Adelaide Xmas catchup WITH PHOTOS part 2

Written February 6th, 2012
This entry was written more than a year after the events to be written about occured. Thankfully Jake’s memory book keeps a semi-detailed event timeline!

Friday, December 24

  
  
 
Beach day! Quite possibly the first photo of me in shorts in a decade or so. KNEES! We left the hotel at about 8am so we could grab Dad and head over to the local beach. Beach time in Adelaide is always super early, I think it is so Dad can avoid other people. In any case, it was rather cold so we (me, Jake, Natey, Claire) were having fun being mean to the others by splashing freezing water at each other. Dad (by the looks of the photos) stayed nearer the edge of the water and just took pictures of our antics. Once we’d had enough of being freezing we went for a little wander up the beach, and then headed ‘home’ to the hotel-apartment, where we were showering by 10:30am.

Once we were all un-sandy and warmer, we headed over to Rundle Mall again for it’s incredible convenience of being RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER. Lunch of delicious KFC was had, followed by a trip to Rebel Sport. Who knows what we got there, could have been more exercise-related clothing, or something for swimming, although I do think it was for goggles, because once we got home we got changed and went to the workout floor for gym time, pool time, ‘jacuzzi’ time, and sauna time. All the sauna time we logged while staying there really cleared up my skin, I loved it. I also loved that we didn’t even need shoes in order to get to the gym area, only thing other than what we would need that we had to make sure we had was the room key. Mmm, easy.

We headed back over to Nanna’s house at about 5 for dinner. Pizza!

Saturday, December 25

  
  
 

Christmas morning, Jake found me sitting out on the balcony playing pokemon on my DS. I think every morning in our little hotel-apartment, I got up WAY before everyone else did. It was a rather small place, so I had to be quiet, so usually I’d grab all the towels off the table/seats on the balcony and hang out there for a while. We had kinda entertaining views from out there, and the breeze was always so nice and cool-warm. Once Natey and Claire would wake up, cereal could be consumed, but before then… just juice, and even that was a noisy endevour.

We headed over to Nanna’s at about 9:30 for CHRISTMAS FUN TIME. There was a present exchange, although unfortunately no pictures so I can’t remember what we got. Good things, probably. Mum’s cousin Mary joined us for lunch, bringing a christmas pavlova that was pretty tolerable even once the cream was removed, so that was a new and good thing for me. Lunch was pretty much the same as it was every day at Nanna’s, only there was a pile of prawns because it just isn’t christmas without prawns, apparently. I stuck to ham, salad and hard boiled eggs (MMM) and perhaps some of the pasta salad because it was right in front of me.

Us kids headed back to the hotel at about 3, and after a wander down the street to a convenience store open on christmas day for some beverages, we relaxed and had ‘nap time’ or ‘quiet time’ for a few hours. 2 hours of napping, 2 hours of gymming and swimming, and we were all starving so we cooked up a dinner of pasta. Very laid back christmas day, but the main family get-together was to happen on Boxing Day.

Sunday, December 26

  
  
 

The real christmas day celebrations were a day late. We didn’t do anything until about noon, when we got hungry and thought we’d try our luck at something being open at Rundle Mall (there was… McDonalds. Yay, what a choice.) for lunch. We also got some photos of us being silly by the mall’s balls, because every day Nanna would ask us if we had seen the balls, and even though we had, we needed photographic proof or she would have never stopped bugging.

At about 1, we headed over to Nanna’s, where not long after we all piled back into the car (HoJu! My old baby ♥) and followed Dad over to Hallett Cove where my cousins live. Dad (with Nanna, Matty and Jemima. Jemima = Matty’s lady) tried to lose us in the final twist and turn area on the way to Dave’s house (Dave = Yvonne’s partner. Yvonne = Mum’s sister) which was rather mean (being my second time to Dave’s, ever) but I didn’t get lost, thankfully. (Pretty sure at the end of the evening I led the way back home.)

Once there, Mum (who had arrived earlier) and Yvonne were already in full swing in the kitchen, so we were all set out back to enjoy the rather cool sunshine. Typical family gathering meant there was a photo of all the kids, many many photos of all the kids. The photo above has back row of Matty, Jemima, Me and Jake. Middle row of Kirsty, Adam and Natey-being-slanty. Front row of Lauren and Claire.

Christmas dinner at this gathering was much more traditional-for-our-family. Turkey, stuffing loaf, potatoes, veggies, and possibly some other kind of meat although I’m not sure, I only did the turkey. Dessert was mum’s christmas pudding and sweet potato pies made by me. I was commanded to make the pies so everyone could taste them, but I had to force both my brothers to try it (they then lied to me how awesome it was… I didn’t care if they liked it, just that they tried!)

