aussie hols...

We had planned our trip home to coincide with the summer holidays the boys had from school and to help break up the 8 week heat blast that is the relentless Riyadh summer. We had 10 days in Queensland to chill (literally) and take in the sights and wonders of the Gold Coast and all that the theme parks that it had to offer. Adam was not at all impressed with the sudden overnight 30'C drop in temperature and very poignantly announced to me one cool morning that he was not wearing long pants anymore as he was going to wear "short pants like I do in KAC" (the apartment complex we live call home in Riyadh) and nothing would change his mind! Matthew was keen to get into the pool and have a slash at the beach to show Auntie Sue his newly acquired swimming prowess...a bit hard to do when you get an attack of the 'freezies' despite the pool signage announcing that the pool was heated to a pleasant 26'C...yeah right!!! The boys got to meet their idol, Batman, at Movieworld and had their pic taken with him (and Robin)...they were sooooo excited to see him appear out of nowhere and then go up and stand right beside him...all their dreams came true in an instant and it was only Day 2 of our holiday! That moment took a lot of beating I can tell you. The superheroes were probably only just nudged out by seeing, playing with and being licked by Scampy (Ninny and Pa's dog) and they were bursting out of their skins with anticipation on the flight down to Melbourne to see him. Melbourne was cold to say the least! It took us several days to aclimatise with the heater on full blast most of the time. One of the things we enjoyed most was listening to the rain falling on the tin roof...something we don't hear much living in the desert. It was great to see those we could (unfortunately many had been struck down by the flu and were in self imposed isolation) and catch up on the past 12 months of everyone's lives since we left, but the time flew all too quickly and we were back on the plane before we knew what had hit us. Thirty five hours door to door on the return journey (with Warren and I lucky to have gotten 5 hours sleep between us the whole way) saw us sufficiently jetlagged just in time to go back to work again! We need another holiday!