New Year’s Eve with Nic

We had hit the Sunshine Coast, which was the start of our social jaunt down the East coast. Our engine issues in January 2014, catching up with Richard and Catherine in Adelaide in April, and our drive shaft issue in July had pushed our ‘schedule’ back about 8 weeks. Having ‘done’ the parts of Australia between Melbourne and Gayndah on at least 5 different occasions (and on every route possible), we had long ago decided we could fast-forward through that if needed. We had taken 3 weeks with the kids to do that only a couple of years ago, so didn’t feel ‘ripped off’ in skipping it.

So we slowed down some more and had Christmas in Gayndah, and then planned to skip our way from friend to friend right down the coast to Canberra, where we would stop longer on our way home to Melbourne.

New Year’s Eve was the first of our social stops, spending time with my friend Nic and her gorgeous family. Bronte is Lexie’s age, Bella 2 years older and Bethie 2 years younger, so it was girl overdrive for poor Angus. We met up at the Mooloolabah Fireworks and concert, which was just fabulous. They have an enormous free event every year, and we met for dinner before watching the 9pm fireworks. With 5 children and LOTS of chatting to catch up on, we headed home to Nic’s after that, and spent the night in a HOUSE. How very unusual…and it’s a GORGEOUS house that Jeff has been building for a while now. It was lovely to see its progress – its just stunning!

Nic put on her usual fine spread of breakfast the next day, though the blokes were too wound up in their devices to notice! Dunc loved catching up with Jeff and having some ‘nerd’ time. Not too many tech nerds out there on the road!

We headed home and they came later for afternoon tea. The girls joined the rest of the kids in a game of Bocce and we chilled and chatted some more. It was really nice to catch up, as Nic is from my “Internet Mother’s Group” and we had missed our annual weekend away this year.