Happy New Year!

Well, hello there 2019. I do realise it's the 9th of January already but, as you might have guessed, we have been enjoying ourselves at the beach. Or at least I have been enjoying myself very much. The boys have been tolerating it with reasonable good nature, and my husband has been going backwards and forwards to Canberra for work. Except for the one Sunday where he took both sets of car keys home, and came back down for an unexpected trip Monday to give them back. Ooops.




Canberra melted through two weeks of 35+ degrees, but the beach was comfortable and lovely. Lots of swims, lots of booze, lots of food that only required unwrapping and many many books. A few walks to try and burn the booze off, but I don't think it made much difference. We tried to take a selfie. This is after I told him to put it higher so we looked up at the camera and didn't have four hundred chins ... but maybe not that high. There is a lovely beach vista behind us that was supposed to be included.



And here are the thousands that infest our beach for the New Year's Eve sandcastle competition. It was quite competitive this year ... and like every year, I think we should enter, if only we could come up with a good idea! And some enthusiasm.



Two weeks went incredibly quickly. I made the boys do one outdoor thing every day (usually a swim) but they spent most of the time watching DVDs, or on their phones, or watching the Netflix they had downloaded before we left. Number two son had a friend there so they spent a bit of time socialising, but number one son went basically full hermit.

But, as I told him, this is probably the last time we'll make him come on holiday with us. He finishes school this year and should have some kind of job next summer.  I stopped going on holiday with my family at the age of 16 ... and even that last summer I made a group of my friends come camping in the same campground up in Pauanui - I went and stayed with them and tried to pretend my parents weren't there.  I'm not sure how well it worked, from memory Dad used to come up and put our tent pegs in properly.

I came back to Canberra yesterday, spent today doing errands and paying bills, ready for work tomorrow. Very very sad face.