The little holiday

We went to Nelligan near Batemans Bay for the weekend to see my uncle and his wife. He is my father's elder brother, and I've seen very little of him since he moved down the coast. The kids don't know him and Crash didn't even remember who he was until he saw him again. That makes me rather sad. I like my father's family, and I want my kids to know them - especially since they never got to meet Dad.

I'm hoping to make more trips down there. Better armed.

It was very pleasant. The weather was lovely and the spot is amazingly beautiful. It was great to catch up with them and we had some great arguments discussions about everything from John Howard to Gaza to the NRMA.

However, there were some lessons to be learned. It's about a 4 hour drive from our place, without stops. 3 kids can't make a 4 hour drive without stops, so it takes 5 hours. I failed to pack the dummy inside the car, which caused more pain than was strictly necessary. We also discovered that Ben gets car sick on windy roads. We didn't get to puking, but we did get to screaming and moaning for 20 minutes before we got to a town we could stop and eat at. Elissa, inevitably, went out in sympathy, although it is fair to say it was hard to tell over Ben's foghorn voice.

On the way home we had plain chips, the window wound all the way down and less sun on him, and there was only a wee bit of whinging for about 15 minutes.

When we got home, we discovered the 763 bites each one had sustained, all red and swollen and horrible. Apparently they have a different brand of mozzie down there, because our local ones make neat little red dots.

All in all, next time we go down Friday night, leaving immediately after dinner, with chips, dummies and cuddly toys all in the car. We come back on Sunday after lunch, without a huge week starting the next day. And we take a lot of Aeroguard.