Our Summer Holidays

Recently I spoke at a local event and when the MC introduced me, she mentioned that I have a blog that people should check out. In my head I thought that I do have a blog, but I haven't written on it for ages.  I don't have the time, energy or desire to blog much any more, but I do love having our memories in the one spot, so I thought it was time I did a catch up. There will be a lot more posts coming very soon.


I blogged about our time away in Sydney over the summer, but that was just a small part of our summer holidays.  We had such a great summer.  The weather was amazing and it was the first time that my whole family had been together for years.  My sister Nicki and her family came over for Christmas from the USA and although we couldn't all be together at Christmas, in early January we all got together for a few days in January. 


I felt for Jalen's girlfriend Erin as it was the first time she got to meet everyone, and it was probably pretty full on meeting everyone at the same time! But I think she coped okay and realised that we are all pretty easy going and down to earth.


It was so cute hearing Nicki and Alex's kids come out with American accents now and then.  We were hoping they'd get back their full Aussie accents while they were here, but after living in the USA myself for a little while, I know how easy it is to pick up an accent - especially when people cannot understand what you are saying. We loved hearing all about their life in the USA.


Kobe loved hanging out with all of his cousins over the summer.  It can be hard for him at home as Jay and Harri are very close, and he's so much younger than them.  It was so nice for him to have kids his age play with. 

My cousin Konnie and her family were down in Tassie for Christmas (they live in Queensland), and it was so lovely to spend a few days with them.  We caught up at the beach and at the Gorge.

We also got to catch up with other cousins and family and my friend Naomi who grew up in Tassie, but now lives in Adelaide.  I love that we have so much time during summer to do this. The rest of the year is so busy and there just never seems to be any time to do anything other than work and running the boys around.

If we weren't at the beach over summer, we were at the Gorge swimming. We would usually meet up with my cousin Tim and Helene and their family and other friends.   I feel so lucky to have this five minutes from home.

This year we swam in the river a lot more than the pool, and would swim around to 'Hogs Bottom' and the boys jumped off this summer for the first time.  Kobe jumped three times over summer (a lot braver than I am - no way that I would do it!) and Jay and Harri would do it multiple times every time we were there (almost every day!).   It looks much higher when you are up there.

Kobe is getting much better at swimming, because of all the swimming we did over the holidays. I always feel guilty because I never actually took him to formal swimming lessons, but he's actually a great little swimmer just because we swim so much. 

We had a lovely walk with Simone and Simon and their family before the fireworks in town for New Years Eve. 

 

Even though Aaron died at St Helens we still love it there, so we made a day trip there one day to spend some time at Binalong Bay. It's much easier being there now and although it makes me think more about what happened, it's also healing to be there and to make happy memories there again.


Kobe was sad but also excited to see the wharf as he knew it was where he had a photo with Aaron, the day before he died.  He loves that he has a memory of being with his Dad there, even if a lot of the memory he has is just from the photo and what we tell him.

 When we weren't swimming at the Gorge, you would find us at the beach.

 

On this day we actually spent a few hours at the beach, and then we decided to head back into town and went to the Gorge for a swim at night! We just can't fit in enough swimming over the summer.

 My brother Chrish came down for a week, before we went up to stay with him in Sydney.  He stayed with us for a couple of days and we loved playing tourist with him.   He hadn't been to Bridport since we were kids, so we took him to Bridport and stopped at Lilydale Falls, picked blueberries and went to the Bridestowe Lavender Farm on the way.

While my family were all together we booked the Ulverstone waterslide for a private booking.  Some of my cousins also came along and it was so much fun.  It's hilarious watching groups of people coming down together, and we made a challenge to see who could get the funniest photo at the end.  my cousin Toni took these pics and I still laugh every time I see them.

One of my favourite days of the holidays was when Harri, Kobe and I went down to my 'Pop's river'.  Jay was working, but it was about 30 degrees and I had been wanting to go down there for a long time, so we went and had the most beautiful day on the river.


I have such great memories of Pop's river from when I was a kid and teenager, and although Pop isn't around anymore, and we can't really get into all of my Pop's old land on the river, it is still special being able to go down there with the boys. It looks a lot different since the big flood a couple of years ago.

We were there for about four hours, and just loved floating around the river and playing with Milly who loved chasing the ball and getting it out of the water.  The water was so warm!

On the way home we stopped for the most beautiful ice creams.

We also had a lot of fun floating down the Hadspen river with Tim, Helene and their kids.   It would take about an hour and it was exciting seeing fish jumping in the water, and we even spotted a platypus.

We were excited that there was a Big Bash cricket match in Launceston this year, and hope that we will get more next summer.

Now that school has gone back, summer and summer holidays feel like they were so long ago.  My body kind of goes into shock after holidays. In the last couple of weeks of holidays I feel the anxiety and stress creeping back in about how life is going to be once I'm back at work. 


I absolutely love my work, but it's really hard working full time and having to deal with the boys and everything on my own. I get very run down physically and emotionally and I always worry about how things are going to be once I'm back at work.  I always say I'm going to look after myself better, leave work earlier, and try to keep on top of things more, but once the boy's sports start up and I'm running them around and Jay to work as well as trying to keep everything else running smoothly I always end up feeling exhausted, and the last thing I do is look after myself.


So when Harri and Kobe both told me that they didn't want to play soccer this year, I had to admit that I was very happy about it! I love watching them play, but not having two trainings a week to go to and no games on a Saturday, sounded so good!  They both wanted to just play basketball this year and I was more than happy about it. 


Harri is playing a lot of sport with school which will replace his soccer, and Kobe is happy to just play one sport at the moment.  I hate filling up every night with something after school, so I'm glad that we will have a couple of nights a week where I can just come home after work and not have to worry about racing the boys somewhere (unless Jay has to work...bring on getting his drivers licence!).



Harri has decided that instead of playing soccer on Saturdays he really wants to do Parkrun regularly.  Kobe has basketball training at the same time, so we drop him off on the way.  When Kobe doesn't have training we have been joining him and just walking it.

 

Since school has gone back we have caught up with friends we haven't seen for a while.  We always love going to Burger Junkie.

Tim and Helene and their kids are really into the tennis.  They have been ball kids at the Launceston International and we have always thought it would be fun to go and watch a great professional match, so we went and watched the women's and men's finals with them. 

It was heaps of fun (and boy those players are fit and talented!) and since then the boys have been wanting to play tennis together.  It's been fun to go and have a hit, but we are terrible! We spend more time collecting the balls from outside the net, than playing!

 

Because I post a lot on my Instagram story I had a lot of people say to me after the holidays were over, that they wished they had a summer like ours.  I told them it really wasn't that exciting (as in we didn't go on any overseas holidays like others did) but we did have a great summer as we did what we love, and had a great time with family and friends. 


Here is 1 Second Everyday from January (man I love that app!).