Skitastic baby

Last weekend we took a long weekend break and headed for the snow. It had been raining gloomily in Melbourne for weeks before which meant that the mountains were getting a decent amount of snow cover. So off we headed to Mount Hotham in the Victorian Alps. It was about a five hour drive. (You can tell we are getting more aussified as we didn't think too much of that. People over here are prepared to travel so much further by car.) We stayed in a lodge which is a cross between a youth hostel and a European style ski chalet: we had all our meals cooked and the full gourmet luxury experience yet we were expected to all sleep in bunks and depending on numbers, share rooms with strangers! Wisely the lodge manager didn't put anyone else in with us, as Dulcie did her waking up in the middle of the night yelling thing (an hour earlier each night we were there, ARRGGHH) but our friends Richard, Raechel & Abigail had a couple of people sharing with them who came back from a night at the bar and tried to get into the wrong bunk. Chaos ensued.







So, skiing in July. Weird huh? (The last time we went skiing must have been almost exactly 18 months ago, as the day we got back that time I discovered I was pregnant with Dulcie, and she hit 9 months last week.) It all actually worked very well with us taking it in turns to ski and do childcare. Abigail took her Pingu DVD and Thea took her new Fifi and the Flowertots, so the gilrs were happy. Thea said she was desperate to "ski fast" so one afternoon we hired her some boots and skis. Cue all manner of whinging. "These boots are tooooo tight." Will skied her down a very flat slope in between his skis and she moaned all the way down, and of course said "Again, again" at the bottom.

We couldn't help but notice a few key differences between the Victorian Alps and the French Alps, our usual ski haunt. Hotham was smaller & lower of course, but it seemed very uncrowded, no real queues. In fact on our way up the mountain on the way there we kept thinking we had gone the wrong way as there was no traffic. And this was on changeover day. Also, the Aussies who work the lifts etc are eternally cheerful, ask you how your day's skiing is going, help you get on the lift, and would never ever dream of closing the lift if they could see someone skiing down towards it. I couldn't help but feel that they should pop over to France and offer the ski resort staff there some lessons in customer service. Also the Aussies are health & safety freaks and insist on scaring you to death by putting signs at the top of black runs which say, "Expert skiers only. Do not fall over on this run," which is the kind of thing that makes me far more likely to fall over.

Anyway, we all got back in one piece, apart from a nasty bruise I sustained to the kneecap by walking into the tow bar on the back of some ridiculously oversized chelsea tractor in the car park of the place where we were returning the snow chains we'd hired. (Long sentence, but grammatically ok I think).

Being away at the weekend meant I missed the release of Harry Potter 7 which led to a pretty desperate time on Tuesday afternoon whizzing round Melbourne looking for a shop that hadn't sold out of them. I was successful on the fifth attempt and spent most of my free hours last week with my heart in my mouth wondering what was to become of the boy wizard. No spoilers here apart from to say I thought JK dun well.

Other news, I have been looking into doing a bit of work and have a few chats with different contacts I've made to see what's out there. Nothing definite yet but some interesting leads. Salaries seem a bit lower here and childcare costs the same, so I need to just make sure I don't lose any money! I think it's about time I got out of the house without the girlies a little more. They are both gorgeous and I love being with them, but it's too full on at the moment and I think a day or too when Mummy has a rest at work would probably do us all good.

Girlies news: Thea has completely turned into a blue-peter-presenteresque reuser of household junk and I am constantly being told off for throwing something away which she wants to make into something unfeasible. She gets this crazy look in her eyes and nearly always starts the process by saying, "Mummy, I've got a brilliant idea, let's make a ..." Today she threw a wobbly when Will left a cafe without the two empty cardboard cups she'd earmarked to make a mask with (?!). Dulcie has started crawling quite quickly now and as I have mentioned before, sees it as a personal mission to tidy up the by-products of Thea's craft work by eating them. She seems so grown up all of a sudden. A friend has lent us one of those baby entertainment centres that they stand up in and she just fiddles with all the toys on it, upright and perky, babbling a load of nonsense that sounds more like speech now. Anyway, if I don't finish this soon she'll have nothing to eat next week as I'm out of frozen baby mush. More anon.