Gold Coast

I have been off the air for a bit because we went down the coast with friends for a few days.  It was a deal that let us stay in a two bedroom apartment for less than staying at the caravan park.  When we got there the place was about the same size as my house, so there was plenty of room for the kids to play Hide and Seek and generally run around!  There was multiple pools to play in and one was heated (barely).  The kids would play in the heated pool, jumping in, swimming across and diving for toys.  When it got too cold in there they would move to the spa and warm up, before repeating the whole cycle.  They would go until they were dropping with exhaustion and then we would go upstairs again and stick them all in the bubble bath. 

The most interesting thing for an observer in all this swimming was the behaviour of other parents.  I must be a very intense parent, I decided.  I went in and swam with the boys a couple of times and otherwise sat on the side and watched them play.  While watching, several other unaccompanied kids would wander in and out without parents.  The youngest would have been about three.  At no point did a parental unit even poke their head in to check.  None of these random kids could swim well.  They could keep their heads above water but that was about the extent of it.  I couldn't leave while they were there, mostly because they terrified me and I couldn't leave and then find out later they had drowned, alone, with no one caring or watching.

One of the days (Tuesday), we all had tickets on an excursion to Stradbroke Island.  It involved a boat trip and a BBQ and then free access to multiple watercraft on the bay side of the island.  Levi loves kayaking (and calls it hayaking), I think mostly because we do it together and it is a novelty.  I went out in the bay with the kids several times.  We built a sand castle, that became a sand mountain, that became Mt Doom from Lord of the Rings.  Of course, none of the kids are old enough to have a clue what Mt Doom is but it kept me amused!

Most nights we all just fell into bed and as the curtains didn't block the light very well, we all got up at about five am to do it all again.  It was a great holiday and already I feel more relaxed than I have for some time.