A family weekend in the Hunter Valley

We had another action packed week with Dad here.  I had Monday off work (I could get used to not working on Mondays!) and Dad and I walked down to Manly via Reef Beach where he had a quick swim followed by a lovely lunch at Whitewater with Leanne.  After several glasses of wine we raced up to school to pick up the kids and take them to tennis.  I was interested to see how they do as it's usually Jasmyn who takes them and I was actually quite impressed - Tom definitely holds his own against the two girls (Olivia takes lessons with them too) which makes me feel better about making them put up with him!  

Thursday was grandparents day at school so for the first time ever the kids had a grandparent (and uncle!) to spend some time with them at school looking at their classrooms, school work and various other displays - Tom's class did a particularly fetching rendition of Yellow Submarine apparently!  In the photo of Tom and Robert you can just spot the charming Miss Cearns (Tom's teacher) wearing the long black dress and an orange bandeau - she's a favourite with the dads since coming to a school trivia night dressed as Wonder Woman.  

In the evening we all headed up to the Hunter Valley where we stayed at Woodlane Cottages - a place Jules and I stayed at 11 years ago with John and Rae!  Friday was a bit drizzly but that didn't deter Dad and Robert from a round of golf, complete with kangaroos, whilst we had coffee and did the food shopping.  The rest of the weekend was spent wine tasting and drinking/eating far too much but it was brilliant.  Our kids are actually quite good at wine tasting as long as there's somewhere for them to run around and we turned Jules' smart new car into a "Happy Bus" with all 7 of us travelling around together.  He was very good and managed to keep his cool when we got out of the car after having been down a particularly rough dirt track and found it had been turned orange.  Within 30 mins of arriving back in Sydney he had the kids hosing down and polishing the car until it was back to it's normal shiny black!  

On Monday morning Dad just had time for a quick swim down in Manly with the kids before it was time to take him to the airport.  It was very sad saying goodbye because we've all had the most fantastic time but we'll be in the UK in August and already have a very busy itinerary to look forward to!