Camping.....

Last week my family with a friend went on a camping trip to Busselton. The camp site belongs to a friend of mine that had been there for the previous two weeks and she left all of her camping equipment behind so that we could borrow it for the week – all we had to do was show up and sit down – bloody brilliant. The camp site came complete with a 3 room tent, fridge, microwave, fans, cutlery etc.. you get the picture.. The camp grounds where gorgeous extremely clean, very little sand but lots of flies (I suppose you can’t have everything lol). The grounds contained two swimming pools and were just across the road from the beach.

I took my 17mth old son which proved to be very challenging! The main problem I had with my son was that I could not lock him into our camp space so he was continuously crawling off towards the road – the big problem with the road was not the cars but all the kids cycling & scooting around – they tend to look sideways instead of straight ahead!! My relaxing week was not to be…
We arrived on late Saturday afternoon and my friend with her two children arrived on Monday lunch time – we are now camping with 3 teenagers (my daughter took a friend) a 7 year old and the toddler – aaarrrrgg what were we thinking!!

The teenagers pretty much went off and did there own thing, returning for food and water. We did a lot of walking around the camp site with the toddler in his green bike, taking him to the park to burn off some of his energy (I forgot just how much they have….). We took our bikes and a carriage to do some cycling – we ride into Busselton which was about 5kms away on the Tuesday which was a great ride – I was very impressed with myself as I have not been fit enough for a couple of years to even attempt a bike ride…The preparation for the ride almost did me in – the teenagers winged as they did not want to come, the baby was screaming because well because….the 7 year old was also complaining and refusing to come….I at one point I was about to give in and then put my foot down and told them all as nicely as I could to shut up, get on there bike and get moving….(though gritted teeth but I did not swear once – well not out loud!) – it was well worth it as once we reach the destination everyone was glad (it did take a lot of coaching to get the 7year old to the destination…a lot)…anyway we looked at the rebuilding of the Busselton jetty, played on the beach and had some lunch. The teenagers every decided to ride back themselves the following day so that they could go to the water play ground (which they did do).
Each day we went to the beach as the baby really enjoyed the beach (he was very cute crawling in and out of the water and playing in the sand) – we either rode or walked (depending on the bum soreness factor lol). We stayed quite active for the entire week.

On the food front – We ate lots of salads and had barbecues daily; I made sure that we had plenty of fruit and salad type foods to eat. I must say though it was difficult to stay on track with the food – as the week worn on I was finding myself starting to stray towards the barbecue shapes and ice cream a bit (my friend showed up with a heap of junk food – which I did not count on!). I started to feel a bit disappoint in myself for “failing” and then reminded myself that it is just food, it is not big deal and I will just have to work a bit harder when I get home – so I relaxed enjoyed the break, walked lots of just kept the damage to a minimum. As soon as I returned home I was straight back on the journey first thing on the Saturday morning (not waiting until I weighed in again like I would have done in the past!) and feeling very good.

The biggest achievement for myself during the week was knowing that the work I have done over the past few months made this trip a success – had I gone a few months ago I would not have been able to ride the bike let along pull a carriage with a 12kg baby in side, sleep on the floor (as I simply would not have been able get myself back up) and just walk around and swim like everyone else. I never though that just losing 10% of my body weight would have this much positive effect on my life and my kids.

All in all a great holiday…