Canberra

Between Christmas and New Years we took our first holiday in a year and a half. I guess were slightly burned by our last holiday to Murramurang Beach. Beach holidays with small kids are not the relaxing panacea that you think they’ll be. The constant vigilance required to keep your kids safe near water, crowded facilities, having to entertain kids without toys, etc. No, sir, going to the beach was not what we wanted to do this year.

We selected Canberra. Lots of people said we were mad: What could you possibly want to do in Canberra over the Christmas break? Isn’t Canberra about as interesting as watching parliamentary question time on TV? Well as it turns out, we’re watching-question-time kinda people. The drive to Canberra is very pleasant, taking about about 3 hours (unless someone has their fingers in your ears the whole way):

In Canberra we stayed in the most amazing serviced 3-bedroom apartment. Not only did we have full laundry facilities and a swimming pool, it was massively spacious, in fact bigger than our house in Sydney, and situated in Kingston which is one of Canberra’s few suburbs with nice cafes and pleasant walking areas. The girls shared a room, in fact Tess slept in a single bed for the first time and that side of things went great. Dad woke up one morning at 8am and everyone was still asleep!

I think it was because they were absolutely worn out by going to museums:

Yes, she’s wearing a tiara. In a science museum. Example #623 of fights I’m not prepared to have. We also visited places of national significance like parliament and the national war memorial:

Miniature park

Did I mention they had a scale replica of machu picchu and stonehenge? And a miniature railway?

We were there for five days and by the end of it I still didn’t want to leave. I was sad for missing out on the Art Gallery and Portrait Gallery and Botanic Gardens and all the other things we could’ve done. We had a blast. Lots more photos over at flickr.

A Christmas update, only two weeks old!

We had a fantastic Christmas this year. Perhaps it was the fact that this was the first Christmas in our new house? Perhaps it was due to Rose’s growing understanding of Christmas and the fact that this year we did lots of fun Christmas craft and activities? Take, for example, all the little Christmas houses I made and put on the mantlepiece, opening one every day. Sometimes there was a little sticker for each of the girls, sometimes a jellybean. It was a lot of fun!

Maybe it was the fact that Grandad was here?

Somehow, even, we timed the number of presents right. There seemed like a lot but we opened them all pretty quickly and the girls were not overwhelmed.

If I can say so myself, I even aced the Christmas dinner. I made an italian spread, most of it ahead of time so low-stress, and lots of it came from our garden.

Yes, this year Christmas was ace.