Well it has been over a month since I last blogged - and boy have I missed it! I love taking time out to reflect and remember on the day to day events of my family's life. And I love as much looking back on them - it is too hard to remember those details without this journal.
So Melbourne! We had a super wonderful trip - really so relaxing and enjoyable. Damien had three weeks off work and then one week in Singapore on a work conference - returning the morning before we started our epic drive home. This drive home was truly hell and shall be left right until the end so that it doesn't spoil the memories of such a great holiday. May I just say what a soldier and amazing man my husband was getting us through this drive - I was too tired to drive.
Christmas was spent with my family on my Dad's side. This is my Dad's sisters family. I have three female cousins all who have families. S has a boy about Tom's age and two girls a bit younger - who doted on my little boys. B and Tom played cricket and skink finding and other boy stuff and seemed to really get a long. Tom had a sleepover a couple of nights too. William was devastated that he couldn't as well. I started to think he was ready for a friend sleepover not just a Nanna & Poppy sleepover. (In fact, on our return to Brisbane he and Tom had a sleepover and the D's house (another Thomas and William in fact!) and he was perfectly behaved and happy apparently - if only very tired the next day when he got home!)
Boxing Day and the next four days were dedicated to the cricket - a wonderful experience for all of us. I find Test Cricket so incredibly relaxing and the lazy days enjoying the Melbourne Cricket Club experience were great. Red wines with Dad in the Long Room and talking to some other members there. Wine in the Hugh Trumble Café watching the cricket on the numerous screens and meeting friends. Then I had Tom with me a few days and he loved the atmosphere - we bought him the world's most expensive shirt (Australian cricket polo) and a flag - which he managed to get a few Australian cricketers autographs on. He loved hanging down on the boundary line (just like I used to!). William came one day and slept through half of it and watched peppa pig the other half on the iphone (and blew my data allowance for the month out of the water!).
The day after the cricket finished (early due to the first of many English capitulations of the summer - yay) we headed to the Melbourne Zoo. The boys had actually visited the Dubbo zoo on the way down whilst I slept in our cabin in the Holiday Park. It was a stinking hot 45 degrees so they didn't get out of the car much so they saw the animals from the distance only but it was still pretty awesome to see giraffes, zebra, elephants etc in the middle of Australia!
Melbourne Zoo - EVERY time I go there I am so impressed. We loved the meerkats, the lemurs, the reptiles but really this time, I fell in love even more with the monkey enclosure. It is so well done and the monkeys are so human! One put on an aerial acrobat show that had us gasping like we were looking at fireworks! Another was feeding its baby and picking its hair (just like I do with my babies!). They come up to the window and peered at us so curiously as well - makes you wonder who is looking at who! We had taken a packed lunch with us so we sat under a gazebo and had that. It was a hot day, again, but we managed to cope.
We then took the day to drive up to the Yarra Valley to see the countryside and visit the wineries. This was surprisingly a lovely day for Damien and I. The kids didn't scream at being put back into the car (amazingly) and they slept while we had coffees and enjoyed the drive. We stopped at two wineries - Balgowrie Estate and then Innocent Bystander. At Balgowrie Estate there was a fire and we had a glass of wine each beside it and managed to keep the kids from ripping the place to shreds.
Damien and I do both get a kick out of the looks one gets with four boys in tow! Except when they are being run around crazy idiots like they were at Innocent Bystander. Sammy was pushing chairs around the restaurant at great rate of knots and so we had to skull our beautiful Moscato and Pinot and head home. We had learnt out lesson of trying to do unknown restaurants with the kids - after Puffing Billy we had stopped at a noodle shop and ordered Singapore Noodles and a couple of other dishes - forgetting that they can be quite spice. William had a complete and utter meltdown and could not be settled. Disaster. So after other days we went home and had an easy Thermomix dinner.
Mum and I took the kids one afternoon to Collingwood Children's Farm. This is a beautiful innercity fully functioning farm with a lovely café. The kids enjoyed the chickens and the guinea pigs, before going on to chase sheep and goats in the open field - Sammy liked to bury his head into the sheeps woolly coat! We also stood and feed grass to the horses. We then had coffee and icecream in the café before admiring a courting peacock who strutted around and shook himself like a South American cococabana dancer! There is a lovely precinct right beside the farm which has restaurants/cafes and gardens as well which we wandered through.
A must for our boys every visit to Melbourne is the Sunday Diamond Valley Railway. This is a very large miniature (!) railway in that there were perhaps six engines running and there are loads of track complete with bridges and tunnels, running through beautiful bushland. It is very well maintained and run (though the volunteers are a bit officious!) My aunt and uncle and cousin J joined us and we took the boys down for a pony ride as well, located beside the railway. William and Eddie are horse crazy and the smiles on their faces during the pony ride were very rewarding. Tom was put on a tiny pony and looked like an Amazon - may have been his last pony ride I think! Afterwards, at Degannis in Eltham, we had a long afternoon tea as William and Eddie passed out on the bench seats after such an exciting morning.
One of our only precommitments was an afternoon at So Frenchy So Chic - a French music outdoor festival at Werribee Mansion. After a fairly stressful morning we finally arrived, very late, at about 4pm. However once we got there it was wonderful. We had left Sammy and Eddy with my parents, so with the other two boys being so self-sufficient - I kicked back with a glass of wine or five and listened to the music on the lawn and did some people watching. It was a magnificent day weatherwise and we were one of the last to leave. As a result, we got lots of freebie left overs - flowers, sandwiches, unfortunately no moet!
With the same friends as at So French So Chic we also spent New Years Even down at Barwon Heads/Ocean Grove. They have a beautiful beach house - newly painted A frame wooden home - decorated beautifully as only my friend can! I have been encouraging her for years to open a home design store! Anyway - we had a wonderful (debaucherous!) evening with them and another of their friends who had similar age kids. The kids played happily out the back for most of the night as well.
The next morning my children were up ridiculously early and the noise they could make in a wooden small house was really quite outstanding. So we all made a hasty exit to let the others sleep a bit longer and so that their beautiful new house was not further trashed. We did manage to take home the remote control for the tv though (!)
It was a nice enough morning so Damien and I decided to drive on further along the Ocean Road to Lorne. We spent a wonderful hour or so hanging out on Bells Beach. The kids played in the very shallows (wild water there!) and in the sand and Damien and I had a coffee up on the dunes and chatted. It was a great way to bring in the new year. We stopped at a Lighthouse along the way as Tom loves lighthouses and also had some great takeaway HEALTHY food from an organics shop. However the rain set in and traffic set in making for a long, miserable drive home. We even had a windscreen wiper blowout!
The first day