Winter Holidays Part 1
We are nearly two weeks in to our three week winter holiday here in Queensland. This is the first year that the kids have also had three weeks off with us - back in Melbourne they attended state schools which only have a two week break. I have no idea why that is - the independent (fee paying) schools cost more but have more holidays... go figure! We've often used these holidays travel to England or Canada to visit family, so we usually ended up taking the kids out of school anyway. This year, with the new house, we decided to save money and stay put in Gold Coast. After all, this is a major holiday destination for people from Melbourne at this time of year!
The first week was a bit of a work week - both for me at my actual job, and for us in terms of doing some jobs around the house to get it cleaned and ready for our visitors. I mentioned this in my previous post, but two of our very good friends had plans to visit us in Gold Coast from Melbourne these winter holidays. We’ve done a lot to organise the house over the past six months, but the fourth bedroom still contained about eight boxes we hadn’t yet unpacked from our move. We recently put together some storage units and a desk (from the Ikea Besta range) for that room, which we figure will eventually become Ella’s bedroom. For now, she still wants to share with her brother, which is surprising but kind of sweet. Who knows how long that will last?
So that first week of holidays included a couple of days of house organisation, finally unpacking the last of our boxes, sorting out some of the closet spaces and making sure we had enough linen and towels for our guests. Oh, and I also reorganised the pantry, which was extremely satisfying. Every time I open the pantry now I get a little jolt of happiness from the organisation.
I also had to go into work for two days, and honestly I could have spent the whole week there trying to catch up on things. Being at a new school and on the senior leadership team has meant a steep learning cure and a big jump in workload for me. I'm trying to keep things in perspective and not get too work-obsessed, which means switching off for a good portion of the holidays and reminding myself that the work always gets done in the end. I'll likely spend one more day at work before the end of the holidays and hopefully that will be enough to feel ready for next term.
In between all the work and house jobs we did manage some fun. I took Ollie, Ella and one of her friends to Dreamworld early in the holidays. Having a friend along meant Ella could go on all the big rides while I took Ollie on the less adventurous rides. Ollie isn't much of a theme park lover at this stage, he has to be coaxed on to rides and prefers browsing the souvenir shops, which can be a bit annoying. But Ella had a fantastic time with her friend, who hadn't been on any of the big roller coasters before, but was convinced to by Ella - and loved them!
On another day we headed down to Main Beach with the kids to ride bikes to The Spit. I thought it was going to be an easy, flat 3 km ride, but the route we took ended up being closer to 5 km along some hilly trails - no small feat for Ollie as a relatively new rider. Also no small feat for. me, trying to keep up with the kids while running! I'm very slowly getting back into running but am not quite up to doing a continuous 5km at a pace equivalent to bike riding just yet! We rewarded our efforts with lunch at The Spit, which is the northern most section of beach in the Gold Coast.
We decided to take the road back to Main Beach, which we discovered had a wide bike land and was completely flat - not as picturesque or fun as our route out, but a lot easier for both the bike riders and the joggers! This route passes by Sea World, and of course the kids begged to go to in. We'd recently got annual passes for the group of theme parks that includes Movie World, Sea World, Wet'n'Wild and Paradise Country, so popping in for the afternoon was no problem. Andy, however, was keen to get home so he could make it to the tip before it closed, as he wanted to get rid of the last of our clean-out from that week. In the end, Andy went to the tip and I took the kids to Sea World, which turned out to be a pleasant surprise.
I had mixed feelings about going to and therefore supporting Sea World, probably due to documentaries such as Blackfish and the podcast about Keiko the killer whale. There are no orcas at Sea World in the Gold Coast, but there is a dolphin breeding program, dolphins, penguins and polar bears, which I feel like can't be good for them to be in such a small space compared to their natural environment. Also, polar bears in Queensland? Surely that's not the right climate for them! I know many, if not all, of the animals are rescues that couldn't survive in the wild, but I still get the feeling that it's not quite right.
All that aside, we were there for about 2-3 hours, which, now that we have annual passes to all these parks is quite enough time for me. The park itself is in a lovely location, surrounded by water, and it wasn't busy at all, which is always a bonus. There are some pretty good rides and I convinced the kids to stop by the jellyfish centre on our way out which was lovely - glowing jellyfish are always such an enchanting sight.
All in all, our first week of holidays was a good balance of getting things done and enjoying the slower pace that comes with the holidays. My next post will be about the second week of the holidays which we spent with Steve, Michelle, Archer and Gemma, our friends from Melbourne and first visitors. Right now we are enjoying a few slow days before our second visitors arrive. We have definitely been making the most of staying home this break - and I have to admit, it’s not a bad place to be.
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