A Family Moment

This afternoon we returned from two nights at Pearl Beach on the NSW Central Coast. It was a rare time indeed, a pure family weekend. Generally speaking we like to do things in packs, possibly with the idea that there is safety in numbers when it comes to entertaining children. We almost always weekend and holiday with friends and/or family.

But this weekend was just the four of us. The way I was feeling last week I was a little anxious about how the weekend would pan out, especially with the forecast bad weather. My fears were unfounded as it was a tiny bubble of family heaven (and that's not a term I tend to use often).

The house itself, Wildwood, was quite isolated; at the end of the last street, surrounded on all sides by trees and bush and wildlife. Let's not start about my personal feelings on these. Suffice to say I was able to tune out these things and simply enjoy the quiet and the far-away-ed-ness of the place. Of course I couldn't have possibly lasted more than the two nights but enough about my mental health problems.

We arrived late-ish Friday night and pretty much went straight to bed. It was raining, we were tired after a wearying week, it was perfect snuggle and sleep conditions. We did just that.

Saturday morning we enjoyed a leisurely family breakfast at the local cafe, followed by a short walk to discover Pearl Beach (which took all of a few minutes). We then took a drive to neighbouring Patonga Beach to see what attractions (not many/any) it had to offer.

Returning to our hideaway we decided a trip to the beach itself would be nice as the weather seemed to be holding off. We ended up having an absolute ball, a blissful two hours of playing in the surf and the sand. There was hardly anyone else there and it was just pure joy, the four of us body surfing together.

Almost as soon as we returned to the house with our lunch of fish and chips the rain started, and stayed. We were housebound for the rest of the day, watching movies, reading and sleeping. The only downer was the take away Chinese dinner. Big Jay drove to Umina for it and it certainly wasn't worth the drive. Horrendous! Luckily we didn't get food poisoning but I wouldn't have been surprised. If you're down Umina way stay away from the Silver Dragon. You have been warned.

This morning our Central Coast based friends met us at the cafe for a big Sunday morning breakfast. We had already packed our stuff and since the rain was still coming down we headed home. It was a brief but lovely respite from real life. I needed it.