Trip to the big smoke to visit the cousins

This weekend Elliott went on his biggest trip yet, Sydney! We went down to visit Lisa, James, Bianca, and Abi (and about time too, since they moved quite a while ago). In addition, Bianca had celebrated her 5th birthday during the week so we had to go down and check out her presents. There was also the issue of a promised game of Twister (which we had given her the week prior in advance of the big day). This was always going to be a big day but Elliott handled it really well. He slept most of the trip down and only had a bit of a moment when we hit the Sydney traffic, but honestly... what Novocastrian doesn't feel like that once they hit the city. Otherwise, we arrived without a hitch and it was great to see the new 'Castle Green'.


The place is lovely and has a particularly attractive front yard (that James was weeding as we arrived, he's good that boy). We had a nice lunch and got the grand tour by Bianca. After lunch Bianca was kind enough to share some of her Ice Cream Birthday cake (lucky us) and then we finally partook in those promised games of Twister. It was all a bit of a blur... but from memory it was a Green trifecta, Lisa won the first game, James won the second and the birthday girl (Bianca) won the thrid (or something like that). Finally, we went out to Rhodes Shopping centre and did a little impromtu IKEA visit (portable computer table for Brett), sorry Paul and Beth in particular (had we planned ahead we would have taken orders... next time). It was a great visit and we are fairly sure that the girls (and their mum) reckon Elliott is pretty alright, and for the record it appears that Elliott is pretty happy with them too!


We then made the journey home and, according to Elliott, we left our run a little late. The trip was not so smooth - a couple of minutes out of Rhodes he started to vigourously object to the car. Kel ended up sitting in the back with him (which we've since discovered is quite fun) with her little finger being used as a defacto dummy (lucky she's still got skin on it). It's true, at the end of the day parents will do anything to comfort their children. Anyhow, the little finger trick worked and kept Elliott from crying the rest of the trip, although for half of it couldn't remove her finger witout him starrting up up again. But all's well that ends well and eventually we arrived home after our big adventure. Elliott must have been worn out because he set a new record of 9 hrs between feeds and 8 hrs of straight sleep that night. Perhaps we should take him on big trips every day... NOT :-)