Holmes Family Blogs

From being completely lazy for most of the year, we have not really done much on the website. That does not mean we haven't been busy, and I will try to show some of the more interesting events of the past few months in a couple of posts.

First up, we managed a short trip to Wales to visit Ealey and Gerry for a weekend in Wales. Blessed with fantastic weather we ventured up the Geyer (a hill near Abergavenny) and visited the lovely Llanthony Abbey where we enjoyed a lovely beer near the old monastery.

We popped the pictures in the gallery but here are a couple:

Lena and Gerry

Andrea, Ealey and Gerry at Llanthony

Alberta is also the province of Canada well known for its ‘big things’. This time, Lash took me to the towns of Mundare and Vegreville to see the Giant Ukrainian Sausage, and the Giant Pysanka (Ukrainian Easter Egg) respectively. The area was favoured by many Ukrainian settlers, hence there is a large Ukrainian community still in the area from which Lash is descended. I found the Pysanka very pretty, however the giant sausage was not. Still I did get to taste some – it wasn’t bad.

So finally I am getting around to posting my world trip for 2007 (this way I can be all prepared for a new trip in 2008!)

Anyhow, on April 20, 2007 at around 12ish, I flew out of Sydney. An hour later, I arrived in San Francisco. The international date line certainly makes for one quick trip. It did feel somewhat longer on the plane though. I blame it on the plane seats.

Arriving in San Francisco, I went straight from the airport to my hostel at Fisherman's Wharf. By straight, obviously I mean that I took the scenic tour of San Francisco and suburbs, but given I was slightly jet-lagged, it didn't bother me too much. In fact it was great, as it gave me my bearings of the city. We drove straight through the centre of San Francisco (and additionally past some shops that I immediately placed on my visit list). After an hour or so, I got to Fisherman's Wharf and settled into my room.

After dropping off my bag and showering, I realised that I was famished. Plus I had a number of things that I needed to pick up from the supermarket, so I headed down to the local Safeway. Amongst other items including Oreos and wintergreen tic-tacs, and browsing all the strange and wonderful things that one may find in an American supermarket, I picked up some deodorant. Not just any deodorant, but Chai Latte scented deodorant. Aah I love America. Following that, however, and very un-Californian of me, it was back to the hostel for a nap. I blame the jet-lag. I did wake up, however, for an early evening wander of Fisherman's Wharf.

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

2007 was a great year! We celebrated 2008 coming by watching London's fireworks from the apartment of a friend.

Andrea's Youtube videos
Greg's Flickr site

I have sometimes been a bit lax on updates from this site, so please use the above links to see what we've been doing. I will pop these links onto the sidebar so you can come back to them.

2007 was a great year: during it we had many great events.

Lena's 1st Birthday
We moved house
We became Aunt and Uncle to Eleanor
We had a fun family trip to Scotland

In 2008, we want to:

Improve our house
Visit Australia in April
Holiday in Iceland
Go Skiing (wishful thinking)
and much much more!

Happy Birthday Lena!!!

To celebrate Lena's Birthday, Greg made her some pizzas, and Andrea made a cake with a special recipe and we got to enjoy a lovely day together. Some of you might expect a phone call or two, as Lena now has her own delightful telephone, with some cool ringtones.

We also were happy to pick up our bronze turkey ready for Christmas. This 5.6 kg beast will feed the 5 of us twice over we believe, so no need to dash out to the supermarket for a while after Christmas - maybe even until New Year!

So we upped house and moved one more time, or is that one last time maybe.

At least this time, we didn't move far, it is about 200 yards from the old place, on a busier road, but bigger and fitting our needs. We were lucky enough to have Francois, Phiona, and my Dad helping us move our stuff in, and managed the bulk of the move in 1 big day without professional help.

Lena is enjoying the new house, finding her newly learned crawling skills really useful, and also finding the steep steps a challenge rather than a barrier. She is also getting social with some other young children...

The new place is a lovely end of terrace house, 3 beds, nice living areas and a good sized kitchen, which is something we really prize in our modern living. The next challenge is the decorating, changing some of the more dated styles to fit in with how we want to live.

To top off the move, we set ourselves the very short deadline of a week to prepare for a housewarming party. At the last moment we did some panic buying of beer, wine and food, which means we are still very well prepared for anyone who wants to pop round for a quick beer.

I also have put a bunch of photos onto flickr of the housewarming

It's been a relief to be able to show people that we are actually taking steps towards getting married. Now when people ask us how the wedding plans are going, I can say "Well we have a ring," which is better than having nothing, which is also pretty close to what we have.

