Holidays, the tooth fairy and corneal ulcers

Our 1st official family "holiday"...

And I say "holiday" in inverted commas because, seriously, travelling interstate with 3 children aged 2, 4 and 6 is no walk in the park, is it? The only reason that I even used the term "holiday" is because my folks who live in Tassie met us in Queensland and gave us a survivable ratio of adults to children 4:3. Otherwise it would have been our 1st -and probably last-official family "exhausting, frustrating and almost intolerable trip travelling interstate".

Sorry. Got a bit distracted there.

So after years of saying that we should start having proper family holidays every 1 to 2 years, we suddenly looked up and realised that our eldest son was 6 and we hadn't even started. So off to Queensland we went. We went off-peak season for cheaper airfares, cheaper accommodation and shorter queues and it was well worth it. We stayed well away from the Gold Coast strip and spent a lot of time at the "worlds" particularly the water ones. The kids loved them. Even mummy finally got up the nerve to go up a few of the moderate sized water slides. We had to deal with one child who was little, one who was afraid of open stairwells and one who doesn't like the dark or loud noises so there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing for slides, rides and the like.

We also made a day trip north to the Australia Zoo which is a very family friendly place and highly recommended. Al and I snuck off with Mae for a day trip to the Eumundi markets near the Sunshine Coast and lunch in the nearby hinterland. We also got to the Gold Coast markets and took a mandatory walk along the Gold Coast beach (2 year old fell in and got saturated within 2 minutes) We went to Mount Tambourine for lunch as well on yet another brilliant sunny day.

The Eumundi markets were fantastic; lots of great quality locally made products but I was surprised by the amount of imported goods being sold. The Gold Coast markets move around each Sunday but they had lots of locally made crafts and I was surprised at how reasonably things were priced, given that it is located in the tourist mecca of the Gold Coast!

Kids and adults alike were worn out after long, active days. Add to that a trip to the doc for Al for a possible deep vein thrombosis, a visit from the tooth fairy as our 6 year old son discovered a wobbly tooth one day and it came out the next (luckily not lost given that he was coming down a waterslide at the time) and another visit to the doc for our 4 year old's corneal scratches due to him and his brother having a sword fight with their toothbrushes, and I don't think that we could have fitted much more in!

So where are the happy snaps I hear you plead? Oh, well, if you insist...


Elephant feeding at the Australia Zoo was a definate highlight.


The Australia Zoo was a really feel good place, brilliant for families. Our kids had a ball (exept our 4 year old son wouldn't pose with the scary crocodile...even though he was just a weeny one)


And of course there were a few crocs around!


Australia Zoo horse riding.


Lots of characters around for the kids (big and little) to have their photo with.



You can't imagine how many little kids we had to push out of the way to get our photo with Dorothy!


The scariest ride on the Gold Coast- Dorothy's tea cup ride! Al wouldn't go on it as it spins and he hates spinning. Mae absolutely loved it so I kept turning us round and round faster and faster and faster... Then wanted to throw up when we got off...Next time I'll stick to the safety and comfort of the huge rollercoasters.


Seaworld = awesome!


Just awesome!


My 2 year old has less fear than me. I was amazed at how high and fast some of the little kids' rides were. Grooming them for the big ones when they get older I guess. Me? Big time woose!


Had to buy the kids some snow cones. Loved them growing up. But I'm not sure that they had blue ones 35 years ago...


And finally, look who I found! My namesake! Tas and Taz! Sadly didn't get a photo with the real Taz. He must have been on holidays. Sniff.

So it was a great trip really. Apparently at the water worlds, you can wait and hour and a half in summer to go down a slide. We rarely had to wait and one day had to wait maybe 5 minutes. The lines for the rides were more than bearable. I packed jumpers and trousers that stayed in the suitcase as it was 22-28 degrees for our whole visit. We could not have asked for more.

I am a homebody so glad to be home sleeping in my own bed but it was fun and made some brilliant memories for us and our children to look back on in the future.

Thanks for sitting through the holiday snaps and not snoring!