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Connor and Ollie usually come and stay with us for one week of each set of school holidays but because we were away last year for 9 months we were unable to have them with us so we thought we would have them for two weeks for the Christmas school holidays. They arrived with Mum on Christmas Day and then Mum took Ollie home with her on Boxing Day because his Dad was picking him up to spend a few days together. We had a few very quiet days with just Connor here with us, he manages to keep himself busy for most of the time but we like to take them out somewhere every second day and we decided to go fishing one day. Our first stop was Bear Gully where we have camped many times in the past and it is only 20 minutes down the road, there are lots of rocks on the beach and it is often good fishing for whiting but when we walked down to the beach to check there was too much weed hanging around. From here we drove around to Walkerville South but it was so busy down here we could not find a parking spot. So now we are driving towards Walkerville North, there were plenty of parking spots here but the tide was far out and there were too many rocks to climb over to get to the water. We had intended to stop at the Kiosk at Walkerville North to have their excellent potato cakes for lunch after fishing and it was a bit early but we thought we would grab some while we were here and have an early lunch. Our last destination was Doyles Road in Venus Bay but when we arrived it looked like there was a music concert going on there with all the people around, it was getting later now so we thought we would give up and just go home, we had a nice drive though.
We had a call from our son Daniel in the afternoon to say his girls were going to the movies in the afternoon to see the latest Spiderman movie and wondered if Connor would like to go too. We asked Connor and he said yes so we organised with Daniel and Sue and Sue's sister Kelly to go for dinner to McCartins in Leongatha while we waited for the movie to finish. We had a good dinner but it was the first time I was caught out with the public holiday loading for a meal. I wasn't really that happy, I didn't mind paying the surcharge but I would have liked to know before I decided to pay for the meal. To be honest the meals were a bit highly priced anyway but the surcharge just made the pricing ridiculous, so in the end I paid $45 for a small Seafood Linguine which would have been expensive at $30. Anyway we had a nice night and the kids enjoyed the movie.
Ollie was to return to us on Wednesday and I received a text from his Dad Steve to say he would be dropping him off around 2.00pm. We hadn't seen Steve for a while now so he came in and we had a nice catch up when he dropped Ollie off, he has more time off next week but he isn't sure when yet but will let us know if he is picking Ollie up from us again. We were expecting Daniel, Sue and Jenna for dinner that night and I had made a couple of Shepherd's Pies to use up our leftovers, I was quite pleased with the way they turned out and we didn't have much left over at the end of the night.
On Thursday morning we thought we would try fishing again and had a plan to go early to the concrete wall part of the Tarwin River, we already had the bait and everything was still packed in the car so I just needed to make our coffees and take a snack with us. We managed to get one of the tables on the river so set up and Robb soon had the boys rigged up with their rods. We spent a couple of hours on the river and didn't catch anything but it was quite pleasant sitting and watching all the activity. Prom Coast Ice Cream had set up a truck in Tarwin so we drove down for an ice cream each in the afternoon.
We all spend a fortune on toys for our children but when it all boils down they have much more fun in a the boxes they come in.
Our very exciting New Year's Eve is going to be spent at home with two of our grandsons. Ollie is very excited and wants to whole experience so we have dug out the party hats and sparklers and we are just hoping we can stay up until it is dark.
So in the meantime Robb has had a CFA callout and we are now watching the fire spreading across Venus Bay. It looks like a grass fire from here but a bit hard to tell.
We were waiting for Robb to come home to have dinner but by 8.30pm the fire was still raging so the three of us had dinner and then after dinner we had sparklers out on the back deck. Robb didn't get home until 11.30pm and the fire was still going strong at that time but a number of the tankers had left.
New Years Day was to be hot again and we had promised the boys we would take them to the beach. It is still really busy down here so we thought we would try Bear Gully again, Connor packed the bait too just in case the water was weed free and he could do some fishing, that didn't work out but they did have fun playing in the water. We stayed about an hour and a half and by that time it was getting very hot so we packed up and then walked up to the picnic table where we had lunch. Robb had visited the Supermarket in the morning and picked up rolls and we took the last of the ham and cheese with us to have on our rolls. It was very pleasant sitting under the tree but it was just getting too hot to sit around so after lunch we packed up and drove home.
On Tuesday we had booked into Gumbuya World, this is always a highlight of our summer holidays. There were only the four of us this year so instead of booking a Cabana we booked a day bed which served us well, the only issue we had was there isn't a safe with the day bed so we had to organise something for our phones and wallets. I had chosen Day Bed 6 which looked to be in a good position and as it turned out it was excellent. We were able to watch the boys floating around the Lazy River, it was behind the bucket on the water splash area, very close to the cafe for lunch and behind us we had 'Surf's Up' and 'The Break", Gumbuya regulars will know what I am talking about. We had another excellent day here, the boys are old enough to go off by themselves but we spent a bit of time with them in the Lazy River and the pool area. We bought lunch and brought it back to the Day Bed and then in the afternoon we spent a bit of time at 'The Break" jumping over the waves. Robb and I had watched the Motocross Show at 2.00pm and then took the boys back at 4.00pm because we thought it was so good. They loved it and from here we left to go home, after six hours we thought they had a good enough day and it was a long drive home.
On Thursday we went to the movies to see Ghostbusters - Afterlife, we all loved it but we were al very disappointed that the movie theatre had sold out of choc tops, Stadium 4 have the very best choc tops anywhere and that is the main reason I go to the movies. We came home from here and had lunch and after lunch we picked Grace up from work so that she could come and visit with the boys. We had a quiet day on Friday apart from driving to Meeniyan to have our Covid boosters, I cooked a lamb roast for dinner and we used the rest of the day to pack up because we will be dropping the boys off home tomorrow.
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