Monday, 4 March 2013

16 - 22 February 2013 – Gold Coast



Our weekend started by doing a bit of cleaning up of the van and having a nice big breakfast.  Then we had to duck into Surfers Paradise to retrieve the car that Josh had left in there the previous night.  After dropping the car back to the caravan park, we headed towards Brisbane to visit the Bear family.  It had been quite a long time since I’d seen Richard and Robyn so it was fantastic to spend a few hours at their lovely home to chat and catch up.  Upon leaving there we called into Harbour Town for a few groceries before having another quiet night in the van.

Josh’s aunt and uncle, Tante Ceil and Ome Jan, were arriving into Surfers Paradise early this morning.  We tried to call them quite a few times to make some plans but just couldn’t get a hold of them.  We ended up just driving in and walking around Surfers in the hope that we might run into them.  As I sat and had a coffee at McDonalds, Josh and Sami went for a stroll towards the hotel where they were staying and fortunately ran into them.  We wandered along the beach with them for a little while, stopping to look at the sand sculptures that were underway.  These poor sculptors had put quite a bit of effort into their artworks, but with the strong rain and wind, they were being challenged to keep them upstanding.  We then headed back to an arcade and took another coffee break at Donut King so that we could sit and chat a while.  By this time our parking meter was near expiring, so all six of us piled into the car and went for a bit of a drive down to Burleigh for a further walk along the beach.  Surprisingly the sun had come out for a short spurt and it was actually quite warm and pleasant.  However, that didn’t last long.  We went back to the caravan for lunch and before long it started to pour down again!  After lunch Josh dropped our visitors back to their hotel for a well-earned rest and when he got back, the same happened in our van.  We tried to stretch out and relax for the afternoon/evening which isn’t that easy to do when there are four of you living in a very confined space – but we managed!

Monday was here again – how time flies, even when you’re on “holidays”.  It was another boring day in the van just doing school work, but it has to be done!  We did, however, manage to pop out for an hour or two in the afternoon to head to the Post Office to send off the last batch of school work.  It wasn’t too late in the afternoon when Josh returned from work so we made a call to Jan and Ceil to arrange dinner with them as they were heading back to Sydney on Tuesday (fleeting visit)!  We met them at their hotel and, as it was pouring again, we just went to a nearby Chinese restaurant for dinner.  The food was lovely but in true Josh style we ordered way too much food.  I don’t know how but we managed to get through most of the food and had the rest packaged into containers for take-away.  The rain had eased a bit so we wandered around the streets of Surfers for a while and then had dessert and coffee at a local coffee shop.  Of course the kids went all out by ordering a massive slice of Red Velvet cake each…. their eyes though are bigger than their bellies and they had no chance of finishing it so took home a further doggie bag.  After a bit more strolling about, the rain had gotten extremely heavy again so we farewelled Tante Ceil and Ome Jan and wished them a safe journey back home… it was lovely to see them!

Fortunately for the kids, Tuesday morning was a cooking class of some sort at kids club.  I figured we could both do with a break from each other so let them spend the morning making some yummy treats.  I think it was Bliss Balls and Rocky Road.  I don’t think any got thrown away so it couldn’t have been too bad!  Another boring afternoon of school work today and nothing new to report!

Wednesday – today was the last day of kids club for the week (and we planned to leave the park on the weekend) so I let the kids go all out today.  The morning activity was a craft class which included a lesson on making “goo”.  After two hours or so, both the kids came back with an assortment of “lovely” pieces of craft including green goo (Zoe’s of course) and blue goo (no less for Sami).  I did allow this goo to sit in the fridge for over a week but eventually got sick of looking at it so tossed it (but don’t tell the kids – they haven’t noticed yet).  They had a quick snack after craft and headed back to the kids club for another hour, this time for a bit of putt putt, tennis and finally, due to the rain, it was table tennis.  It was great that we’d all had a bit of time out from the school work and each other but trying to get them to concentrate on school work in the afternoon was a big challenge.  Mornings work so much better!

Thursday we managed to get stuck into school work seeing as though we didn’t do a whole lot yesterday.  Tonight was schnitzel and trivia night at the bistro of the caravan park so we arranged for David Oviedo and Jack (Josh’s old apprentice) to meet up with us for the challenge… not to mention we needed the help!  It was a fun night and we also did really well in the trivia department… just call us winners!!  The kids enjoyed it too.  I was impressed that Zoe was even game enough to get up and tell a few jokes to the audience.  The prize of the night was a bottle of wine.  Needless to say that I drank most of it… just what I needed after so much “teaching”!

Friday was Josh’s last day at “work”!  He had finished his report and just had to meet with the relevant people in the office to discuss all of his points.  Once done, the kids and I drove to Brisbane to pick him up as he had to return the loan car.  It was about lunch time which meant we had a few hours to kill.  We had decided that we should head to Dreamworld one last time.  There were a few rides that the kids hadn’t yet been on so we decided to try and get to these first.  The Pandamonium ride (which Josh and I couldn’t bear to go on more than once so we sat on the bench and watched the kids go again) and the Wipeout which the kids and I went on 3 times in a row.  To finish the day off Zoe was hounding to get one last go on the Giant Drop and no-one else was keen to go.  Being the courageous mother, I decided to take her on one last time (secretly I was hoping that the ride was closed before we reached the front).  It was about 5.02pm and no luck on my part.  We were seated on the ride ready to go and I was dreading it every second of the way to the top of the ride.  By the time we dropped back to the ground, the look on Zoe’s face was every bit worth that last ride!!  We cleaned the van up a bit tonight as we leave here tomorrow.










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