As you can imagine the time we spent at home was an emotional one, we spent as much time as possible at the hospital and around visiting hours there, we would try to see as many friends and family as possible. It was difficult to leave the hospital (although you have no option at all around visiting hours) and go and be happy to see everyone else.
We spent time with all of our family. We went to see Nanna who was thrilled to see us and helped us fill our backpacks with good old Yorkshire Tea and Marmite and took us out for Christmas dinner, we spent time with nearly all of our Nieces and Nephews and I even got to have a snuggle with Matthew who we hadn’t yet met…remember he was born while we were climbing the sulphur skyline?? He’s 9 weeks old already…how time flies!
Also while we were back in the UK we had an article published in LOOK magazine which we didn’t think we would get to see it so it was nice to be there when it came out!
All in all it was such a sad time AND such a happy time all rolled into one. It’s hard to be the extremes of both of those feelings without feeling guilty and it is exhausting!
The week was over in a blink and suddenly we were saying our goodbyes all over again, yet another emotional rollercoaster as we drove back to visit friends in Manchester.
Toff and Nats provided us with the mini break we needed before our flight back to Canada and we enjoyed a meal out with yet more friends and popped in to see how much Maximus had grown at Ilan and Layla’s, before heading back to the airport for our early flight back to Canada.

The next twist in the tale…of course there always is one…is that we were flying back to Calgary to an appointment with the American Embassy to complete our American visitors visa application.
Now, you know by now that with us nothing is easy, and if you have been following us through Canada you will know that we have had several issues whilst travelling across the borders with trying to return our 90 day waiver visa. This has resulted in our 90 day waiver visa expiring (even though we have only spent 35 days in the US) and this cannot be extended. The only way we can get back into the US is to apply for a 1 month to 1 year visitors visa. This costs $140 EACH and involves a face to face meeting at an embassy. We had been arranging this the day we got the news to return to the UK and as the earliest appointment we could have in Vancouver was in 1 month we decided to try other embassies that we could get a return flight to for an appointment. The nearest place with one any time soon was Calgary and we were given an appointment on 12th October.

 So it had been arranged. we would fly back from the UK to Calgary on the 9th October and stay with Clarks brother, Paul (who luckily lives in Calgary) who was willing to put us up for a couple of days. Unfortunately for Paul it meant we would be crashing his Thanksgiving! Again luckily, Paul welcomed us and he had enjoyed his official Thanksgiving dinner before we arrived. So, we offered to cook spaghetti on Thanksgiving evening as a kind of thanks for having us in his way.
So we spent a lovely fresh sunny morning wandering the deserted streets of Calgary while everyone enjoyed their thanksgiving morning and bought our ingredients.

We went to the store and gathered up a couple of bottles of wine, made a mess of Pauls kitchen and sat down to dinner with Paul, Angie (Pauls lovely other half) and Rudi (the huge hyperactive puppy) and enjoyed our very first Thanksgiving.

We had such a great night, we laughed and gossipped, talked wine, travel, art, food and zombies and managed to polish off 6 bottles of wine between the four of us!!!!!! And thats before we mention the liqueur coffees! We thoroughly enjoyed the bits we remember and man did we feel rough the next day!

We spent our hangover catching up on the blog and editing videos and that day we received an email (a rather dull one at that) telling us that our application for Australian citizenship had been accepted! It took us a year to gather the evidence we needed and our application has been in process for over a year and they choose this day (not that I’m complaining…well maybe a little) when we are hungover, emotionally drained and least expecting it to send us the best news ever! We couldn’t really raise the energy to get excited and it was a real anti-climax at the time…I’m sure somewhere down the line it will sink in and we will get excited!

Before we knew it it was the morning of our interview and we packed up and said our goodbyes and headed to the Embassy. We were scanned, quized, finger printed and told not to drive in the dark in Mexico (??) and sent on our way with a ten year visitors visa and no passports!
We weren’t expecting to get 10 years so that was a great bonus and well worth the $280 fee! Now all we had to do was get back to Vancouver without our passports and wait for the visa’s to arrive!
We jumped in a taxi to the airport and waited the 4 hours for our flight to Vancouver, managed to board the plane using our drivers licenses which was novel and finally landed in Vancouver airport…our favourite airport in the World! we have been to the airport on 5 seperate occasions since the 30th August and have made a great friend in Jaeger Mah whom we met again while we waited for Angie to collect us for the ferry crossing BACK to the Island.
It was so lovely to see Angie again although it had only been 10 days, we finally landed back on Vancouver Island 16 hours after we had left Pauls for our interview!
The best thing about the whole experience was that we had been told our passports with our shiny new visa’s in would take 7-10 days to arrive at our given address. We were given a tracking number and resigned ourselves (not at all upset about it) to spending 7-10 days back in Nanaimo with Clark and Angie…However, as we arrived in Nanaimo Alex received an email saying that our passports were already at vancouver airport! They had pretty much arrived the same time as we did! Why didn’t they just tell us to wait for them??? Ggrrrr!! Anyway, all was not lost, it meant we could spend the weekend with the Garnett family and then set off all refreshed on our journey down the West coast of America!

We had a great weekend, drinking, eating , going out on the boat and talking too much and I even got my nails painted at Morganic Studios and we treat ourselves to a haircut each!
As we left this morning (with our emergency peanut butter and coffee supplies) we struggled to say goodbye knowing that we wont be back in a week. I had to run and get into the van before I started to cry and we waved all the way down the street!

Although it was hard to leave, now we are back on the road (well, we are currently on the ferry to Vancouver) we feel ready to start our journey again. The last few weeks have been tough and there continues to be emotional hurdles for us to jump but it is all part of lifes journey, and what a journey we are on!

Find out what happens next on our wedding travel adventure!