Fourth time's the charm

Some tired snow bunnies.
Our snow kangaroo. Yes we really made it, not just posed with someone else's sculpture!
Four cute kids off to sight Mt Kosciuszko (Ryan thought we were going to climb it, bottom to top; perhaps a bit optimistic with a toddler in the middle of winter).
We saw lots of signs of the drought in our travels. This is one of the most obvious.
We made a slight detour on the way home to go through Glenrowan to visit the giant Ned Kelly. Cool, huh?

Back the third

The absolute highlight for me was learning to ski. We only skied for a day and a half but it was great! I could have stayed there for weeks. It took me a little while to get going; after the first day I was somewhat ambivalent but Ryan took to it like a duck to water and insisted we do it again the next day. I'm so glad we went back for the second day. Everything seemed so much easier (I guess we were less tired too). Neither of us fell down and we had so much more control over everything. And we had so much fun. The ski fields were pretty deserted (weekday during school term will do that) so we could pretty much do what we wanted. We were at Selwyn which is really geared to family and kids. We did a couple of really long runs and even made it unscathed down a blue run a couple of times (they go green circle (easy), blue square (medium) and black diamond (really scary)).

Photos of the kids skiing plus the view from the chairlift.

Back part 2

I wasn't sure how long I could make my blog before it fell in pieces around me. Although I've seen some mighty long blogs out there. Not naming names...




Ryan got all kitted up for the snow before brushing his teeth.


Our first glimpse of snow.


Four very happy kids.


Sophie hiding from something.


This is the Big Trout in Adaminaby, near where we stayed for the snow. Good trout fishing there in summer apparently.

We're back!

Back from our fun-filled, action-packed, non-stop adventure holiday. We really had a great time. The weather was great, the kids were great, everywhere we stayed and went was great. Most nights I went to sleep with a smile on my face, just feeling good about the holiday and life in general.
Ryan promised he will put up his own blog of the holiday so I will link to that when he does it. I'm not sure what I will put in here - I actually wrote a travel diary and kept it up for the whole two weeks, no mean feat for me... I could conceivably type it all in here. Or maybe not. I think I'll just put in some photos for now.

Bethany found this place in Mildura.
Our second night we stayed at Burrinjuck (or something) National Park, just outside of Canberra. The kangaroos were very friendly and came up to us as soon as we got there to see what goodies we had for them.

Giant pears at the National Gallery.
Sophie very happy at an adventure playground in Tidbinbilla (or something) National Park. This area was devastated by the bushfires in 2003, it was interesting to see the way the bush has recovered.

What am I doing?

Sometimes you have to just stop and ask yourself, what the heck am I doing?
Why am I sitting here, at 10:30 at night, freezing cold and sleepy, yet messing around with changing the style and colour of this blog? Why?! It's not like it's something I have to do, or something that needs to be done, just something that can be done. Why am I spending my time thusly?
If I could answer that, I would probably be a much more productive person in life!

No business like snow business

So very soon we head off for our long awaited 'snow trip'. We leave as soon as everyone is up and ready on Saturday morning. That could mean 5am, it could mean 9. We'll just have to see...
I think we're pretty much all organised (or at least as organised as I'm ever going to get).
A few weeks ago, we went to a secondhand ski wear sale and picked up mittens, jackets, snow suits etc. The weird thing is that earlier that day, I had picked up some cash for a catering job, $366 to be exact. Then we went down to this ski sale and spent $361 without even trying to match the amount. Here is a photo of the kids all decked out in their snow suits and mittens.

And then an amusing photo of Sophie licking oatmeal off the floor. It's often best not to ask why when you see photos such as this.

The last few days we have been working out what quilts or sleeping bags we should pack (space is limited in the van and there are lots of us with lots of stuff). The kids are testing the sleeping bags tonight on the lounge room floor (the last gloomy photo).

Most of my photos will be gloomy from now as the flash appears to have broken on my camera. Joy. But Paul did get some (unintentionally) speccy photos on Sophie's birthday due to the lack of flash (another post).