The Long Weekend

You haven't blogged in ages, my bride complained last night. Well, actually I haven't blogged since Thursday, which means I have taken the long Easter weekend holiday off much the same as most Aussies.

We have a wonderful tradition here that we make Easter a four-day weekend, even though very few people actually do it for religious reasons. Good Friday is the country's major shut-down day and very few things are open. (Last year I posted about it here.)

The real trick to this holiday thing, though, was applying the Christmas tradition to Easter -- namely, not only taking off the day itself but declaring the next day a holiday as well. So December 26 and Easter Monday are national holidays, despite the fact that their religious significance falls somewhere in the realm of "We were enjoying our day off so much, we wanted another day."

We spent Good Friday in Canberra with Jason and Laura and then had a farewell lunch at a lovely Thai restaurant on Saturday. I should add right now that I learned an invaluable lesson: a big Thai lunch is not the best preparation for a 3 1/2-hour drive, but then I suspect most people already knew that.

I had done the good Easter Bunny thing in Canberra and snuck into a shop to buy a bunch of little chocolate eggs to put on LK and Shirley's pillows Saturday night. I wanted to surprise them, so I kept them in my pocket. That was lesson #2: little chocolate, foil-covered eggs that sit in your pccket for more than 4 hours become one mis-shapen, foil-specked chocolate blob. I can only hope that the thought counts.

Easter Sunday was the highlight of the weekend, when we got to see Lily after more than a month without a Lily-fix. This one was critical, because it will be early August before we see her again.

She is growing so tall, and at 7 3/4-years-old, she has developed a great sense of story-telling and humor. She is also incredibly active and fearless, not thinking twice about walking on stone walls and jumping around.

You can tell her age in that picture at the top. She has a scratch over her eye and her front teeth haven't quite finished growing in. I am saving that picture because when she is a famous celebrity I should be able to sell it to whatever web sites are around then.

Easter Monday's big event was spending a couple of hours moving our remaining storage stuff into a smaller bin and sorting out the stuff we will need to take with us as we go globe-trotting once again. Not very exciting, but since we leave on Thursday it had to be done.

Today I had set aside the late morning (here) to watch Syracuse play for the basketball championship. Since they got eliminated many games ago, the game will not be so important. Tonight and tomorrow, dinner and lunches with family and friends before we head out. Then farewell to Shirley, who I suspect is planning a party for Thursday night!