The Photo Gallery – Frightful (from frightful elegance to reality)

Frightful is returning from holiday to piles and piles of dirty washing.

The last four nights of our trip away to the US and UK were spent in absolute luxury. There’s only been a handful of days in my life that I’ve enjoyed such absolute decadence. I didn’t think once about cleaning, washing, cooking, clearing dishes and putting away armfuls of laundry.

The Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara was decked out with frightful elegance for Halloween (I’m just glad the spiders weren’t real!).

So after lounging by the pool in blissful palm tree surrounds, being served fresh fruit and cocktails, it has certainly been ‘frightful’ to return to reality…

Thankfully the weather here in New Zealand has been bliss for our return. Perfect drying conditions have helped me wash, dry and fold away countless baskets of washing. Two sleeps we’ve now had in our own beds and we’re all adjusted back to New Zealand time.

It’s great to be home and the return flight went smoothly – with sky couches on the Air New Zealand flight from LAX helping all three children sleep for a large part of the twelve hour flight.

The frightful pile is now down to the normal daily hum-drum of family life with three daughters, a busy hubbie and me – the housewife and mother. I feel much like my three daughters in this photograph… except I haven’t been ‘attacked’ by a zombie (as they were acting out) in a grand hotel – just buried under the frightful reality of domesticity!