Coming Clean

This is almost three weeks past due, but better late than never!

I think a good majority of you realize this by now, but for those of you still in the dark: my last two blog posts were complete lies. I never found a job in Whangarei, Alexa and I left New Zealand on June 30th and traveled around Australia for 16 days before flying back to Auckland for a quick stopover. On the evening of July 18th we landed in Reagan National Airport and we've been back since then.

Why the deception, you ask? In early June Alexa and I picked July 18th as an arbitrary date to return home, and when I told my parents I realized July 19th was my niece Madison's birthday/party. And what could be a better surprise than Uncle Eoin and Alexa randomly showing up on the doorstep?

We decided to keep our return a secret from the entirety of my sister's family, and since they read the blog I had to make a few fake posts.

Anyway, the surprise ended up being a bit more exciting than just showing up on the doorstep. My dad had jokingly promised Madison a horse for her birthday, so my mom set about creating a fantastic two-person horse costume. Obviously I was the brains of the operation so Alexa pulled up the rear (literally), and after confusion ensued for a couple minutes we popped out of the costume and surprised everybody! I think the look on my sister's face was the most priceless, but unfortunately we didn't get a picture. We did, however, get these two pictures:

Awwwww.

And yes, the costume did have a mask. Once Alexa's back in town we'll have to don the suit again just so we can get a full picture of the brilliant costume my mom made.

So that's that. Now that I'm back in the States you may be worried that you'll never have the fortune of reading my blog ever again, but don't worry. I still have 3 or 4 posts to write about our fantastic journey along Australia's east coast before I retire the blog.

I apologize to the many, many people I haven't gotten in contact with yet. I don't know how 3 weeks have gone by already, but I've been insanely busy--cleaning, selling junk on ebay, trying to find a real job and all that other fun BS. More on that later. Keep an eye on your inbox for my updates about Oz-Trail-Yer.