Here in our little corner of Queensland, we have been having a lovely winter. It has been incredibly mild, and I’ve had friends tell me about how confused their gardens are, with flowers and strawberries already producing, thinking that we’ve gone straight into spring!
The past two weekends in particular have been just glorious. We’ve been having super blue-sky days of about 25 degrees, which is the perfect temperature for spending time in the great outdoors.
I ran out of time this week to post about last weekend, so excuse my two-weekend posts this weekend!!
Last weekend we woke up early to a perfect sunshiny day and decided it was too good to waste on housework! We packed up the kids, and headed out for a family breakfast date, then trekked off half an hour away to our nearby beach town, Hervey Bay.
Mayana asked if she could sit up at the breakfast bar looking out into the street, and felt very grown up sitting there by herself, enjoying her raisin toast and “cup-of-chino”.
We found that there was a lovely little markets happening, so we strolled through them before heading out onto the famous, almost one kilometre long, Urangan Pier. The sky was cloudless and brilliant blue, and the ocean looked like it had been sprinkled with glitter. It was glorious. We meandered along, looking into the water for fish and soldier crabs, and enjoyed peeking into the buckets of the fishermen set up for the day at the end of the pier. We felt like we were on holidays.
As we walked back, we had a message from friends who were keen for a spontaneous meet-up, so we spent the next hour or so playing on the beach with them and their kids, chasing soldier crabs, examining sand worms, and jumping in the puddles formed by the ‘potholes’ left behind by the stingrays when the tide is in.
I was amazed by Reuben’s lack of intimidation when playing with the crabs. He had absolutely no hesitation in picking up the soldier crabs and letting them crawl over his hands. Our friend’s six year old son was not so keen on them, and Reuben found it highly entertaining to chase him around holding crab in his outstretched hand. Actually, we all found that pretty entertaining.
It was nice to just step back, and let the kids explore and have fun. My kids don’t often have the chance to get wet and dirty, and they both enjoyed it so much… but especially Reuben. I think just having this huge space that he was free to run in and enjoy was pretty close to one of the best experience he’s ever had, and you couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.
He liked to squat nice and close to the puddles and peer in very intently. Occasionally his face would accidentally dip into the water and he would quickly stand up, blinking up at us with a face that asked, “what just happened?!!”
We wrapped up our fun afternoon with fish and chips (because it’s like a rule that you have to have fish and chips when you go to the beach – especially in Mayana’s mind!!), and then tripped back home for a much needed afternoon rest. It was such a lovely day, and made me want to make a bigger effort to get out there and have fun with the family in our beautiful area more often!
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