Last week of the holidays

A while ago I heard of a new activity called an Escape Room.  You get locked in a room for one hour and have to solve a number of clues to find the key to let yourself out.  I love puzzles and mental games so the kids and I arranged to try one out with Meg, Jay and Tilly.  Our Escape Room was based around a stay in a hotel in Paris: we are checking out of our hotel room when we realise we've hidden our passport and tickets somewhere in our hotel room and we have 1 hour to find them before we miss our flight.  We all loved every single minute of the challenge and managed to complete it with 6 minutes to spare!  It was quite bizarre being locked in a room, the 6 of us, with no clues immediately apparent.  We had to search all the drawers and turn furniture upside down to find clues that led to other clues etc etc.  Tess is now thinking that it might be a great idea for a birthday party.  

Talking of Tess you may notice that there are very few photos or stories of her at the moment.  She has firmly entered the teenage years where the last thing she wants to do is hang out with her family.  It makes us all very sad but we've taken the view that it's best to give her space and she'll eventually come round.  

Tom and I headed over to Scotland Island on Tuesday to catch up with Leanne, Noah and Charlie.  The boys headed out spear fishing whilst Leanne and I sat and chatted non-stop for the entire 5 hours.  Such a wonderful day. 

A combination of salt and chlorine has bleached Tom's hair this summer - I'll miss his blond locks. 

Getting ready for some spear fishing

Catch of the day!

It was Australia Day on Friday and Jules was on surf patrol in the afternoon.  In the evening we headed round to the Kernahans for an impromptu Australia Day dinner.  

Another surf carnival, Nipper Nationals, was held at Manly beach on Sunday.  It was a hot but overcast day and I'm ashamed to say that my face got quite sunburnt.  Tom did a fantastic job in the swim, went ok in the boards and completely nailed the Ironman coming 11th in the final - the second Manly boy over the line.  The carnival was running very late and we were worried about getting to Tom's water polo competition on time when the shark alarm went off (Jules was out the back of the surf doing water safety at the time!) and the beach was closed.  There were 1,000 nippers on the sand waiting to be allowed back into the water but it was already 3pm (they had been there since 7am) and the council life guards said that they were not letting anyone back in until at least 1 hour had passed so the remainder of the carnival was cancelled.  I later heard that the alarm went off again 30 minutes later as the shark was clearly hanging around.  

 Tom doing the Ironman

Tom and Harry

One of the nipper parents is an excellent photographer - here are a selection of his photos.