Bella, Gabe and Josiah

After basically two days of travel, we needed a nice slow day. So we slept in and then walked down to get some breakfast at a cute little cafe. Then we went looking for more coffee and stumbled upon a really cool mall with an awesome hobby shop that we spent a long time wandering. I think all three boys could have spent a lot more time here and bought all sorts of things… We went back to the house to change the laundry and the boys informed us that they were heading fun playing just the two of them and they didn’t want to go anywhere. So we let them play for a while and then we went to get lunch. Then we’re took the bus out to Bondi Beach. Given that it was cloudy and there was a bit of rain in the morning, we did not take our swimming stuff, instead we packed sweatshirts. But when we got out there, the sun was out and it was lovely and the boys wanted to swim, but we said no. Instead I took a nap in the sand, Pat went on a walk and the boys played in the sand. Then we got gelato. Beca

We had one day, really a half of a day, in Brisbane. Unfortunately Bluey’s World didn’t open until the next day, so we literally missed it by a day… We got up and had breakfast at an old church that had been turned into a pancake restaurant. Then we checked out of the hotel and went you the Royal Botanical Garden to explore and let the boys run around. Then we went to the airport, where we discovered that Gabe was very, very hungry. We finally got him some food and then I made him do more homework. We flew back to Sydney and the clouds were amazing!! Our flight was supposed to land at 6:30, which seemed entirely reasonable. But the flight was late and then we had drama getting out rental car and then Pat had to drive on the left side of the road and then we had issues getting into our airbnb because the parking spot was too strange. Anyway, but the time we got inside and dropped our bags it was 9:30 and we still needed dinner. Needless the say, the boys did not make it through dinner.

When I bought us our tickets to Uluru, there was no direct flight back to Sydney, they all went through Brisbane. So I figure we might as well make it a long enough layover to see a bit of Brisbane. While that made for a good plan, it meant we spent a lot of time in airports… We got up in Uluru and Gabe kept working on homework. He’s close to being done, but not quite. I keep trying to convince him that if he gets it done, then I’ll stop giving him a hard time about it, but it’s hard to do… We spent the morning twiddling our thumbs, reading our books, walking into town for some food…and that’s it. It was a slow morning. Then we the shuttle to the airport, where we flew to Brisbane.  We caught the train into town, walked from the train station to the hotel and got dinner on the way. Then we went to bed. And that was our entire day.

We had nothing planned for the day, except for a tour into the Outback to see the stars after dinner, which might be the thing I was most excited about about the trip. So we had a slow morning, did some dot painting and visited the camel farm. We finally made it to the pool, which it had been killing Gabe that it took us that long. I finally made him get out when his lips were turning colors… And then another lightening storm came through and our trip to see the stars got canceled. I’m not going to lie, I was really disappointed about it. I mean, it was pouring and there was lightening and not only would it have been unpleasant, but we wouldn’t have seen anything. That said, I was still really, really bummed. So instead we went to dinner and went to bed…

We went to bed last night after watching the sun set over Uluru, then we got up in order to watch the sunrise over it as well. Unfortunately that trip involved going to the highest sand dune to eat breakfast and watch the sun rise and that maybe wasn’t the best option in a lightening storm. So we were up to meet the bus at 4:55 and the guide came in and said he’d pick us up at 5:45 instead and we’d go somewhere else for breakfast. It was a nice breakfast, but the tour definitely had a rough start. Luckily it got much better from there and the storm cooled off the land a lot, so it was downright pleasant walking around, rather than shoot-me-now hot. Gabe found a cool moth at breakfast. Then we drove into the national park to get an up close view of Uluru. Will and Kate sat on this bench. The flies were so bad that you can see them on my face! I tried taking a cool artistic shot and I broke Gabe. Our guide, Rick. That’s the end where people would climb up, back when they used to let peop