travelling

First up, let me just say that Mt Buller is unbelievably awesome. It’s a ski resort just over 3 hours away from Melbourne and it’s so awesome that I traveled 14 hours to go there and back twice in a week.

The first time I went was on Friday together with Lawrence, one of the other bloggers from the Singapore Blog Awards. We were the only 2 fanatics who went up to Mt Buller while the others went check out Great Ocean Road and Phillip Island. It was really tough to choose which tour I wanted to take but I really wanted to check out the mountain to see if it was worth the drive up with the kids.

Turns out, totally worth it.

The wonderful folks from Tourism Victoria arranged for the rental of all the equipment and a 1-hour personal snowboarding lesson. I had my first and only other snowboard experience up on Lake Tahoe 13 years ago with my brother. I fell so badly that I told myself I’d never try it again.

It’s just one of those things I was resigned to not ever be able to do, like base jumping and eating live frogs.

But since everything was arranged, I figured I’d just try it out for 15 minutes and if I sucked, I’d just go tubing or tobogganing like a kid.

The great thing about a private lesson is that you learn so much faster than going for a class. The first thing the instructor did was take me up the ski lift to snowboard down the hill. There were all these really small kids whizzing past me like pros and they made it look so easy. After 2 rounds, I could make it all the way down all on my own.

For real. I made it down this slope all by my lonesome. I fell more times than I could count but I made it down long stretches on the board. Huge achievement.

On Monday, we brought the kids up to Mt Buller for 2 days for a bit of snow play. They’ve never seen snow and they absolutely LOVED it. They had snowsuits and boots to keep them all snug and warm the whole time. Kirsten just stomped around in the snow and made snow angels, snow balls and a snowman.

Tru was more of an adrenaline junkie so he did the toboggan and skiing. After the 8th time dragging the toboggan back up the slope, he slumped over in the snow all dramatic and said “I cannot make it, I got no strength.” So the husband had to drag the toboggan up the hill with him sitting on it.

If you’re heading to Melbourne (especially with kids), you should definitely do the drive up to Mt Buller. It’s an experience they will never forget.

With my newfound snowboarding abilities, I think we’ll be doing this again next winter.

It’s day 5 for me in Melbourne and the kids finally arrived yesterday. It’s obvious that they love it here – they’ve been beaming in delight ever since they reached, even with the jet lag and all. They both happily declared that they’re staying in Melbourne with my sister and not coming back.

Traveling with kids is intense because there are so many things to look into and we’re not the most organized people in the world to begin with so there’s a fair bit of scrambling to be done. But the look on their faces makes it all worth it.

First order of business was to visit the Collingwood Children’s Farm. Right next to the farm was The Abbotsford Convent, which I presume is a real convent. I can’t be sure because we didn’t see any sisters (except mine – ok that was bad, I know) or nuns but the place did look rather convent-ish.

Within the premises was a cafe with a really nice band so we sat down for a cup of joe and some creme brulee. I’m going to have to stop eating cakes with my coffee but they always look so tempting. At the rate I’m eating cakes here, no amount of shredding is going to help me when I get back.

The Children’s Farm was very cool. It’s a real farm but they opened it up for kids (and adults) to visit and experience a bit of animal farming. And it was a total hands on experience, not the sort where you have to observe the animals from behind the fence. They got up close with goats, ducks, geese, chickens, peacocks, sheep and cows.

And this has to be my favorite picture of the day because at the precise moment the photo was taken, Kirsten turned to me and said “mommy I want to touch the lion.” I used to teach them that lions had a lot of bushy facial hair and when she saw the sheep, she was all “BUSHY FACIAL HAIR! LION!”

Today we all learnt that lions and sheep had something in common – facial hair.

We rounded off the visit with a cow-milking session. They brought out Heather to the barn and all the kids took turns helping Heather to prevent engorgement. Having gone through some engorgement myself, I know how much of a pain it can be so we all milked Heather with tremendous gusto.

Ok I didn’t actually get to touch it but my sister said it was warm and squishy and extremely therapeutic. Sort of like a stress ball, except warmer and squishier. The next time I get stressed, I’m going to milk a cow.

Have a good Monday, you guys! We’re heading up to Mt Buller this morning to make snow angels, back with more tomorrow.