The OzMcPs: Camping at Putty Beach

It's been a big week and I have a lot to write about. Sadly I'm exhausted after a weekend camping so will keep it brief.

Tom had the Talent Quest on Wednesday and performed RipTide by Vance Joy. It's the first time he's ever performed in public and he admitted to being nervous. My heart was in my mouth. He spent a lot of time working on his piece with his guitar teacher so he was well prepared. He sat up on the middle of the stage, just him and his guitar, and started playing and singing. The hall fell silent..........because they couldn't hear him. A very kind year 6 boy stood next to him holding a microphone by his mouth for the whole song. Tom made a few stuffs but they were probably only really noticeable to him, me and Tess. He was a complete legend. When he came off stage his friends were all high-fiving him. As he walked around the school that afternoon more friends and teachers came up to him to say how good he'd been. They haven't announced who goes through to the finals, which is on the same day that we fly to the UK, but we're keeping our fingers crossed. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter. He had his first performance and he did really well - what more can you ask for.

On Thursday morning before school Tom had his first surf lesson with Samson Coulter. Samson Coulter is no ordinary 14 year old - he's a professional grom and is currently 2nd in the U14s and 4th in the U16s in Australia. He is also an amazingly patient and friendly kid who appeared to be really happy to be teaching Tom. Samson's very kind father, who is also a very good surfer, told me that Tom is called a micro-grom and there has been some talk about signing him up for the micro-grom circuit next year. I am so far out of my depth it is not funny but I'm also so incredibly proud. In the 1 hour lesson Samson taught Tom to do cut backs and was really impressed with how quickly he picked them up. There will be many more lessons to look forward to.

Unbelievably it's not been all about Tom this week. We found out on Wednesday that Tess got an A in her clarinet exam. The examiners general remarks were: "Tess, you have prepared well for your exam. The program was performed with expression and confidence. Keep up the great work." Once again I was filled with pride - what a legend!

So finally I can talk about our weekend camping with the Watts, Rivers and Burgesses to Putty Beach. Putty Beach is actually the first campground that Tom ever visited at the tender age of 3 days. We left hospital with him, went and spent our baby bonus on a family tent and decided to try it out immediately. It rained the entire time we were there so we only stayed one night. I was worried that this might be repeated as the weather was pretty grim Friday morning but we remained optimistic until about 2pm when it started really pouring so we decided that we'd have our camping dinner at our house and leave early the next morning. It was a fairly drunken evening which ended with us singing lots of classical Australian rock at the top of our voices and resulted in our departure time being closer to 8.30am rather than the 7am we had originally planned.

The sun shone for the rest of the weekend with the exception of a brief 10 minute shower on Sunday morning. We spent time surfing at McMasters Beach, the kids made a brilliant swing out of a length of rope and a big log, the adults played lots of games (Rummikub, Sequence) and occasionally let the kids join in, we ate lots of yummy food and we all had a fantastic time.

So much for brief.................