Reuben arrives!

We are delighted, overjoyed, thankful and still slightly surprised to announce the arrival of Reuben Freddie George Tough. He was born on Monday 26 August at 22.34, weighing 5lb 130z and 3 weeks early! Never let it be said that the Toughs do not know how to make an entrance!

Bye Bye Tru

Trudie's been gone a week - how have I coped?

Trudie about to get aboard the Kodiak to depart Aiyura, at the start of her journey back to the UK

Well, it's been tough, but I wish I had a photo of the freezer from the day she left - food literally fell out of it, it was so full of goodies she'd made me. Otherwise, I managed to find something almost as cute as her at work to distract me (no, not the helicopter - even I don't go as far as to find it cute).

One of the cats at work with her new-born kittens

I have also done a little flying in the fixed wing recently to help me see parts of the country not so frequently serviced by the helicopter. Last week we went to Hoskins, on New Britain (an island to the east of the PNG mainland) which involved flying over this relatively recently active volcano and it's lava flow!

There are still a number of active volcanos around PNG

But I am mostly rather looking forward to our being back together again.

Journeys

I’m not sure about the wisdom of blogging when I am jet-lagged, but just wanted to let you know that half of team Tough is back in Wales safely and the other half is doing really well too.

It was hard to leave Duncan, the turquoise house on the hill and Ukarumpa friends. I already feel excited about going back in a few months, but a few things have to happen first!

The journey back did not start well. Air Niugini decided I didn’t have the right paperwork, even though we had checked and double-checked beforehand, and didn’t give me the green light to go until 5 minutes before boarding…but then it was wonderful and I felt as if my path was strewn with angels! The beginning was particularly frustrating because we had tried so hard to make sure everything was sorted beforehand, but amazingly I was very calm. Anyone who knows what I am like in an airport (I would be there 5 hours before a flight if it was up to me…)will appreciate the miracle of that and I am delighted to have made it home relatively unscathed!

It feels surreal, but wonderful to be back on beautiful Anglesey and it is almost as if the last six and half months haven’t happened…but I know that they did and that now I have two homes. The fact that they are eight thousand miles apart means that I already know what it means to feel joy to be in one and yet still miss the other.