Monday, December 27

Beach again this morning. We went at about 10:30, even though we all were ready much earlier, because Jemima wanted to go to the beach and she refused to go early because apparently that is crazy (and the water would be too cold). I do kind of agree, but it’s so ingrained in me that beach = super-early that anything else just felt weird and wrong. It was even colder than it had been a few days previous, so we barely went in the water, and Jemima completely refused. Beh.

We came ‘home’, showered, and went back to Nanna’s to laze about for the rest of the day. Barnacle Bill’s was dinner, which as always was absolutely expectionally delicious. I crave that stuff all year, but even when I lived in my home country we only ever got Barnacle Bill’s at Nanna’s place because that chain left Victoria (my home state) many many years before. (Jenn and I went on a state-wide hunt once and could never find… although we did find a all-you-can-eat pizza hut which is also something that didn’t exist around where we lived, which was good even if it made us sick… random tangent…) so that was some awesomely delicious fish & chips.

Tuesday, December 28

  
  
 

Today we to Port Pirie to see my Dad’s sister and some of our cousins. I somehow knew how to get there, so I was elected as the driver for the day. We followed Mum, but it is always nice to know that if the convoy gets seperated, I can still find my way to the destination. 3 hours later and we were sitting in my aunt Christine’s lounge room with her cute dog, waiting for my cousins (Ben – Christine’s son, and a rather pregnant Amy – Denise (other aunt, she was in Tasmania so not at Port Pirie)’s daughter). The cousins on this side are all older than us, I think Amy is the youngest of the 3 (her brother Christian also didn’t show up) and she’s about 5 years older than I. Cousins on Mum’s side are all the same age as the 3 of us (Kirsty is about 4 months younger than me, Adam is a few months older than Matty, and Lauren is a few months older than Natey).

After present exchange, we went around the corner to Cafe Primo. I’m pretty sure I had a delicious single-serve hawaiian pizza for lunch, because that sounds like something I would always order.

After eats, and a bit more time at Christine’s place, we headed back to Nanna’s. Claire was feeling ill and needed to sit up front, but so did someone else, so Claire went with Mum and we got Dad in the backseat while I drove home (he didn’t want to drive the slightly-more-than-2.5hour-drive because he wanted to nap), which turned out to be good because at one point we got way ahead of Mum’s car and that was the one time when a turn was approaching and I wasn’t 1000% certain of the correct place to turn.

Five and a half hours of driving in one day isn’t very fun.

Dinner was pizza at Nanna’s, and the cousins-on-mum’s-side showed up because it was our last night in Adelaide. We had another group photo outside Nanna’s garage, and I took photos of interesting things in the backyard, like a cat skull and the awesome brick wall that has always been awesome.

Wednesday, December 29

  
 

Final day in Adelaide/South Australia for 2010, which meant BIG LONG DRIVING DAY. We left just after 8am (once Natey had sorted out the payment for the room, apparently the people at the hotel were kinda being idiots about the whole thing somehow, but they called us 10 minutes away from the hotel to say all was sorted and they were idiots. heh.) Claire took the first driving shift, because it involved navigating through the city to the highway and she had her GPS which she knew how to obey but we didn’t really (we being the other drivers – Natey and me).

Our first stop was a stop that is not allowed to not be stopped at – Jagers at Tailem Bend. It’s just a tiny little restaurant attached to a petrol station, but it is delicious and tradition. They do amazing milkshakes there, and awesome awesome wedges, which I probably had even though it was only about 9:30 by this point in time. Mum and Dad met us there (Matty and Jemima were only around for a day or two, they flew in and flew out) which was nice, it was the only time we were at the same point in our travels because we kept stopping. It was a stinking hot day, and HoJu had no working air conditioner, so that makes travels FUN!

When we stopped at Bordertown, I was finally the one to drive, whichmeant yet again I got to be the one driving over the South Australia/Victoria border. I’m special like that. The eagle-statue photo is from Bordertown, we were on the other side of the highway from the awesome happy trees we had sat by on the way to Nanna’s.

We made lots of stops for beverages and just to slightly dry off from the sweat lodge that was the car, and also to get locusts out from the windshield wipers/grill/etc. I think the only time we really hit a swarm was passing by Ararat where the above photo was taken. Crazy bugs!

Our final stop was Nando’s at Greensie for dinner, and even though that took a while and was only a few minutes from home, it still counted as part of the trip. So we left at about 8, got home after 7. WOO!