Packing for Dummies

What a conundrum!!  Your child has made the State team and has to go to a competition interstate for 5 days.  Only problem is……said child can't make it from the kitchen to the front door without losing something *sigh*!!!!!!     What to do??  Well if you are anything like me, you arm yourself with snap lock bags in every size you can get and a permanent marker and get to work…...  

Firstly I had to clean out the bag.  Oh the horror.  How many shockies and tennis balls does one boy need?  On the bright side, I did find $3:50 in change rattling around in the bottom so that was a bonus.

Now you are probably wondering why everything is in snap lock bags?  Well there are two reasons.  Firstly, a leaky drink bottle can be a bit of a disaster.  Secondly, our household will never forget the rotten banana soup incident of 2014…………and 2015……….  The weird thing is this child does not like or ever eat bananas so I have no idea why they were in his bag in the first place.  I did lose my sh*t after the 2015 incident and refused to clean the bag at all.  Instead I made him throw it in the bin and go without until he had earned the money to buy a new one.

We have now ticked everything off the tennis bag checklist.  We sat together and packed it so he saw everything go in….and now all I can do is sit back and keep my fingers crossed.

We leave for Melbourne bright and early tomorrow.

When life gives you lemons...

Late last year I spoke to the boys' tennis coach about going interstate for a tournament.  He suggested we go to Shepparton but I had a couple of problems with this.  Firstly, it would be January.  Secondly, it would NOT be near the beach.  I decided to try to find a tournament we could enter that would also be a great place for a summer holiday.  This proved to be a wise decision as a combination of windy weather and a change in court surfaces (The Snerd is a Hard Court boy….the tournament was on en tout cas ) meant that The Snerd bombed out early in 12/U singles.  Curiously the 10/U singles was a round robin with all matches played on one day so Captain Crazy had days and days of holiday.  So in the end, although we didn't have a fantastic tournament, we did have a really great holiday and a terrific look around the Mornington Peninsula.

We stayed at Big4 Mornington Peninsula Holiday Park.  Big4's are a great budget friendly choice when travelling as a family of 5, so we have stayed in a few around Australia.  I always feel a little concerned about staying in Big4's when on 'business' rather than 'leisure' as it is possible to have kids running around until quite late at night which is problematic when you try to get your 8 year old in bed at 7:30pm.  However, in this case we had no issue with noise at all and the cabin was big enough for us to fit comfortably without feeling like sardines and falling over each other.  Arguably the best thing about this Big4 was the coffee van who came each morning for a couple of hours saving me from the horror of Instant Moccona.

On the days we weren't at the courts, we explored all the beach towns and I got major Beach Hut envy:

On one of my favourite days we went road tripping to Enchanted Adventure Garden which we all loved.  Although we didn't go tree surfing due to The Snerds fear of heights, the kids had great fun on the tube slide and all the garden puzzles while I was blown away by the gardens.

Maybe I have lived a very sheltered life but I have never seen hedges like this before.  I thought they were amazing.

We stopped in at Heronswood for lunch and more gardens (much to the delight of the children).  However they were pacified by the wonderful food and the homemade cordials.

Homemade Ginger Beer at Heronswood

Finally, as someone who does not live near the coast, I have to mention how cool the Sand Sculpting was at the Frankston Waterfront.  Even thought the theme was 'A Day at the Zoo', I have long been a closet Steam Punk fan so I really enjoyed this one:

So even though this was supposed to be a tennis trip I think we will all remember it more as a family holiday.  We may not have gotten the tournament results we wanted but instead, we made lots of great memories.

Shack Life

Between the end of school and New Year, we managed to get away to the beach for three weeks (the two dogs included).

This is the second year we have rented the same shack.  When some people say shack they mean 'palatial abode by the sea', but when I say shack I mean shack….complete with outside toilet.  However we love our rented shack in its sleepy seaside town.  The kids are free to come and go as they like, and the pace of life is so relaxed that it is safe for them to ride their bikes which affords them a freedom they don't have in the city.  Also the lack of fences meant the dogs had more freedom than they ever imagined!!!

In between walks on the beach, beach cricket, backyard cricket, catching up with friends and coffee, we finally had time to relax and unwind from our incredibly busy year.  It was a wonderful way to end 2015.