Busy busy busy

Anna and Georgie all dressed up for Trick or Treating

For all of you who have cruelly contacted me and asked me to post a picture of me as black as the ace of spades, I have bad news. The tan has faded nicely, and is in fact almost gone. For a few brief moments I did indeed have the golden glow I was hoping for, and I'll probably do it again (especially if it carries on raining).

So back to what we've been up to.....after our return from the Hawkesbury, Grace and Bob took the train up to the Blue Mountains for a couple of days, leaving me to restore order in our home. We did all the usual things - swimming (lots of moaning as usual), netball (won), basketball (also won). I had the tan, as you know.

The tan was part of my plan to look gorgeous (hahahahahaha) for a very hectic social calendar. Thursday saw me glowing with friends at the Altitude Bar in the Shangri - La Hotel for Nadia's 40th birthday. This bar, as well as being very luxurious with waiter service for your Strawberry Bellinis, has the most spectacular views of the harbour from its position on the 36th floor of the hotel. I felt a bit like a film star. Then we were off in our chauffeur driven car to Hugos in King's Cross (which is the Sydney equivalent to Soho). A great time was had by all, and I didn't get home until 2.45am. Luckily I was sober. Friends from home will find this surprising, but I do seem to have become Captain Sensible about drinking. I didn't have anything after about 10.30pm except water (we went out at 6pm), and even ordered a Peach Bellini which I had a couple of sips of and then left because I knew it would be one too many. And this for a person famed for her exploits when three sheets to the wind. Goodness me....

Andrew very kindly put the children on the bus for me the next morning to allow me to have a lie in, and I got up at 11am and went straight to the gym feeling very chirpy. Then it was rush rush rush to get home and ready to go to the Opera House with Andrew and Grace and Bob. We had dinner at Circular Quay and then saw a program of Rachmaninov played by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Ashkenazy. It was wonderful, and so nice to be enjoying an orchestral concert. We were pretty tired afterwards, but I took everyone to the Altitude Bar so they could see the view. Andrew didn't like it, and we couldn't get into the reserved seating area we had been in the night before, where the view is best, so it was a bit disappointing, but Grace and I did have a strawberry mocktail which was quite the loveliest thing I've ever drunk.



The Year 4 Mum's Posse

Then the next morning I was up early being picked up to go with Sharon and Maria on the Yea 4 Mum's Weekend Away. This took place at a resort in Ettalong Beach up on the Central Coast, but the town is accessible from Palm Beach by ferry in 25 minutes. It's a very pleasant trip on a nice day, and going somewhere by boat always seems a bit of an adventure doesn't it? We had a real laugh, as you will be able to see from the photos, but the real highlight for Maria, Sharon and I was the completely insane lift system. The hotel rooms had those key cards and the cards also had to be used to operate the lifts. There were 10 of us on trip with rooms on various floors, and the reception people failed to tell us that our key cards were programmed to take us only between the 2nd floor where our room was, and the ground floor. As a result, we spent sometime in the lifts, travelling up and down at the whim of other travellers, unable to make it to the 3rd floor. Irritation soon turned to hilarity (particularly when given that we had consumed a fair bit of champagne), and by the time we gave up and went to ask what the problem was at reception, we were pretty much beside ourselves.



Sharon busting a few moves to the band at the Ettalong RSL Club!

But the fun in the lifts did not stop there. After more champagne in Leisa's room, Maria and I dashed off for a quick shower and scrub up before we all went off for dinner. We jumped in the lift, confident that as we were going to our own floor there shouldn't be any problems. No such luck.....after initially making encouraging noises, we found that we were not going anywhere, and the lift door wouldn't open. We were still rather giggly, but the realisation that we might be stuck was slightly dampening the humour, so you can imagine our relief when it suddenly set off. We were slightly irritated when it failed to stop at the second floor, but at this stage it wasn't all that surprising. What was surprising, however, was to step out the lift on the ground floor and find that we were in the kitchens....Naturally, it wouldn't take us back up, so in the end we crept out, hoping that we might be able to find our way back to reception without being seen....however, we were soon spotted and escorted out, much to the amusement of all the staff. By this stage, Maria and I were laughing so much we were barely coherent, so the discovery that we were in the kitchens of the RSL club next door to the hotel was almost too much for us to bear. We had to walk out the club into the street, and walk round the corner to go back in the hotel and all in all the trip from the 3rd to the 2nd floor had taken over 20 minutes!

I swear that is the sort of thing that can only happen to me....



Ettalong Beach



Sharon and Maria doing a bit of modelling on Ettalong Beach - lol