January School Holidays - 2021

Every school holidays for the past 6 years we have had our daughter's two boys stay with us for one week, unfortunately last year with Covid this was a bit difficult and I think we only managed to have them twice for short times. When we organised to have them this year coincided with when the latest outbreak was announced and we were concerned that we would be in lockdown again but so far so good. Our daughter Erin joined us for New Years eve which was a pretty quiet affair as we originally had a 50 birthday party to attend but this was cancelled when the new restrictions were announced to stop large gatherings for New Years celebrations. So I made a lasagna, heated garlic bread and we opened a really good bottle of Veuve Clicquot to celebrate the end of 2020 and hope for a better year in 2021, and then we were all in bed by 10.00pm. We usually sit on our back deck for a while and watch the fireworks at Inverloch but of course they were cancelled too. Erin stayed until mid morning and then took off home. We spent the afternoon with the boys playing pool and talking about what they wanted to do for the holidays.

We decided we would go to the movies the next morning and after much deliberation we chose to go and see Roald Dahl's "The Witches". I had a few concerns as to whether it was suitable for Ollie at 8 years of age and it was rated M and considering we had found the original movie a bit dark but decided to go ahead anyway. I booked the tickets online and was a bit surprised that there was a booking fee of $1.60pp, I thought that a bit steep but I wanted to secure the tickets only to find when we turned up there were only another three people in the theatre with us, oh well. This remake was not anywhere near as dark as the first and Ollie said he enjoyed it and didn't seem too concerned by some of the darker moments. Anne Hathaway as the main witch played it well and Octavia Spencer as the grandmother was also a good role. We all had choc tops because Leongatha Stadium 4 makes the best choc tops of any other theatres. We picked up KFC for lunch and took it home because it is just too difficult with restrictions at the moment to eat at some of the take away stores. We didn't have anything planned for the afternoon so spent the afternoon playing pool again and Ollie spent sometime playing ball outside. We live on a sand dune 1km from the coast so when it is windy it is exceptionally windy here and Saturday was a very windy day which caused Ollie some issues while trying to walk back up to the house, we were watching him from the lounge room and found it hilarious to see him trying to walk against the wind, he said later he just couldn't get his legs to do what he wanted.

Saturday night rained all night and it still hadn't stopped on Sunday morning, it was a home day anyway but we were all stuck inside until the weather cleared in the afternoon at which time Robb and I went out to do a couple of jobs we wanted to finish in the yards. We were hoping the weather might hold out for the next day when we had planned to go the beach in the morning. It rained again for most of the night but we still had hopes that it would clear up later. After breakfast I packed up a picnic lunch we visited the supermarket to pick up a last couple of items and then headed down to Walkerville North. We arrived and parked and then hopped out of the car and the rain started again, we sat and waited for a little while but it didn't look like it was going to stop and we put plans in place for some way to save the day. We decided to drive to Fish Creek where we thought there was a nice playground with a good covered area where we could at least go ahead with our picnic and if the weather did clear the boys could have a bit of a play around. We arrived at Fish Creek and it was still raining so we found a spare table under the covered area and sat and had a very early lunch, maybe it was brunch. The rain did have a few breaks and the boys went out to play when they could but we were only there for a couple of hours before packing up and driving home. We thought it the weather cleared we would go back to the beach in the afternoon but that never happened, maybe tomorrow.

The weather is still overcast with showers so we thought we would go shopping in the morning instead of Wednesday morning hoping the weather may improve overnight. In the afternoon we played bowling on the Wii and a bit of pool but that was about it. I spent the afternoon cooking making muffin cups that were really successful for dinner.

Wednesday morning the weather has improved a bit. Robb and I had a coffee and a bit of a read after I prepared breakfast for the boys and then we packed up the car to try the beach again, we had the chairs and beach equipment still in the back of the car so there wasn't much to collect. By the time we arrived at Walkerville North the sun was making an effort to break through the clouds and it was really quite warm. The boys played on the rocks and in the water and because the weather had improved so much we stayed down there for a couple of hours. We came back and the boys had a shower and a bath before lunch. After lunch it was more pool and games on the Wii. Daniel Sue and the girls are coming for dinner tonight and I am making pizzas with Ollie's help. Ollie spread the tomato sauce we made yesterday on the bases and spread the cheese and then we both topped the pizzas with the fillings everyone requested. We have a seafood one for Robb, a ham and cheese for Grace, ham cheese and pineapple for Ollie and a spicy one for me, of course the others will be sharing too. Grace has a friend of hers coming too, Liv who we know, so it should be a nice night.

Dinner went well and everybody complemented Ollie on the Pizzas. It was good to see Liv as we hadn't seen her for 12 months because of Covid. The three girls were more than happy to pose for photos for me.

Grace was having a lot of friends coming over the next day so we asked Jenna if she would like to come fishing with us and she was more than happy to join us on the river. I organised to contact her the next day when we were leaving. Thursday morning after the boys finished breakfast and Robb and I had a coffee we drove down to the office to sign paperwork and I contacted Jenna when we left there and said we were on our way to pick her up. Robb had organised the fishing rods earlier and packed them in the car and we picked bait up at the General Store so after picking Jenna up we continued on to the fishing jetties. The first one we came to was empty so we pulled in here and I set up the chairs while Robb set up the fishing lines. We thought they would only fish for 10 minutes but an hour and a half later they were still going. We thought that was long enough because Connor was getting a bit red on the back of the neck. Unfortunately we didn't come home with any fish but the three children seemed to enjoy the experience. We had leftover pizza and garlic bread for lunch and I cooked toasted ham and cheese sandwiches to fill it out a bit. After lunch Jen and Ollie played pool, Jen didn't know the rules so Ollie was teaching her, the only problem is that Ollie has a bit of a tendency to cheat when the opportunity arises and I was listening to them while playing but Jenna wasn't easily fooled. After pool they took it in turns playing each other at bowling on the Wii. Ollie is pretty good at this so the other two had to work hard to keep up with him, it was quite funny to watch. Robb and I wanted to pack up the boys belongings ready to take them home tomorrow and Jenna had rehearsals to go to later on so we dropped her off home around 4.00pm and then came back and prepared dinner. We were having a roast for dinner and Robb was making his duck fat potatoes so we took it in turns in the kitchen, I also made a lasagna for tomorrow nights dinner because by the time we drop the boys and visit with Matthew and Lyndal and then shop at Launch Fresh it will be quite late when we get home.

Friday morning we were up and dressed and the boys had their bags packed by the time we came out to the loungeroom. We had told the boys they could have breakfast at McDonalds on the way home so we stopped at Leongatha and ate inside the cafe. We all had McMuffins and they were unusually good, Robb and I had a coffee for the trip, half an hour there and we were back in the car on our way. We dropped the boys home first and then drove around to Matt and Lyndal's to say hello, they are packing up their house for their big trip and they wanted us to collect a few things to store in our garage. We didn't stop there long either because they were really busy. We had planned to stop at Launch Fresh to pick up our fruit and vegies and after that we called into Rayner's fruit farm for plums for Robb to make plum sauce, with all our jobs completed we were back in the car heading for home. We didn't stop again and made good time getting home arriving around 3.30pm. I had made a lasagna yesterday for our dinner so all I had to do was unpack the fruit and vegies and pack them away. That is another week with our boys completed, it always goes so quickly.