Australia 5

We woke up on Monday 14 Feb, our second full day in Australia, only slightly later than the first day. I think it was around 4:30 when Astrid woke up and pooped - in three separate installments. By the time we'd finished dealing with that, David decided to just get up. This was the first day of the conference, so David left around 7am to go to the hotel. I wasn't thinking about it being Valentine's Day, so we didn't do anything to mark that.

In the morning, the kids and I hung out in the flat and I did a little laundry - we have a nice, European washer here, so I ran a load and then hung it out on a rack on the balcony.

It was the warmest day yet (near 80F, I think), so we headed down to the beach so the kids could swim. Over the previous two days of short visits to the beach, all the kids had acquired minor sunburns on their faces, so I coated them with sunscreen. They loved being able to go in the water and the beach is very flat, so even quite far out the water only came up to between knee and waist level on them. Unfortunately, the sunscreen didn't seem to work well and it quickly became apparent that they, Freya in particular, were getting burned, so we left. We stopped for ice cream and then at a convenience store for more sunscreen and tp on the way back to the flat.

I cooked the kids some rice and chicken for dinner and we all felt right at home when I set off the smoke alarm in the flat, as that is what happens nearly 100% of the time when I broil things at home.

We had arranged for babysitting on Monday and Tuesday evenings with a babysitting service so that I could attend the icebreaker cocktail hour on Monday and the banquet on Tuesday. Anita, our babysitter, arrived at the flat at around 4:30pm and we all immediately liked her.

David and I enjoyed the cocktail hour at a restaurant on the pier (http://www.stkildapierkiosk.com.au/restaurant.html). I ate many more oysters - I think this will be my oyster vacation. We were also served delicious little lamb chops with mustard and an assortment of other heavy hors d'oeuvres. Poor Astrid had a hard time going to sleep with the babysitter, in part because I didn't give very good instructions, but the bigs had a wonderful time and were happily hearing a bedtime story when we got home at around 7pm. Anita will come again Tuesday evening so I can attend the banquet.