Hospitality

It's been an easier transition than I thought :o)

When we left our resort, we headed back to our friends' place. The kids were thrilled to get back to play with their new friends, and we were looking forward to hanging out, checking out the eco village, baking some gluten free/ sugar free carrot cake cupcakes to share, sticking around for a Nick-made dinner, and having a sleepover (in our motorhome out the front). It was wonderful. We felt so welcome and thoroughly enjoyed the kids enjoying themselves (so much Lego! and colour coded! like a dream!!), and after they were asleep we actually hung out awake! With other adults! Drinking wine! And talking about non-kid things! Ahhhh. Refreshing. This morning I enjoyed a cartoonishly large cup of delicious coffee - my stomach was a bit annoyed but the rest of me was in heaven. Thanks so much guys. We had a great time.

We are now in Brisbane. First stop was Chinatown so that we could have a planning session over yum cha. Yum. There is a lot of cool stuff to do around here with kids, and if the rain eases up a bit (there has been so much rain in the last couple of days that there has been flash flooding in the area) we'll have lots of nice outdoor stuff to check out. There's a sciencey place that looks really fun, so that's probably where we'll head in the morning.

On our way to a caravan park this afternoon, we passed an amazing looking playground and turned around to check it out. It is huge and covered, so when the rain came again it was no problem at all! Very nice stop. We also found that there are plenty of spots around here to park for the night, so that will save us the almost $50 we were going to spend on accommodation. Nice. And I sold two cookbooks this week! If you don't count the theme park tickets which were 75% of our week's budget on their own (I'm not sure why you wouldn't count them, but just stick with me here for the sake of discussion), we came in well under budget for this week. We just have a bit of frugal living to do to make up for the other few weeks over budget and we'll be golden.

Oh, I also wanted to acknowledge the dude at the playground that turned my afternoon around. He was pushing his little 2 year oldish boy on the swing, and Eli was hanging out next to them, enjoying their enjoyment. He had already been on the swing for awhile and indeed could spend the better part of the day on the swing, and I sat watching him, thinking I couldn't be bothered to go over and put him in the swing and then stand there pushing him. When this other little boy was done, his dad helped him out of the swing and walked my way. He asked if Eli was my little boy and I said yes. He said kindly, "He wants to go on the swing." I said, "Yeah I know, he always wants to go on the swing. He was already on it for ages". He nodded, smiled politely, and walked away. And it hit me like a slap in the face - Oh my God, I'm that parent. I could be doing something really easy and making Eli and I both really happy in the process, and instead I'm just sitting here grumpily, resenting the fact that he wants to go on the swing again and needs my help to do it. Wow. He's two years old! What an amazingly silly thing. Dude, you'll be happy to know that I did get up and push Eli on the swing, and we both completely enjoyed it. And dude, thanks. You made my day.