School holidays start, so does the rain

The school holidays started on Friday afternoon - I can't believe Tess has one more term to go and then she'll have finished her first school year. Tom and I were on ice-block duty at lunchtime which is always a highlight for Tom as he gets to pretend he's a school boy and stuff his face with ice cream at the same time!

We had booked to go camping this weekend (which was a long one) with Julia and Michael at a beach campsite 3 hours down south. We watched the weather forecast during the week with trepidation as it got worse and worse for the weekend and on Thursday afternoon we decided to wait until Saturday before going down so that we could assess the weather. On Saturday morning it was pouring with rain so we decided to cancel our camping trip. I was secretly quite pleased because I still hadn't recovered from the previous weekend and was looking forward to some quiet time at home. We spent Saturday looking unsuccessfully for an activity centre for the garden - time is ticking and we want something in place before Sam and Anna arrive in December. In the evening Lisa and Craig came round for dinner which was very nice as it's been quite a few weeks since we did dinner together - it is amazing how you can live next door to people and barely see them. Jules put the little tent up inside for Tess and Tom and the 3 of them slept in it on Saturday night which the kids found almost as exciting as real camping.

Tess was a social butterfly on Sunday with a lunch party at our favourite Dim Sum restaurant in Manly. Jules took Tom swimming and the two of them had a lovely time with Tom swimming like a dolphin he informs me! In the afternoon we wanted to make the most of daylight saving (our clocks went forward on Sunday) so we headed down to Manly for a ferry ride. Sydney Transport do this amazing deal on Sundays that anyone can travel on any mode of public transport for $2.50 all day. Armed with our tickets we took the ferry to Circular Quay and then another ferry to Luna Park. Tom had his first experience of dodgems which he loved and we all enjoyed the ferris wheel.

The weather had cleared up marginally on Monday morning so we decided to go on a bush walk - we reached the car just as the heavens opened. We can't complain about the rain though as it's been ages since we've had any and our new grass looks amazing.