G. wants to wait to do his paperwork in July, because then it will be good for the 6 months before getting married. All the paperwork has to have been issued within the last 6 months when you register. I told him if he did it now, it would probably arrive in July, which would do, but there's no convincing him. Sigh. Sometimes you have to pick your battles, so I'm letting this slide for a bit longer. My parents want to come over (did I mention we decided on December?) and so they are anxious to get a firm date out of us.

We also went and looked at dirndls yesterday. I tried on a few, all were very nice. I love trying them on; they are all so different in colour and patterns, even though the basic idea is the same, I feel like it's totally different each time I try a new one. And unlike other shops, where there are shelves and shelves full of the exact same shirt in different colours, there's usually only one dirndl of a certain colour in each size. Far more variety.

Anyways, there was one we both quite liked, but I'm going to take my best friend down with me on Tuesday to see what she thinks. G also didn't really want to know 100% if that was the one I was getting - he wants a bit of a surprise. Heh heh, maybe I will get that red latex jumpsuit...

During the first two weeks of March Tom and I took a well earned holiday to Tasmania. On this trip we were never far from the sea...starting with our mode of transport to get there. On a Friday night we, alongwith our trusty ute, boarded the Spirit of Tasmania II at Station Pier in Port Melbourne with some trepidation, knowing that Bass straight was probably the second most fierce stretch of water in the world (after North/South Island crossing of our nearest neightbour, New Zealand). We needn't have worried... the engine vibration was more prominent than the ocean swell on the balmy autumn night and was quietly soothing whist we drifted off to sleep in our cabin...only to be awoken fiercly at 6am to the sound of piped music and the wakeup call that we would arrive at Devonport in 45 minutes!

From Devonport we drove straight on (after a couple of hot cross buns and a cup of tea from the bakery) to our planned first night's accommodation... the sand dunes of Mt William NP on the north-east tip of Tassie. We had packed all of the camping gear in the back of the ute (well we hoped so) and prepared with our National Parks Pass (conveniently available for sale on the Ferry - $20 per day!!! or $50 for 2 months) we set up camp at Stumpy's Bay #4. It was a pretty site with a lagoon and a number of persistent wallabies (and also a Tiger snake as we later found). Our main pastime at this campsite was the long beach walks on the fine white sand. The beach was stunning with it's orange lichen crusted rocks, white sand and hardly a soul on it. There must have only been about 15 people in all of the 4 camping grounds combined. Most were in campervans, but we stuck with our trusty budget dome tent. We also climbed the 218m peak of Mount William - despite not being amonst the highest peaks even of Tasmania, still had fine views for a full 360 degrees.

After a few days at Mount William we moved on to the next stunning white sand beach... that of Bay of Fires, north of St Helens. Allegedly this is the second best wild beach in the world (I forget what is the best... probably Whitehaven in the Whitsunday islands of Queensland). Bay of Fires is actually less "wild" than Mount William due to the number of people staying there, and to be honest this was probably it's only detractor. It was a fine beach, though I did prefer Mt William due to it's isolation... and probably because it was the first we went to and had the best weather.

From Bay of Fires we hit the tourist trail proper and pitched our tent at Coles Bay Caravan park. Since we had been camping for a few nights in basic campsites (read "basic" as a pit toilet and no shower) the relative luxury of the 4* caravan park was unparallelled and that first shower in the amenities block was amazing. The facilities of the caravan park were also good, having a kitchen complete with toaster, kettle & sink for campers plus roof for those escaping rainy nights (of which luckily the only one we had was at Coles Bay).

Coles Bay is best known as a base for exploring the famous Freycinet Peninsula and the exquisite view to Wineglass Bay. We did the Wineglass Bay/Hazards Beach circuit which was great, though to be honest, no more stunning than the beaches we had already been to. One of the highlights of our stay in Tassie was the gourmet food experience, and Coles Bay was no exception. Just down the road from the caravan park was a mussel and oyster farm. Now I am not a fan of oysters, however have been known to consume a mussel or two with a Belgian beer. I had heard that it was pretty simple to cook mussels in a white wine sauce, so we searched the Coles Bay for appropriate ingredients... white wine from the pub at the entrance to the caravan park, garlic and cream from the general store along with our kilo of fresh mussels harvested that morning. First problem was that they hadn't had time to clean the mussels, so they thew a few more in at no extra charge. So that evening after darkness had already descended one could have caught Tom swearing at a few mussels as he was trying to get the gunge off them in our camp washing up bucket. But eventually we successed and a fine meal of mussels in white wine cooked in the billy, plus potato chips cooked on the barbie... and of course another bottle of wine was consumed. A great memory!

