Camping at the Coast

 Talk about a vacation! Last month we escaped to Jervis Bay before the end of school/holiday rush. It was a week chock full of beauty, wildlife, mess and fun. Memories were made, folks!

 We stayed at Greenpatch Campgrounds, which had the friendliest wildlife I've seen to date. Birds all over us, possums trying to eat out of our pot (I literally had to remove them with my hands) and heaps of roos, even a snake found shelter in the bathroom block after a rainy night. It was exciting.

But the beaches were the real highlight. Beyond beautiful - exotic, rustic, and altogether EMPTY. Amazing. I'll never get over the beaches here.

Would've been the perfect picture op for a Christmas card... but I'm not that organized.
Instead, we got this:

 Camping with 5 kids is bound to be an adventure, but we were able to laugh through most of the painful parts.

 Lessons learned: 

fly nets work for mozzies too

candles are a poor substitute for an open fire

mandatory tick checks are a must before bed 

(we tweezed off 5 total)

car dance parties can be a great respite on early morns or rainy days

every speck of food must be locked up before dusk 

(or you're in for a wild night combating the vandals)

 (My attempted car nap and the elusive kookaburra.)

 We explored many of the local beaches and hikes. Our favorites: Murray's Beach, Cave Beach, and the Guinness Record Whitest Sand in the World at Hyam's Beach.

 

new sunglasses photoshoot - work it!

Lured the fam over to this cave with crazy layers of black insects above.

 Hard to leave such a paradise!

The Call of the Beast

A couple months ago I participated in my first "mud run" with a few friends. It's something I've wanted to do for ages and when the National Obstacle Course Racing Championship was held in Canberra it was an easy sell! Loud music, dirty, family-friendly, hot and sweaty. Much money was raised for the Soldier On charity. There were individual winners and group winners and then a kids run at the end. I did the medium 8K course with friends and then ran the 2K course with Will, Kenna and Annie.

Me vs. 8Ft Walls: Bruised & battered but conquered unaided (see that smile?)

I'll tell you what, my "training" on the neighborhood monkey bars was insufficient for the amount of walls we were require to scale not to mention the uphill runs... I was tire hopping, sandbag hoisting, balance beaming, cargo net crawling, mud pit slogging, rope climbing, boulder jumping, tire dragging and river running for about 4 hours (the kids kept repeating and repeating their course and my wobbly legs about gave out by the time we walked back to the car.)

 Poor Darren had retreated there quickly with the babies to escape the heat and flies so didn't witness much of our athletic prowess, but I got a couple pics of the kids. The wall climbs and net army crawls were the most challenging while the mud pits and balance feats were the most fun. And of course the giant slip & slide hose-down by the fire department at the end. The kids were real go-getters and it was a blast to do together.

 A few Before & Afters

showering off with some pumped-in river water

Glorious day out in the countryside with perfect weather for the run.

The Holidays

"The Holidays" is a term used in Oz not just for Christmas and New Years, but all of Summer Break as well. You can imagine cramming in all the "end of year" projects/parties/teacher gifts into an already full early-December! But despite the hectic lead up to Christmas, they pull it off year in and year out. Then everybody takes off on holiday. And I mean everybody. Offices closed, phones offline, they are OUT. December and January are a ghost town round here as friends are off galavanting around Europe or cruising the islands or touring Asia for 4-6 weeks at a time. That's doing "vacation" right. And you can't blame them when most every destination is "overseas" and requires an expensive airline ticket. Leaving for a month or two at a time is the only cost-efficient way to go.

For purposes of this post however, I'll just try to catch up with how the end of 2013 "holidays" looked for our fam.

The lead up to Christmas was lovely. Lots of baking, puzzles, a bit of caroling, plenty of Santas and reading around the tree with eggnog each night.

lots of notes between Fizbo and Annie - heart melters

Will trying a dizzying approach to stringing up the lights

Summer needed little supervision (or clothing) in December with all the Christmas decor around.

this one gave out free gelato coupons!

She was pretty enamored with Santa too. She kept wrapping up gifts for him under the tree.

The Embassy Christmas party was funny. Des wouldn't get near Santa, but walked around with a soda in one hand and three cookies in the other as if he owned the place.

We also enjoyed Carols By Candlelight for the first time. Beautiful venue out in the park. Everyone brings picnics, candles, and enjoys the show, singing along with the traditional carols while hundreds of bats fly overhead at dusk. Christmas at its finest!

 A couple more special events in Canberra: home to the Guinness World Record for the Most Lights on a house (over half a million.) We braved the 90 minute line to walk through the driveway and there was pretty much not a surface unlit. What a feat of time and ENERGY.

And then there's this whole 12 Days of Christmas Celebration downtown. Free camel rides, blow up castles, water games, climbing walls, bumper boats, bungee tramps. It was a a kid's dream and barely any lines!

Will was a gentle Joseph again for the Ward Nativity and Summer took her shepherding very seriously, stroking the one "sheep"s head constantly. We sure will miss these friends!

We enjoyed a super long stretch of Dad being home (he gets Australian and US holidays which means about a week and a half at the end of the year) by just vegging out together. And while the house was a pigsty, we sure reveled in the R&R.

 Christmas Eve stayed light til 9:30 so it gave us plennnnnty of time to pack in everything. Movies, bubbly, Summer finally getting to play Baby Jesus in the world's laziest Nativity, Christmas reading, Santa/reindeer food, etc. etc.

 

 Christmas Morning:

from this.... to this...

Can you beat Christmas Day spent in the pool? I don't know... Pool toys. Best $15 I ever spent, and many thanks to our kind neighbors Christmasing in Europe who gave us free reign. :)