Sunday Stills (2/52)

It's early Tuesday morning and my Sprocket still sleeps beside me. Last night we tumbled into our own house after our epic three day drive home from Queensland to Gippsland. So this is a leetle late for Sunday Stills but here's the roundup for the last week.

1. My Sprocket looking very old in his Nana and Grandpa's garden.
2. My Popppet about to eat one of her Nana's tomatoes. (It wasn't the birds)
3. My Sprocket  up a tree. Note lovely aqua nails.
4. The dolphin, Patch, the kids fed at Tin Can Bay on the way up to see friends at Hervey Bay.
5. My Beloved putting away the chess pieces after he played a game with an old friend who has just moved to Hervey Bay. (I was asleep on the couch savouring the sea breezes and hopefully not snoring too loudly. We woke at 4.45am that morning to get to Tin Can Bay in time to feed the dolphins. Soo sleepy!)
6. Photos from our trip home. Quick paddle at Coff's Harbour where we stayed the first night. Just before our epic drive to Canberra.
7. One of the amazing rivers along the NSW coast. Did any one else know NSW has stolen ALL the big rivers. Every few miles we crossed another massive water body.
8. Port Maquarie. The best. We stopped for fish and chips on the beach. (Sublime fish and chips.) Great surf, amazing sweeps of pale sand beach after pale sand beach. We can live here. My Papa  says I just felt at home because of my convict roots as it was an old penal colony. Whatever. We can move.
9. We hit Sydney and it started bucketing down and the temperature plummeted.* We could hardly see the road. And don't get me started on the almost sheer vertical mountain (don't they know about tunnels? zig-zags, going around?) between Sydney and Canberra. In the rain. In the dark. So scary.

But now we're home!
Sleepily joining with Em at The Beetleshack for the second Sunday Stills of 2013. Time seems to speeding away very fast this year! Are we truly two weeks in?

*The rain was of course a GOOD THING because of all the fires. We were scanning for smoke and  checking reports the whole drive. The first drops were such a relief. 

Journeys End

We're finally at Journey's End.
We've driven many, many miles through the desert to be in my Beloved's hometown for Christmas.
We've admired the vineyards of the Yarra Valley, the Christmas Lights of Wagga Wagga, the stunning sky, opals and ingeniousness of Lightning Ridge, the mass of animals and goodwill at Milmerran.
We've seen emus and kangaroos, held puppies, yabbies, hens, ducks and turkeys. We've fed lambs, swam in dams and been down mines.
Four nights after leaving Melbourne we're finally at our home-from-home in Queensland, admiring the mangoes growing on the tree in the backyard and the deep green of the banana leaves.
We're a wee tad tired.
If we lived in Europe our journey would be roughly the equivalent of Edinburgh to Rome. (A tad further) but we crossed three states rather than four countries.
Now at journey's end I'm grateful for catching up with friends and family, for the wonder on my kids faces at all the new and amazing things, for the chance to reacquaint myself with the heartland of this fragile, ancient land whose edges I cling to. I'm grateful we managed to avoid flood and flame (although we saw the singed trees that edged my Uncle in Law's property and the smoke on the horizon). It's been an amazing trip...  but I'm so grateful to have arrived!

Joining with Maxabella at kidspot for 52 Weeks of Grateful.

                 

                     

                                     

             

                                     

                       

(Belated) Sunday Stills

A busy, hectic week. Only now that we're on the road can I finally exhale. A busy week, but with some beautiful moments. We've been deep into craft, so grateful for rain, and beginning on the first of the Christmas celebrations. St Nickolas has already visited the kids, filling their stockings the night we stayed with my parents in Melbourne. There will be presents under the tree for them when we arrive in Brisbane. We had an early Christmas party at my Grandmother's and it was lovely to see the children explore her bounteous cottage garden, exclaiming over cicada shells, butterflies and dragonflies.

1. Early morning flower in my parent's garden
2. My Grandmother in her garden
3. Poppet Painting
4.Poppet Painting her princess-arm to make arm prints (scorning the potato cut-outs I made)
5. End results -wrapping paper and cards
6. Grandmother's garden
7.Poppet in her great Grandmother's garden
8. Roadside blooms

We're a third of the way on our journey up to Brisbane. Wagga Wagga tonight. The kids are restless after a confined day and tomorrow is our longest stretch. So we'll see how it goes!
Joining with Emily at The Beetle Shack for Sunday Stills.