Our Trip Up North: Part Two, Ulmarra and Yamba

We arrived in Grafton around lunch and were lucky enough to meet with Dad and old Dad for lunch, I haven't seen old Dad in 8 years and N,E & C have never met him before at all. So I was very thankful we got to see him.
Great Grandfather, Grandfather and Grand sons

We got to hang out at Dad's on Friday which was really lovely to get to do. They have such a lovely spot to relax in.

I think this is a beautiful photo of Uncle don Charlotte and Josh.

And My Beautiful Eli

And my beautiful Josh...Josh finally convinced pa to crack out the fishing rods.

Auntie Dawn, Uncle Don, Janine and Charlotte arrived in good time and we got to spend a some time with them there as well.

Little Charlie had his first paddle in the water at Yamba.

We got to spend some nice time with Granny in the morning
Eli found some shells when on a walk with Auntie Janine.

Josh got to go fishing again...thanks Uncle Dan

Danny thought the paddle boats where great fun...for the first five minutes!!! Good on you Danny

Granny's birthday party was a lot of fun, it was so fantastic having all the families together. It was very special.
Granny had a ball I think, Auntie dawn made this lovely cake. The food was Delicious and the kids had so much fun together running around like wild things.
Mum & David
Dad & Valerie
Charlotte and Chantelle had fun with the balloons at the end of the night.
Beautiful photo of pelicans taken by Janine

Melbourne Slow Food Market, Day Out.

Today the boys and I head into Melbourne with our friends Jo, Izzy and Wil to have a morning at the Slow Food Market. It was so worth the trip, what a spoil of delish goodies. Quite a rare treat for me to indulge in such delicacies, but so glad I did. It makes you feel so good eating such wonderful things. Thank You Jo for suggesting this day out to us.

My goodies include: raw organic milk, raw honey, olive oil, organic chocolate, organic wine, blue cheese, falafels, red cabbage, organic baby carrots, fruit leather, turkish delight, and honey comb. I feel so truely bless to have been able to indulge in these delightful goodies.

Our Trip Up North: Part One, The way Up

Earlier this month we packed up the 4wd (to the rafters and beyond) and left our regular homely mish-mash daily routine for a more nomadic live-in-the-moment/live-on-baked beans/and don't bathe for days routine that is always so refreshing.

We were headed for Northern NSW for a weekend of family, fun and Great Granny turning 90.

As we are some what budget conscious travellers and always up for an adventure, we had no plans as to where we were going to stay, we had a general direction in mind (as you do when heading NORTH) but figured we'd find somewhere eventually. And EVENTUALLY we did, a beautiful National Park (Very small and in the middle of somewhere which was no where), it was so pretty, like a little oasis in the middle of hundreds of KMs of cleared farm land.

We'd set up camp and started a fire in no time, made a dinner (not baked beans, rice the other travelling staple) and snuggled off to bed.

After a sound sleep (Charlie first night camping) we awoke to icy tents and swags, not to mention extreme earliness too. The boys got the fire going and made toast, Charlie and I decided to have breaky in bed on this day, at least until the sun was shining on our tent and had melted the ice. The boys were having a ball by this time, they love camping and being outside, and fires too or course. We weren't in a hurry to leave as it was so nice to be on holidays and chillin out.

We knew we were officially tourist when we got to Dubbo and were the only people wearing shorts and t-shirts... we realised that we'd perhaps been a bit slow off the mark that morning as the day was getting away from us and we still had quite a way to go. I think we would have gotten a lot further and lot quicker if not for the GPS...REALLY not a fan of GPS at this point of the trip. So we decided to stick to the solid lines on the map and cover some ground. We made it past Gunnadah and then off the beaten track again in search of our second nights stop over. We found another "green patch" on the map, so we headed for that, we had no idea what we'd found until the next morning. We awoke to birds and this stunning river.

We were wanting to get to Grafton by lunch so we had a quick feed, a quick explore and hit the road again

We made it there by lunchtime and met Dad and Old Dad (Dad's dad) at a pub for lunch, which was really lovely as the boys hadn't met Old Dad before. We were pretty had it so we went to Dad's to chill out on the river bank and get ourselves cleaned up and relax for a while. We got to spend the next day with Dad and Valerie which was really nice and unexpected. The boys got to do some fishing too.