Our Pre-Christmas trip

Well, we have been to Melbourne for a long weekend to visit Paul's family - a sort of pre-Christmas gathering. We enjoyed catching up with everyone - including cousin Lizzy's new best friend, Devan. Devan became David's new best friend, who taught David how to poke out his tongue at the dinner table! We had a big family dinner on Saturday night, for ten adults and David (counting Devan as an adult). David suddenly started poking out his tongue - at Devan. Paul asked him and Devan said he "might have" poked his tongue out first.

We also survived "firestorm" and bushfires approaching natural disasters. Nothing close to the metropolitan area, but extremely bad in country Victoria, particularly Gippsland. Bad, out of control wild fires are raging across four States now (Tasmania, NSW and WA as well as Vic), with a long dry summer to come. In Melbourne on Saturday, it was hot (around 38C max) with visibility down to 800m at the airport, and less in the city, from the smoke. City buildings were sucking in so much smoke through their airconditioning that the fire alarms were going off. It was like a fog.

It was also my birthday. We went into Melbourne, caught up with Carolyn, who is heading back to Perth next week, apparently permanently, and went shopping. With David's help, Paul bought me a lovely new watch for my birthday.

Another lovely present was that David organised his dad to buy me long stemmed red roses (see photo). David then went to sleep beautifully at around 7.00pm so we could go out to dinner. We went to a local Japanese restaurant while David's grandparents baby sat. We got home around 10.00pm and David hadn't even stirred!

David enjoyed the trip a lot - despite the fact he came down with hand, foot and mouth disease, a virus that affects young children. He had been exposed when Katie came down with the disease but we thought he had missed it. However, as we didn't realise he had it until we were in Melbourne on Thursday, it was all too late to cancel the trip. David had a rash on his bottom, and little welts or blisters or pimples on his hands and feet. We don't think he developed many in his mouth - as he kept eating. Initially, we thought it was teething, particularly the rash and the grizzlyness and tiredness. It seems to have passed now after a week, with almost all the marks gone.

David travelled well on the way down, going to sleep for a large part of the flight. The strategy was that he had two sleeps during the day, but then we kept him up and he had a walk around the Qantas lounge (see photo of David in the lounge) until the flight boarded at about 8.00pm. it was a full plane, so we were glad he slept. We got him off to sleep in the car from the airport, with another bottle and took him in and put him straight to bed when we arrived at Paul's parent's home.

Coming back on the Sunday afternoon flight David didn't sleep - even though he was very tired. Luckily we had a spare seat for him to wriggle in on that flight. It would have been tough with only our laps. A short managable flight though. A good trip, and Nanna and Grandad really enjoyed seeing David and how much he had grown. David really loved seeing them and rampaging aroung the house. He seemed to recognise his bed and slept well the whole trip.

David enjoyed the travelling so much, that he has been very interested in the travel bags ever since - see the photo of him playing with the bags. Perhaps he wants to travel again. We have bought him some more toys for Melbourne and brought a couple back for Christmas. We have a few decorations up and we plan to put up a tree (in the playpen) this week.

Well that is all for now - we are really tired after the trip and looking forward to Christmas, at home.

more later!