New Zealand and Moving Back to Portland (via Honolulu!)

Hi everybody~
Hoping this finds you all well and surviving the continued US Presidential Race & Wall Street drama. It continues to be interesting for us to watch these topics unfold from a somewhat outsider perspective. What an incredible impact the US economy has upon the world. I had honestly never really considered this idea before living here and watching the news, day by day, as they just wait to see what will happen dependent upon the US market. The Aussie dollar has dropped by about 20cents against the US dollar in the past 2 weeks, so we figure we may as well spend most of our earnings while we're here, which is always pretty easily accomplished for us. And we mailed our US Absentee Ballots off to the states early last week, so our votes are in.

So, we've got 3 big news events to report upon. First, as you can see from the picture, Andy received his Four-n-Twenty Magic Salad Plate! What a treasured Australian souvenir this will be for us to own.
Second, Andy also received a job offer from a company in Wellington, New Zealand. Which, after quite a bit of debate, detail examination, soul searching, and a few tears (me, of course) we decided to pass on.
Which leads to our third big news topic, barely even 60 minutes old - we have purchased a portion of our return flights for moving back to Portland! We will be leaving Melbourne for good on Thursday, May 7th, and making our way back via a stop-over in Honolulu. We plan to stay in Honolulu for possibly 4 or 5 days before flying direct from Honolulu to Portland, so we will be back in Portland by mid-May 2009! Crazy! If anyone would like to plan on spending a few days in Honolulu with us, just let us know!

Everything else here is good. Spring weather comes and goes by the day. Spring horse racing is a hot topic again, and we've been getting ourselves organized to attend the big Melbourne Cup day on November 4th this year. Well, I've been getting organized - Andy mostly just has to put on his suit and get on the train. I've had the pleasure of attempting to create an entire ensemble (dress, shoes, hat, purse, accessories) on a reasonable budget, which is a challenge in trendy Melbourne. We'll let you know how it turns out. We leave tomorrow morning for an 8-day holiday on the southern island of New Zealand, which we are really excited about. So the next blog will certainly be filled with tons of cool NZ pictures, no doubt.

Fun wishes to our Portland peeps as everyone celebrates Steve & Marnie's Portland Wedding Reception this weekend! You all know how much we wish we could be there to join in the festivities, but we will certainly be there in spirit and I'm sure "Cheers!ing" you from New Zealand. And we'll be seeing most of you via webcam for the annual T*%s-n-Stache party the following weekend I hear :)

Australian Quote for the day:
We're a nation of punters and party-goers.
-Paul Hogan

Cheers!

Love, Christy