Awakening from Blog Slumber

Yeah yeah, I know it's not the first time my blog has suffered a lengthy stretch of neglect. Things (and babies) happen, OK?

But I'm making it up now with a quick update. Time to brief you on the most major event of the previous 4 months:

WHITE HOLIDAY!

Howlong to Albury?
You gotta love the white stuff! We've been planning this holiday for some time and we stuck to the plan! That's quite an achievement in itself.

We headed for Albury on Friday 6th July, stopping frequently (like I said... babies!) along the way for various reasons. We were greeted finally with rain in Albury, and I didn't care.

Staying in a comfy motel in Howlong (yes, it's a place name), we soon made our own fun. Most memorable was the sock fight which resulted in an amazing discovery -- socks magically clug to the brick wall! We have the photos to prove it.

General Eva Burrows
Saturday morning we attended a breakfast at the Howlong Golf Club with special guest retired General Eva Burrows. What a lovely woman of God. She has some fun and inspiring stories to tell, and overall I can describe her best as a good old Aussie grandma. Very down to earth and fun.

We went shopping in Albury, and bought a few items for our forthcoming white adventure.

On Sunday morning we attended the Albury Salvation Army Corps where Eva was speaking. She spoke on the Holy Spirit with the main question posed being "You m ay have the Holy Spirit, but does the Holy Spirit have YOU?" Think about it.

Crickennis
Eli and I invented a game in the motel tennis court. We named it Crickennis. Ball is bowled from one half of the court OVER the net to the batter (wielding a cricket bat). The batter needs to hit it back OVER the net to score - which makes being caught out a real threat.

The batter doesn't have to run, but scores points according to where the ball is hit to. Hitting the side fences of the court in the bowler's half = 2 points. OVER the side fences on the bowler's half = 4 points. Hitting the back fence behind the bowler = 4 points, OVER the back fence = 6 points. Just hitting it over the net and not hitting a fence = 1 point.

Eli "won". He can remember the exact score.

The White near Bright
We loaded up the car on Monday morning, had a nice cosy breakfast with Ralph and Gwen Brown at their little cottage house, then made for Bright, Victora, via Beechworth.

We checked out the Ned Kelly museum in Beechworth, and had a yummy lunch at the bakery there. I've never seen such a busy bakery in my LIFE! I'd guess they served 100 people while we were there.

Back in the car and we headed for our destination, that lovely little town in the valley between all the large, snow-capped mountains.

Tuesday we gathered the things we needed, hired toboggans and snow chains, got dressed in our snow gear and headed for Mt Buffalo.

The trip UP the mountain was extremely edgey - literally! Our nerves were on edge because our car was on edge. We could seen a sheer drop on our right side, with no barrier between us and a quick trip to Heaven. It became kinda scarier once the sides of the road began to ice up. When a large coach suddenly appeared around a sharp corner, we were at the height of our nervousness.

Remarkably we survived :-) The exciting part of the journey was when we first started seeing patches of snow, then little mounds of it... and finally big walls of snow next to the road. For the kids and Janene, who'd never seen real snow before, it was just brilliant.

We geared up completely at the top in the car park, then we spent about 3 hours tobogganing and smashing large slabs of snow over each other's heads. We were limited to what we could do as a family since Layna was so small, but overall we had a marvelous time, and I do believe I am the best tobogganer in the Southern Hemisphere.

The day was fun, but we decided it was enough. The memories were there... next time we'll have a crack at skiing when the kids are bigger. So the remainder of the holiday we spent visiting other touristy things, such as the huge hedge maze at Wandiligong and pretty little towns like Harrietville.

We headed home on Friday 13th, and apart from Clayton spewing up for the first 2 hours, the journey was smooth sailing. However, it was lovely to be home, greeted by our ecstatic dog Molly.

I did say though, I'd live in Victoria. If only I had a good enough reason :-)