On the beach

Thursday:

I'm back! We've been away on holidays.

First news, we have successfully put a holding deposit on the boy puppy after missing out on the girl, and after much thought have decided to name him Thor. Blond and gorgeous!

On Saturday we drove to Sydney to my husband's aunt's wedding. She is the disorganised kind, so I bet my husband that she would be at least an hour late - but no! Right on time. The wedding and the reception both went smoothly. The only bad thing that happened was that the kids were playing on a knee-high wall behind the church after the ceremony and Jasmine slipped off, grazing her thigh badly on the way down. Honestly, it was as big as my hand (including fingers). She was upset at first, of course, but after the pain subsided a bit I think she rather enjoyed having it to show everyone and get a lot of sympathy. Hmmm, I wonder where she gets that from...

We spent the night and the next morning at my brother-in-law's so we got to see my cute little niece, then Sunday afternoon and night at my mum's. One of her legs has swollen up badly each time after she's had a bone-strengthening injection, so she needs to see someone about that. She was limping a bit worse because of it. A couple of days before we arrived, one of the house drainage pipes collapsed so when my brother had one of his eight hour showers (he has OCD) the house flooded. He just went to bed and mum got up the next morning to sodden carpets, which she felt too overwhelmed to do anything about. She didn't even put down towels or anything. We tried to dry it up a bit when we were there, and she had at least organised a plumber who came when we were there. She and my brother are fighting more about his hoarding, now that her health isn't so good she isn't coping as well with that stuff. It will be a great thing for her when she moves to a nursing home and finally makes him get his own apartment (which she will pay for). It's all just too much.

After those dramas we headed off down the coast to a seaside resort town called Kiama. Tim and I used to go there before we had kids. In fact our first holiday together was there after we had been dating for three months. He got food poisoning (or a virus maybe) one night and spent all night throwing up. Bit of a tester for a new relationship! I had to negotiate with the hotel for an extra night because he was too weak to leave bed the next day.

Anyway, Kiama is lovely and I don't know why we hadn't been back since we had children. I booked the hotel in a bit of a rush and "family room" turned out to be extra beds squeezed into a normal small room, but the view was great and the weather was very interesting. Hot sunny days changing to freezing heavy storms in the space of a few minutes, and back again. We watched the sky and spent as much time as we could out of doors and had a lovely time. Beaches and long walks and seeing the two blowholes and trying different restaurants.

On the way back we went on a suspended walkway high above the treetops on the side of a mountain. None of my photos really did it justice. Very very high. Not bad for someone scared of heights!

Looking forward to my own bed.