A round up of the life in Melbourne over the course of 3 weeks

I can't believe it is almost 3 weeks since I last posted.  I have had limited computer time over this time due to school holidays and kids hogging the computer lol.

The last 3 weeks have been both hard and great at the same time.  Hard because the first week Hubby was in Germany and great because I had my boys here for 12 days and step kids for a week.

That first week while hubby was in Germany was pretty horrible.  I was trying to be happy for the second half of the week because I had my older two boys here but it was tinged with sadness and emptiness because hubby was away.  The worst part of his trip to Germany was the fact that we hardly got to talk at all!!!  The phone in the apartment they were staying in wasn't working and our mobiles had really bad connection.  We ended up just texting with Viber as it seemed to be the only thing guaranteed to work.  Then of course there was the 8 hour time difference which meant that the only real time we got to "chat" was at about 6-7am my time, just as he was about to go to bed.  It was so frustrating and like always when he travels, things always go pear shaped at home with things breaking down or animals getting sick, but I won't even go into that!!

I ventured out around the local area with the boys, then took them to Fountain Gate shopping centre which is about 20 minutes from here.  On the last day that hubby was away we caught the train into the city.  I was rather nervous about getting lost lol but although I proved that my sense of direction truly sucks, I did manage to get us home in one piece.  I also discovered that Mr15 has a fantastic sense of direction (obviously inherited from his father!!) and considering he hadn't been to Melbourne since he was 4 years old, he had a knack for knowing which way we were heading.

The second weekend of the holidays saw us travelling to Adelaide on Saturday then returning to Melbourne on Sunday with my stepkids in tow.  The trip was okay but I was keen to get home to my older two boys who had chosen to stay back and look after the animals for us.  I felt so bad leaving them alone when they had only been here a few days!  But of course, they were perfectly fine :)

Hubby then had to work on the Monday and Tuesday, the latter being his 46th birthday!  We had our traditional party food night and I made a cake for him that day and Miss13 helped me decorate it.  The cake was a new recipe and my first ever sponge cake (I will post the recipe on my other blog soon!).  Hubby had a craving for a pavlova and since I haven't really baked too much in this oven as yet, I didn't want to attempt a pavlova until I was a little more certain about cooking times, so we bought one from the Cheesecake shop.  It was nice but at $28 so it should have been!!!  I vowed never again to buy a pavlova lol, I will just make my own, that was just ridiculous.  When we are trying hard to watch our pennies that was definitely not an expense we needed.

Hubby took Wednesday to Friday off work so we could spend some time with the kids and show them a little bit of Melbourne.  As with our luck, things didn't quite go to plan with the weather warming up.  We attempted to go to the zoo on Wednesday but it was packed (I am guessing because they are celebrating their 150th birthday).  We couldn't get a carpark and the line up at midday was just unbelievable.  We decided to give up and come back the following day.  We ended up taking our picnic lunch down to the beach at St Kilda and then driving down the coast to Frankston before heading home.

Thursday we got up bright and early and headed into the zoo.  It was a lovely day, although with the temperature hitting 29 degrees that day, it was very warm and we ended up leaving at about 3pm as we were all very hot.  (Normally I wouldn't be such a sook but since it was the first warm day we have had for the year 29 felt very hot in the sun lol I need to acclimatise for a little while, not go from wearing a jumper one day to wearing summer clothes the next).  There were a few things we did miss seeing at the zoo but I have promised the younger kids that we will go back very soon.  We all loved the elephants and the gorillas as these are things that the Adelaide zoo don't have. 

Friday was spent at the markets (Melbourne and Caribbean) as Miss13 was desperate to go there and find One Direction stuff.  She managed to spend all the money that her mother had given her and was just like a kid in a candy store.  Her mood wasn't great as she walked down the first aisle of the market without seeing anything 1D and I found myself becoming very annoyed with her.  Then she found some stuff and the mood lifted.  By the end of the day though I sadly realised that this was the only reason she had been so keen to come to Melbourne :(  . 

We returned to Adelaide on Saturday to drop all the kids off and Hubby and I were able to take ourselves away to a motel for the night.  We were so exhausted we couldn't even be bothered to go out for dinner though and just bought some cheese and bikkies and sat in our room for the night watching Harry Potter on TV lol.

Since this post is getting way too long I will share some of our pics over the course of the next few days.  It feels so strange going back to just two kids again and once again I am finding myself having to readjust to life as a family of four again.

OK off to do some vacuuming (joy!!)......