good to be home

We've been back from our Christmas south-west Ontario junket for a few days now. As usual, the first part was spent frenetically visiting everyone while shuttling back and forth between PJ's mom and dad in Waterloo, and the 2nd part was spent drinking wine and reading books at my parents' place in Walkerton. It was a good trip - despite some horrible driving, we saw all of our closest friends from our pre-Ottawa lives, including one dear friend who lives in Europe and I last saw 3 years ago at a wedding over on that side of the Atlantic, and a few others who have gone away for the past few years when we came home for the holidays, but were all around this year. It's amazing how, with good friends, the passage of years does nothing to stilt the conversation.

Now, we're back in Ottawa. We had a wonderful quiet New Year's Eve with some close friends, making "gourmet diner" food and playing Rumoli, and a great day yesterday, alternating between being productive (finished the latest baby quilt, got the new wireless router installed, made 2 soup recipes out of a new Christmas gift cookbook - which is all vegetarian recipes which feature alcohol as one of the ingredients . . . ), and ODing on DVD television.

And the funny thing is - it was good to be "home" where we grew up and where we used to live, but then it was also good to come "home" to our little nest and our regular lives here. It's horribly trite to say that "home is where the heart is", but I guess it's one of those sayings that is over-used because it's true. I like that I have multiple homes, and can feel like I belong in a variety of places.