We had a couple of days in between our two sets of visitors over the school holidays. We took it easy over those days, whilst also getting the house cleaned and ready for round two of our visitors.
One evening, I took the kids down to Broadbeach for an impromptu outing, riding their body boards down the sand dunes. They spent a good hour running up and sliding down repeatedly while the sun set. The dunes were created by the cyclone back in March. The beaches on this end of the Gold Coast still haven’t fully recovered from the damage, but the silver lining is that the dunes provide a lot of fun.
Once it started getting dark, we went in search of ice cream. My sneaky parent trick is to choose an ice cream shop that’s a 10 - 15 minute walk away, so I can squeeze in a walk, and the kids are happy to comply if there’s ice cream at the end! Of course, this requires careful route planning to avoid passing any closer options, which takes careful planning in Broadbeach!
We came across one of the many koala statues around the city, and Ollie was particularly intrigued by this one because it was covered in comic strips. He’s become obsessed with Pokémon over the past term and was very excited to spot a Pokémon comic on the koala. We had a bit of fun climbing on it before heading off for our ice cream.
We also went to Junior Parkrun again - a 2km timed run for kids aged 4 to 14. Ollie has taken a real liking to it, improving his time each visit, with a current PB of 9:48, not bad for 2km! To be fair, I’m not sure I could run it that fast. He’s also joined a running club at school this term and now runs 2km on Wednesday and Friday mornings before school.
Ella participates in Parkrun grudgingly. Every Sunday morning she insists she’s not doing it, but we drag her along anyway and she ends up jumping in at the last minute.
And then next thing we knew, we had our next round of visitors: Verge and Taryn and their sons Charlie and Theo. Just like with our last visitors, it was like no time had passed since we last saw them and the kids played happily together for the 3 nights they were with us.
Ollie and Theo originally met in daycare, when they were both 2 1/2 years old. They are like two peas in a little nerd pod. Theo also loves Pokemon so they two boys spent hours looking at their cards together, and also playing with some little figurines Theo brought with him. Ella and Charlie went to school together from prep-year 3, and were in the same class every year, so also know each other well, and are both very active so still got along well.
We spent a lot of time outside and in the pool. Like our last visitors, they were happy to escape some of the Melbourne weather and enjoy some warm sunny days. Taryn and I both love reading so happily spent an afternoon reading in the sun and drinking wine while the dads and kids played in the pool.
One afternoon we headed to Burleigh and took the kids on the walk through the National Park from Burleigh Heads to Tallabudgera Creek. It's always easier to get your kids to go on a walk when there are other kids around. This is a nice easy walk that has both ocean views and lush rainforest to walk through.
When we got to the creek we spent some time exploring, skipping stones and exploring the beach. This is such a lovely area, a calm creek that leads out to the sea - the views are just stunning.
Any big walk with kids is of course rewarded with some ice cream. Ollie and Theo sat at their own little table having a chat, they were honestly too cute the whole time we were together.
After staying with us, they moved on to Sea World resort for a few days, checking out some of the theme parks. We met up with them at Sea World one day. Theo and Charlie and not as in to rides as Ella is, but there is plenty of other things to do at Sea World. There is a dolphin show and a sea lion show which we watched. Thre is also an underwater Shark Gallery where it is quite peaceful and beautiful to watch these amazing sea creatures gracefully swim around.
Sea World also has a huge play area and splash pad. It's a bit too cold for a splash pad this time of year (in my opinion - though it was open and there were children splashing around in it) but the adventure playground was a huge hit with the kids. Because we have annual passes, I could see coming here for the afternoon for the adventure playground alone!
And that pretty much sums up our third and final week of the winter school holidays! We are now back to reality, in week 3 of Term 3, though we are already starting to get ready for our next adventure - a long weekend camping with Craig and Mel in Northern New South Wales!
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