Our Holidays

Since Aaron passed away I have absolutely dreaded weekends and school holidays. When we are out of routine, the days seem extra long and the nights even longer.   But since I have started my new job I feel like I have turned a little corner.  The grief is still there but for the first time in two years I wasn't dreading school holidays.

It was a nice surprise that I wasn't dreading it like I normally would, but was actually looking forward to having a break with the boys, having some fun and catching up on things around the house.  The first week we had a quiet week and enjoyed sleep ins and lazy mornings.

We were extra busy during the second week as we went to Hobart for Noah's two year 'angelversary'  and loved our time at Port Arthur and we had so much fun exploring places that we hadn't been to before.  On the way to Port Arthur we stopped along the way to see lots of different things along the Tasman Peninsula.
We always see signs with warnings about kangaroos and wallabys crossing the road, but had never seen one with a Tasmanian devil on it, so I had to pull over to get a pic. 

The boys were fascinated with the tellesated pavement. 

When we were on the harbour cruise at Port Arthur the tour guide mentioned that it was worth a short drive to the Remarkable Cave.  I'm so glad we decided to go as it was amazing. 

We were inpressed with the view on the way down. 

But it was even better at the bottom, where the cave was.  The waves were crashing into the cave and the boys desperately wanted to jump down into the cave, but I reminded them that the barriers were obviously there for a reason. 

The day after we got home from Hobart we had booked the bike centre.  It was nice to have lots of friends join us for a play, and we didn't even mind that it was raining a little bit.

Straight after we left the bike centre we headed down to Swansea to fit in as many days as we could at our friend's beautiful beach house before the holidays were over.  We were so excited to end the holidays just relaxing and were happy that we could take Milly with us as we missed her when we went to Hobart. 

Milly loved running up and down the beach, retrieving the tennis ball all day, but wasn't keen on the water at all.  The first day she would jump back every time a wave would come up, but she quickly got used to it.  

We've just finished a six week puppy training course, and it was fun to do training with Milly on the beach every day. 

Because it's spring time in Tassie it's definitely not warm enough to swim, but that didn't stop the boys going in. I needed my sunnies with the glare off their white bodies! 

We always love going to Bicheno and visiting the Blow Hole and getting lunch.

The beach was beautiful, but it was so windy we ended up with more sand than salt in our chips.

We had a lovely time together, but Kobe found the holidays really hard.  He had settled down a lot over the past couple of months, but during the holidays he was very teary again and kept saying that he was 'sad because of Daddy and Noah'.  Hopefully being back at school and in routine again will help things to settle down for him.  It was so nice to finish off our holidays at the beach.  

Last night Jalen said he wishes we could go back to Swansea as he felt so relaxed there.   I'm sure we will go back and hopefully we can get through the summer holidays just as easily as these past holidays.