Thud!

Sigh. Time for post-holiday-itis. Despite the lack of sleep I could have quite happily remained under canvas for another night ... or six! But paid employment beckons ...

Ross and I bought our first tent within a year of getting married, and only managed one holiday in it together before the kids came along!

We've had a few holidays in it as a family since then, and initially it wasn't too bad, but the kids will insist on growing and things were getting a bit ridiculous, so after 13 years we finally upsized. We had a practice run setting it up the night before we went away. My brother, who was celebrating the New Year with us along with my parents, took one look at it and said 'That's a HOUSE. It just happens to be made of fabric!'. It didn't look that big in the shop, alongside an even larger one, but taking up half our back lawn it was rather impressive! So impressive I was seriously wondering whether it would even fit in the tent site at the camp ...

No worries!

We'd never been to Himatangi Beach before. We just wanted to get away somewhere, having not been away from home on holiday since our jaunt to Mt Ruapehu in October '09, and a friend had mentioned hearing good things about Himatangi Beach Holiday Park, so once we knew they had a vacancy we didn't even bother checking out other options!

Himatangi Beach Holiday Park is dog-friendly. This meant eruptions of 'Awww!' from our daughter at roughly 10 metre intervals. Not just at the campground either - the beach was only a very short walk away and there was a steady flow of canines of all shapes and sizes. Possibly because of its proximity to the beach the ground was beautifully soft and the tent pegs could pretty much be pushed all the way in by hand ... but that would have spoiled Amy's fun ...

Within about 5 minutes of arriving John had already decided that this was going to be 'the worst holiday ever'. Then he opened his eyes and discovered the playground next door ...

Spinning!

Swinging!

Motion sickness! ... chundering! ... whoops! :/

Ah well, there were still sand dunes to demolish and rivers to cross/fall into and trees to climb and pinecones to collect and books to read ... Ross and I have noticed a distinct pattern - and not just away on holiday, but at home as well - the incidence of our kids uttering the word "bored" is directly proportional to the amount of time they spend plugged into electronic so-called "entertainment". No TV, no computer, no X-box -> no boredom. The solution seems blindingly obvious doesn't it? Get rid of the gadgets. Not terribly likely, I'm afraid! However I did ask them to leave off automatically turning on the TV and computer the second we got home. We weren't entirely gadget-free though, I will confess. As the camp noise slowly died away each night it was gradually overwhelmed by the steady dull roar of the Tasman Sea (Amy asked if there was a heat pump going!) - my nice relaxing little "Ocean Waves" mp3 sounds decidedly pathetic in comparison!I I had no problem falling asleep with the white noise of the water, however the kids did, and Amy in particular kept waking me up again! (Ross just took out his hearing aids and sailed off into oblivion!) So the "girls" ended up watching Wall-E on the iPod at 11:30pm on night 1, since we were both wide awake, bored silly, and likely to get ourselves into trouble otherwise! :D

Darn that was too short ... Sigh ...