After Coles Bay we were going to stay in Hobart for the weekend, however on realising that not only was it a Friday night, but that also was a long weekend and that we had no accommodation, realised that it might be a bit tough to find somewhere to stay. Whilst we were happy to camp in the bush, I'm not to keen in the city, and we were hoping to stay in a B&B somewhere close in. So instead we booked our B&B for a few days later and in the meantime took a detour.

Our detour took us down South west of Hobart, through the Huon valley and down to the southern-most point of Tasmania - the South Cape. After a couple of hours drive it took us about 10 minutes to get from one site of Hobart to the other and we continued on, filling up with supplies at Huonville. Our camp destination was Cockle Creek, the end of the most southerly road in Australia. There was free camping by the road, and also in the National Park (provided you had a NP pass). There were a few people down there - not surprising as the weather was forecast to be good, but we got there early enough to get a good campsite in the NP.

Cockle Creek was beautiful. The weather was more than good. There was clear blue sky, no wind, and Recherche Bay had clear still water. Only downside was the wasps and bumble bees. We walked along the bay learning about the early whaling history of the area and drinking in the sheer beauty. We also kept up our exercise regime by taking the 4hour return walk to South Cape beach. Along the way we met many surfers carrying their boards across. Many of them were camping out there. We were tempted to continue a bit more of the south cape path, but after 20 minutes of bush bashing, called it quits and headed back to Cockle Creek. I think the rest of the South West Cape trail may not be so well maintained as this first bit! It was a warm day, so once back at Cockle Creek I though a swim to freshen up might be in order. If freshening up was the only objective, then it was met with no questions, however the swim was not exactly relaxing... the water was freeeeeeezing, despite the 25 degrees air temperature, and I barely laster 10 seconds under water.

After a couple of nights in Cockle Creek we headed back to Hobart, on the way freshening up at the Hastings Thermal Baths, naturally heated (but only to 28 deg C) from a spring. We wanted to appear at our best before arriving at the B&B in the big city. Hobart was a pretty quiet time. The weather was not so good, so bringing forward our trip to Cockle Creek had been quite fortuitous. The main highlight of our stay was the side trip we took to Bruny Island. We took one

of the charter voyages down the east cost of Bruny Island. Aim was to get to a small island seal colony to the south of Bruny Island, but unfortunately the weather was against us. with 30-40 knot winds and 3-4m swell, conditions were not safe for us to go beyond the meeting of the Tasman Sea and Southern Ocean. We did see plenty on the way though with a few albatross and Shearwaters galore. We also sped through "the monument" which was slightly hair raising (see photos)! The evening treat was dinner at Peppermint Bay, overlooking a splendid sunset over Bruny Island. Food was pretty good too!

From Hobart we travelled straight up through the centre of Tasmania, past the great lakes (Tassie is in drought too... there is a lot of water missing from these lakes) up to Devonport. A nice lunch at the Deloraine Deli, and sampling some local gourmet delights at the Honey Farm, Ashgrove Cheeses and D'Anver's Chocolates filled in the time before our ferry back to Melbourne.

Click here to see our full photo album.

Today Tom and I ran the longest race of our lives... 15.2km on Melbourne's scenic Run for the Kids fundraising race for the Children's Hospital. We joined 26000 other runners and walkers on the route. Not sure what place we came in at yet. The winner finnished in about 45 minutes and my humble attempt was 1 hour 50 minutes. Tom sped away from me at the 3km mark and finished about 15-20 minutes ahead of me. Am pretty stuffed now and sure I am going to be stiff tomorrow.

See me cross the finish line on the attached link. I am in the middle of the photo with green shirt and dark 3/4 length tights.

The invites have been sent! Well, are being sent. We still have a few people/groups to send them to, but for the most part, they are on their way. We sent it electronically, by email and personal message via a forum. Why not take advantage of the technology? I'm not fussed for the format, and if people do want to print it out, it is in a nice design with a picture and everything. If you want to see it, go to Zee Groom's page. That has everything but the actual location listed.

It's exciting getting the RSVPs back. Everytime I get one, it feels special, knowing that this person wants to be with us on our day. That is really starting to make the excitement grow.

I've been with G for 3 years now, and I still love every minute of it.

We spent last weekend up at Coffs Harbour visiting our friend Anneke. We spent some days at the beach, and on the river. We also spent some time singing around the piano.

Last weekend we went down to the south coast for a weekend away at Milton. We stayed on a farmhouse in the midst of a vinyard. The house was only about 5 minutes from mollymook beach which Justine enjoyed swimming at.