllic week in the Dordogne at a rambling Manoir and a hamlet of gites swimming, drinking white wine, playing with the children, chatting to all my old school friends, sharing some appalling parenting stories and wearing high heels every evening. Seriously, I don't think I could design a better holiday.  It was particularly fun to do it all with the husband as the last few English weddings I have attended on my own.  It came to light he was also known as 'Eugene Travis' by his NZ crew.

'That's just my drinking name,' he said.

I was puzzled.  'I thought it was Chest Fernandez?'

'Nah, that's my DJ name.'

My school mates naturally wanted their own drinking names.  Step forward Raymond Luxury Yacht and Le Skud.

Before leaving New Zealand I was worried about the year ahead for the husband in the UK.  As he is someone who enjoys spear fishing and surfing, I was concerned that the delights of the Ribble estuary which slops past our little town across miles of quicksand wouldn't hold the same attraction as the stretch of glittering ocean where we are lucky enough to live on his side of the world.

In the run up to us leaving we hadn't spent much time together (probably because I had little time spare between all those leaving parties).  For the last month or so since we arrived we have spent almost every hour God gives us glued at each others' hip.  My whining refrain of 'We really need to have quality time together if we want our marriage to last the distance,' has been replaced with a shifty 'I'm just popping out to get some milk' in order to have 5 minutes to myself.  Actually I'm thrilled, it has been a hugely bonding month for our family and really great for the children to be picked up from school and nursery by both of us as they settle in.

HRH has generously supplied us with a fun filled weekend of Royalist fun.  We have friends coming to stay and I can barely contain my excitement.