First week of the school holidays

Looking for whales at North Head

Offices of the Brotherhood of the Immaculate Pixel

Tess and Tom at the water park

I always find the school holidays difficult because although the children don't mind going to vacation care they still complain about it because they would much rather stay at home with me and vice versa.  Fortunately some of my guilt was alleviated by Jules taking Thursday and Friday off this week to hang out with the kids.  The 3 of them had a ball going to a water theme park, having lunch in Manly with John Rumbold after visiting his studio, and playing rugby on the beach to name but a few activities.  

Ryan, Tess, Maggie and Tom

On Saturday the Jamos arrived from Melbourne and after a deli lunch the boys decided to take the kids out on the speed boat.  It was sunny but a little windy so everyone was thoroughly rugged up.  In the evening the Mennies joined us at Ormeggio and fortunately I'd managed to persuade everyone in advance that we should choose one of the 2 tasting menus.  We went for the matching wine option and I think it was a good choice because everyone was clearly in the mood to put a few away and if we'd been drinking by the bottle we would have got through far more than we really needed.  As it was we all piled back to our place, opened more bottles of champagne and beer and sat around chatting and playing Jules' new guitar until the wee hours of the morning.  

Tom wishing he was surfing!

The boys had hatched a plan to go sailing on Sunday morning but it was blowing such a gale that there was no safe way of getting the boat off the stand so the plan had to be abandoned.  I made Porchetta for lunch with a view to taking a picnic down to the beach for everyone.  Because of the wind we ended up having the picnic at the Mennies house and afterwards headed down to the beach for a spot of rugby.  Just now Tom turned to Julia and said "I've had such a fun day" - I think he likes having visitors!