The sun shines in my sister's smile, and now she has taken it back to California with her along with Eddie and Mom, leaving me shadowless under low dark clouds full of mist. She also left me with her cold, so three days of dreary wet weather over this long Labour Day Weekend are not entirely unwelcome. The gloom suits my current disposition and affords me the luxury of sleeping late without waking to piercing yellow rays at 5:30 am. Still - I am getting a little stir-crazy and expect the Cat in the Hat to show up any moment, even though it already looks as if Thing 1 and Thing 2 have ravaged the apartment.

"But wait?" the observant reader might ask, "Didn't your mother visit you just last month?"

Yes. Isn't she awesome?

The original plan had been for Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, and Brother-in-law to arrive en masse for ten days of familial vacation chaos, but inconveniences of employment resulted in a scheduling conflict, and Mom decided to come twice...(er, I don't think I care for that sentence). At any rate, I reckon 7 people in a 2 bedroom apartment would have been as taxing on our collective patience as on our plumbing.

I had grand plans of merging the photostreams of the dual visitations into some sort of grandiose presentation that would fully capture the magnitude of emotion and entertainment experienced during those busy few weeks, but this cold has side-swiped my attention span and sapped my creativity, and I need to save my strength for the next round of visitors in two weeks time! Stay tuned.

However, I did manage to upload some snapshots for those of you who are interested in seeing my family make goofy faces at random locations throughout the Sydney Surrounds.