I'm coming home!

Guess what the visa officer said! :

After initial entry to Australia has been made the visa allows you to leave and re-enter Australia as many times as you like until 4 February 2010. Please note that the visa will cease on this date.

Yayy! I'm definitely coming home for Christmas! My ticket is for the 21st December. :) Ticket prices have gone WAY up since May (from $1200 round-trip in may to $2800 in Dec.) so we're really hoping that we can afford for Chris to come too. I'd hate for our first married Christmas to be spent apart. :( At least I know that there will be no visa dramas this time 'round for me anyways. We do have to lodge the Partner Visa app. before Feb. 4th, so it's really good that I'm able to come home and get all the documentation we need. It was going to be a BEATING trying to send mom on a wild goose chase after all of it!!

If Chris is able to come with me (he should, we just might have to pull a few strings) we'd really like to road-trip up to a little bed and breakfast someplace where there's snow. :) He's never seen proper snow before, and I've only seen it from the airplane window so we'd really like to just bundle up and go to the B&B and maybe spend an afternoon building a snowman!

I'm a little bit disappointed that my ticket is for so late in December. I don't remember it being that late when I booked it, I thought it'd been for around the 18th or so...but I think that booking it earlier made things too expensive or something...ah well what can you do. I wish I could be there to experience how nice Christmas time is in DFW. There's just an entirely different mood in the air, it's like magic. There's Christmas music playing in every store and everyone has those over-the-top light displays in their yards and on their houses....there's the seasonal coffee creamers. hahaha The mood in Moranbah just doesn't change all that much. Sure the decorations go up....but I honestly think that everyone's hot and sweaty and the heat makes people angrier than they would be otherwise. Australians should be allowed to elect to celebrate Christmas in July. Maybe then they'd get to experience some of the magic. :)

The Aussie dollar is REALLY strong at the moment and is only going to get stronger!! It's at $0.92USD and is supposed to make it up to $1.20 USD sometime next year! woot! We'll be transferring my student loan debt over here at that point, so it's really exciting to be able to chop 20% off my debt just like that! Let's hope the predictions are true. :)

Anyways, I know this update doesn't really talk about what we did on the weekend....but I can't be bothered to write any more than I already have, just wanted to say I'm coming home!