Well, here I am back in the chair in front of the screen, home again. Got home about two hours ago. And after the balmy north it is so COLD! You probably get that when as a snowbird you come back home from somewhere like Florida - from the warm winters back to reality. And yes! there were two frosts while I was away and people said they can't remember when they had one before etc. But I remember "when I was a girl we had real frosts and ice formed on the puddles...." you know what I mean.

Just rang the northern family to tell them I had arrived safely and my small grand daughter Naomi said: "When are you coming home Granma?" She wanted me to "stay with me forever". So I guess you could say the visit was a hit. Granmas are the people who read a story three times, take you to the park, have time to paste the monkey face you cut off the cereal box onto another piece of paper so you can color it in. Mums and Dads are busy but Granmas have a lot of time. I wish it could be that way for longer, but a week was better than nothing.

I enjoyed the north. Cairns is a beautiful city on the coast ( where the kids live is a suburb)and the multitude of palms and tropical gardens show it is warmer than here.The spectacular foliage plants particularly caught my gardener's eye. We didn't swim as the lagoon, their big swimming pool on the water front, was having repairs done and the seaside was a nice place to sit beside and have a coffee but I didn't feel inclined to get into it. We had some lovely drives along the coast, particularly on Saturday when we went further north to Port Douglas and the sea is a spectacular aquamarine studded with tiny islands and the shore is lined with palms and the undergrowth looks like jungle, all the things you imagine the tropics to be like.

Shirley had to go to a womens meeting in Townsville, 385kms further south so she took two other ladies and me for company. It took us over four hours to drive down there, we had the coffee evening, stayed overnight in a motel and drove back to Cairns. With cities so far apart in northern Queensland it is difficult to get ladies together for such events but they considered it worth the effort. The Salvation Army church she leads also had a BBQ night with a travelling country band also made up of Salvation Army members and that was a real hit with the locals too. In places like that they take entertainment as a privilege rather than an everyday occurrence and I think get more enjoyment out of it because of that.

The remoteness of the north has left it with a lot of charm the newer larger cities lack but even there the high rise is starting to dominate the waterfront so to see it in its best light you had better go there soon! We didn't go out to the reef but I will stay longer next time and plan a couple of excursions to just be "a tourist for a day". This trip was to catch up with family things rather than to go sightseeing. And I did read out in the sun, and I did play in the sun with the ball and the kids, and I did feel as if it was all worth while.

I came home to a message that I need to ring the respite center as they have a "tummy virus" running rampant there. But I am sure they would have said if Ray was sick and am assuming it is just the general warning they issue if there is a something nasty they don't want visitors to catch. So that can be dealt with tomorrow.

I didn't take my camera so I can't post pics in the Gallery yet, I will have to wait until Shirley downloads hers and sends me some. You will just have to believe that the sky was so blue, the sun was so warm, the setting so exotic that I just loved being there. And having the family there made it just so special.