Healing

The holidays have gone so fast (here's hoping term 1 goes just as fast!) and I knew that before the holidays were over that I wanted to make a day trip to St Helens.  I was keeping an eye on the weather forecast and hoped that a good day coincided with one of Jay's days off work. 

It worked out perfectly and I was really looking forward to getting down there with the boys.  It's only our third trip back since Aaron passed away there, and the first time was really hard but this time I didn't feel anxious at all about going back this time.

We decided to go to the sand dunes first.  On the way there we had to drive past the house that Aaron passed away at and Kobe straight away yelled 'that's where Dad died!'. I was surprised that he knew since he was only three when it happened, but he probably realised it from photos that we have from our holidays there. 

Kobe was so cute when we got to the sand dunes and jumped out to take a photo with his iPad.

Last time the tube didn't work very well on the dunes and we told Jay that, but he was keen to try anyway and was like 'well it won't if you don't give it a go!'.  It still didn't work even though he had faith in it :)

The boys played on the dunes for ages and then we went into town to grab some fish and chips for lunch.

Kobe has a canvas of a photo of him with Aaron on the jetty fishing, which was taken the day before Aaron died.  He loves it and he recognised the spot straight away and wanted to go there to get another photo.  I could tell that he was happy to be somewhere that he knew he had been with his Dad before.

I couldn't wait to get to Binalong Bay as it's my favourite beach.  It's so beautiful - I just wish the water wasn't as freezing as it is! The lagoon has broken back out again this year and was flowing to the ocean. 

Kobe made me laugh as he kept saying 'what!! This lagoon is made by nature!?  Harri! This lagoon is made by nature - people didn't make it!' as he thought all lagoons were like the one at Wet n Wild where you just float round and round in circles.

We really wanted to walk to the other end of the beach and sit on the rocks, but the tide was high which meant it was quite deep to get across the lagoon. Jay and I looked for ages for a shallow spot and we eventually got across by pulling up our shorts as high as we could.  Jay was cracking me and some tourists from Pennsylvania up as we watched him trying to cross.  They were taking photos of the boys swimming in the lagoon.

How white is that sand!

We spent some time on the rocks at the other end of the beach, and Harri had lots of fun jumping in off the rocks.

It was a big day driving there and back in the same day (it's two hours each way) but we had a lovely day and it was nice to see how far we have come in the last five years, and to know that it's still a favourite place to go and it isn't traumatic being there anymore.  It's definitely healing to go there, knowing that we spent so much time with Aaron and Noah there and knowing that Aaron would love us being back there.

I had fun putting together a little video of our day using the 1 second a day app (which I'm so addicted to already!).  It was one of the best days of our holidays.