An update…
…sorry for the lack of posting, it seems like quite a few bloggers have got blogger’s block.
Firstly, our holiday. You know, I have travelled around the world by myself, by going on holiday with children is really something else. Not quite so much spontaneity… but lots of fun and lots of joy in their joy.
We left Adelaide late Friday night. The children were in childcare while I packed and cleaned the house. Once the car was ready to go, I picked them up then picked A up and headed to the airport.
Neither of the children had flown so it was all new for them. The flight was pretty stressful, as much as we tried to make it fun and relaxed, that just didn’t work. I finally got Dexter to sleep about 40 minutes before we landed – my nipples felt like they were about to fall off.
We got to Brisbane at about 10:10pm, out to the car rental terminal by 10:30pm and on the road by about 11pm. I thought that hiring a car would be easy, just get in it and go. And it was. I was also afraid that hiring a new car would make our car seem sooo old, but coming back to our big car was nice. I like to be able to put my foot down and GO!
By the time we got to the hotel it was about 11:30pm. It was fun driving in a new city – A did try to direct me, but I just went with the flow. We stayed at the Brisbane Novotel – very nice. A was a bit frustrated by the extra charges – $15 for valet parking and $50 to clear the mini-bar – he was afraid Willow would grab something from the fridge and tear it open.
It was a lovely room, we had one with two double beds. A slept with Willow and Dexie slept with me. I think we all got to sleep at about midnight. One of the memories etched in my mind is of Dexie standing at the window looking down on the city streets and jacaranda trees in the morning. He really started cruising furniture while we were away – he woke up at about 5:30am and I lay in bed fishing toys out of the bag I’d packed for him.
We eventually got ready, A took Dexie in the shower and Willow hopped in with me. The hotel had cable TV, so I had to drag A and Willow away from the cartoons! To make the most of the hotel experience, we had the full buffet breakfast. A baulked at the $24 p.p. price tag, but I argued that we were on holiday, this was the kind of experience we had to have! There was a room that was double the size of our lounge room that contained the buffet. So many yummy foods, french toast, fresh squeezed juice, bacon, roast tomatoes, fresh fruit, the works. Somehow we only got charged $22 for A and I, so that worked out to be $11 each for breakfast which wasn’t too bad.
From there we had an important date to make! We had some friends to meet on South Bank. It was so fantastic to meet everyone, but I don’t think I got to spend enough time talking to anyone. A was very good at keeping Willow entertained, it wasn’t hard with the water features around. The children were quite well behaved considering that they hadn’t had a sleep.
Dexter at South Bank with his leaf!
Willow at South Bank. I think the cheeky grin is because I was telling her to be careful on the rocks!
After the meet-up we left to drive up to our resort. One of our friends warned us that the traffic would be bad and she was right. We went past a two car bingle which didn’t help. That morning in the hotel we saw the weather, it was going to be 34c in Adelaide, it was cold in Brisbane and we even saw hail on the side of the road.
We finally got to the resort – what looked like it would take two hours was a four hour trip. We stayed at the bottom of the sunshine coast at the Breakfree Alexandra Beach Resort. We booked through the travel agent and our main criteria was that it was a child friendly place. Looking at the website before hand I wondered if it would be as nice as it looked. It was. It was absolutely beautiful.
Although we requested a 2 bedroom apartment we were upgraded to a 3 bedroom apartment. Willow went in one room and Dexie and thw suit cases went in the other room. We got settled in quickly and went for a walk to the little convenience shop at the front of the resort to buy breakfast stuff. A storm was forecast and it was quite cold, so we went back up to our apartment where I fell asleep at an embarrassing 7:30pm.
I had to take a photo of this – Queensland bread!
As I expected, the children were up by 6:00am, so I figured that I might as well make the most of it and took them for a walk down to the beach. If I’d thought about it, I would have taken Dexie in the Ergo carrier, not our little quicksmart stroller. Once we finally got there, Willow freaked out at the waves, so I was convincing her to come with me while dragging this useless pram across the sand. I gave that up for a bad joke and went back to the apartment to find A.
We’d planned this to be a veg-out day, hanging around the resort. We spent most of the time in the pool, getting the children used to the water. None of us are water people. In fact that was the first time A had been swimming in 10 years.
That afternoon we hopped in the car for a bit of a drive around. Although we were determined not to, we ended up going to a Westfield – the Sunshine Plaza. It wasn’t quite the fluorescent hell that the ones here can be, in fact it was quite pleasant, located on a river, with some lovely cafes. A wanted a hat and we figured that it would be much cheaper to buy some food and take it with us on our trip to Australia Zoo tomorrow. On the way back to the resort I stopped and picked up two bottles of wine for A and I to share.
To be continued…
