Road Trip!

The last week has been a very busy week. It was time for my grandmother (BigNanna) to return to her home in Sydney after living with Mum and Dad for the past 6 weeks or so. As Dad was driving her down, I took the opportunity to scab a lift with him to visit Michelle and Mark. Of course, I took Mim with me, so Michael only had to cope with one child at home, one who is (more or less) house trained.

We left Wednesday morning at 7am, detoured via the city to get Michelle her Brisbane News (because we all know how much she needs to read up on the goings on in Brisbane) and then onto the freeway. Before we'd even gotten to Ormeau, the little voice from the back pipes up "Are we almost there?" No darling, only another 950km to go!

With only a stop at Grafton for an early lunch and a pit stop at about 4, we were dropped over at Chateau Cammeray at 7.15pm. Thank goodness for Caitlin's DVD player to keep Mim amused as she only slept for about 45mins the whole day (going through the Gold Coast).

We ordered yummy Livio's Pizza for dinner! Bugger Dominos or Pizza Hut, this stuff is the real deal! I can't find anywhere in Brisbane that is comparable. After dinner, Mark set up the laptop and we went through 900 photos of their recent trip to Dublin and London. Couldn't see the last 100 as my eyes were just too tired. Mim had dropped off to sleep about 9pm
(outside the Art Gallery)

Thursday - will Michelle and Mark went to work, Mim and I took the bus into town and wandered. We visited Haigh's Chocolates to get Michael's chocolate order (talk about a kid in a candyshop!) and then went on the monorail, followed by a walk to the Art Gallery and a look at the real paintings (not that modernist bullshit fingerpainting that passes for art these days). Then back to Cammeray to cook dinner for Mark and Michelle and Dame Mary (Mark's mum). And another late night for Mim.....

(spot the clone!)

Friday - Michelle took the day off work, so we caught the bus into town again and went to the Sydney Aquarium at Darling Harbour. It's a wonderful place - pity there were so many students there! Mim had to be carried into the entrance - she refused to walk through the shark jaws on her own!

We saw seals, penguins, eels, sharks, manta rays, Nemos, starfish, turtles, bitches (from Bankstown High)...... Mim was not overly impressed by the sharks. You got to walk up and down the perspex tunnels looking up into the fishtank. A few sharks were sleeping on the tunnel. We were watching a largish shark swim around when suddenly everything went dark. It was a huge manta ray swimming over the tunnel and blocking out all light!

Auntie Lelly was clearly flavour of the week, none of this holding Mum's hand business! After the Aquarium, we went back into town to have some lunch. The only place that had seats available was next to a McDonald's so we had that. Michelle was treated to a glimpse of parenthood - how simple things like having a drink of water, can go horribly wrong for a child. Like forgetting to swallow a mouthful of Coke before opening it again to take a bite of Cheeseburger!

After lunch and a couple of panadol to help Michelle's "ache head", we caught the train to Panania. All was quiet until we reached Kingsgrove.... A gaggle of school girls got in, not one of them spoke in a volume below 80 decibels. I was soooo glad to hear them yelling at Amy not to have sex with Andy tonight and discussing various other members of the male species! God, we were never like that as kids.

Friday night involved dinner at Big Nanna's favourite nightspot (and dayspot) - the Revesby Workers Club. It's even swankier than the Kedron Wavell RSL! Poppy ordered Mim a small coke which ended up being a mega sized glass of Coke so she started the night on a sugar rush. All was fine until I took her to the toilet and made the mistake of pulling her undies up for her .... there was a massive tantrum involving throwing herself onto the toilet floor and crying childish obscenities at me. Just love it when kids do the rag doll impersonations when you are trying to pick them up off the floor, unlock the cubicle and get the hell out of there! She cheered up pretty quickly when Poppy took her.

It was another late night on Friday - so I'd expected her to fall asleep on the drive home pretty quickly. that didn't happen. She didn't crash until about 6pm, just before Ballina. She was funny at Fredo's Pies, Fredrickton though. We were perusing the million choices of pies to have for lunch when she turned around and said "I just warted!" Poppy kept his cool and said "I wouldn't be advertising that fact".

So we arrived back home by 9pm Saturday night and boy wasn't I grateful to go to bed!