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Brian is in Dallas enjoying leadership meetings (not sarcasm) and reconnecting to our old life there. He left before the sun rose on Monday morning. On Tuesday night when I took the rubbish bins out to the street, a small portion of our fence behind the bins fell right over. I’ve left that just where it fell for a very sound reason. I thought that perhaps it would serve as a visual reminder to the rest of the house that something fell apart while Brian was gone and nothing else need pile on. So far so good.

Many of you have followed our updates faithfully for years. Perhaps at this point you’re wondering, “Well, what DID happen at home? The house tends to be fine and everything tends to stay more or less standing during his trips. That isn’t usually the issue. So, more specifically, what creatures invaded civilisation whilst the one person capable of keeping his head and ousting them is gone?” Good question! Very, very good question.

We’ve been tracking oh-so-well this time around. No spiders. No unnaturally large geckos. No prehistoric lace monitors sauntering up the drive threatening our chicken nugget of a dog. Several bees, but that’s okay. We can *mostly* deal with that. This time nature decided to jump scare the pants off me at night. After the attempted break-in back in December, we coated the house with security cameras. I didn’t feel insecure, but I knew during the times Brian was gone I would desire a way to see outside without having to actually go outside. The kitchen door camera is at our back door, just mere steps from our bedrooms. The girls were fast asleep after a delightful day spent celebrating their February birthdays with another family. I was turning out the lights, proud that I was doing so right at my 10pm goal. Then the buzz came alerting me to a “person detected at kitchen door,” something that never happens unless one of us is coming and going that way. None of us was coming and going that way. I completely panicked and found myself not wanting to look. Why look? Let’s just put our hands over our faces and pretend “person detected” will go away. But I did look and found a wild friend glomming onto the wall. My heart rate took a bit of time to recover and I’m still not overly amused. But I am mildly amused.

The uptick in spiders (big Australian ones), ants (big Australian ones), and bees (also big Australian ones) has worn on my psyche of late. Then came the day the girls were piled on my bed working on school with the window uncovered behind them. Willa looked out into the jungle and saw a goanna (think: tiny, spotted Komodo dragon) climbing up a tree and stopping for a nap. We stopped and watched him for a bit, enjoying both his lazy, quiet moment and the cockatoos bouncing in the trees around him. It hit me anew just how much God has blessed us with our window into his creation. It feels priceless. But, well… we do pay a price. The surreal goanna experience that transformed our boring bedroom window into a zoo exhibit certainly made me far more willing pay the spider, snake, ant, bee, and occasional tree frog on the camera tax in order to keep that view.