aka R’acquel

A long time since I’ve been in blog world. Our whole family has experienced great relief since we made the decision to pull Aidan out of school and take up the direction of homeschooling as the alternative for our son’s education. The weeks leading up to this decision were acutely stressful for Mitch & myself, Aidan included. The school wasn’t able to manage things well. My maternal instincts were screaming out loud within the second week of school, but i’m glad that bulk of the nausea I endured throughout it all is greatly over for now.

We opted to schedule a break for much needed rest & relaxation over at the Werriberri Lodge in the Megalong Valley, which is about a 20 minute drive from our place. According to the documentation at the lodge, Werriberri was the name of the last Aboriginal chief of a tribe that was located in this area.

This place is known as our ‘home away from home’. We even had the same cabin as last time, No.4. The Smith’s have conglomerated at this place for weddings, funerals in the past. After this adventure - for ‘everything else’ as well, so I couldn’t help but have that Weddings/Funerals & Everything movie run through my head every now at then during out stay there.

As usual with any getaway, I always have to do a toilet review first for Newtown Mums (because this kind of information is very important to them).

This toilet, was impressively sealed for our protection. From what? Boogie Monsters? I still don’t know.

A very b-grade performance on the presentation of the toilet paper, which didn’t come with a neat triangle fold and it was also going ‘under’ instead of over. I wasn’t too disappointed by this at all, because it is budget accommodation after all – but it would have been very problematic if I faced something like this in an expensive 5 star hotel.

The most unusual presentation of the mini-shampoos I’ve ever come across to date, but the bottles were very nicely branded.

I’ve always loved the design of these cabins because it’s a very efficient use of space which can accommodate 6 people with one double bed in the master bedroom,

and 4 bunk beds in the other bedroom.

It gets very cold in this area at night, Mitch turns into an axeman by the shed to help gather the firewood.

Aidan gets busy riding his bike called “Huffy” in the name of exercise amidst oodles of fresh air to get the cheeks all red & rosy. Lots of great bike-riding tracks in this area. I can’t believe it’s been a whole decade since i rode my first-ever 2-wheeled bike off the edge of a small cliff in the more daring drik-bike tracks of this area.

I get distracted by the local flower.

Aidan starts multi-tasking with Huffy by helping to carry the firewood back to the cabin.

Most of our time indoors was spent playing with the open fireplace and telling stories.

Too busy relaxing to take any photos of the delicious home-cooked meals I enjoyed making away-from-home, but that is a left-over plate of chicken schnitzel on the coffee table! For breakfast, we enjoyed grilled bacon with eggs, char-grilled cherry tomatos & home-made pancakes.

Landscape shot from the base of the Megalong Valley – there’s obviously many wonderful look-outs from the cliff tops that looks down into this area. Very fortunate to have lovely weather during our stay.

Father & son go in search for the horses, which made me think of Mrs.Lifecruiser’s childhood!

Saying hello to the local donkey. It was wonderful to see Aidan so happy & peaceful, glowing from the inside.

He was glowing even more when he finally got to ride the horse who’s name was “Hound”.

Going “solo” – it was amazing to see him so happy. He had another turn riding the horse known as “Coin” the next day. We’re hoping to make horse riding lessons as regular feature in Aidan’s life – something for him to master in an area which his parents are completely clueless.

Ah yes, the final dishwashing detergent review. A classic 1-2 star, predictably – very heavily “diluted” with water, so you need to use even more in order to clean the dishes up!

Looking forward to doing this sometime next month to “get away” again. Will be sure to go on a bush walk to check out the waterfall/creek for the next round and i’ll get more snappy with the camera when it comes to the food!