Wednesday 13th Jan

We had to check out by 10am and I was in a really bad mood as I hadn't slept much at all. We did our usual of grabbing breakfast and packed up some lunch rolls and got on the road by 10.30am to head to Sara's in Umina. I drove and it ended up taking us around 2 and a half hours after we'd stopped off a few times. On our arrival, Lauren had left us instructions on how to get in as they were both out at work, so we got sorted and shortly after Lauren came home.

We all set off for a walk to the beach which was beautiful and not too busy, and after an hour of lying down walked to a margarita cocktail bar on the beach to have a drink before getting some food and prosecco in for the evening. Sara's was a lovely little place all on one level will a well looked after garden and her cute kitty, Cleo, who loved attention. We cooked fajitas for when Sara arrive home from work and managed to get our laundry done. After a lot of giggling girly chat and showing the girls our campervan which consisted of us getting soaked by Sara's garden sprinklers in the dark, we made it into bed for a reasonable 11pm.

Thursday 14th Jan

Being thankful for their hospitality I waved both of the girls off to work in the morning whilst Lisa still slept. We managed to pack up and said goodbye to Cleo and after stopping off eating our cereal at a petrol station garage and to get a subway takeaway for lunch, we began the (what was meant to be 3 and a half hour) journey to see Jess in Port Macquarie. Lisa drove first and I took over half way through, we kept making the mistake of stopping off too soon for rest breaks and then seeing the right turn off afterwards. At one point we ended up in a weird town when we should have stayed on for a couple of kilometres more for a subway. After a trip that took 5 hours, we finally made it to Jess's.

Jess was at work so her parents, Debbie and David showed us in and had kindly had prepared us separate double bedrooms for us to sleep in so we could each sprawl out. They popped out and we chilled by Jess's pool area and admired (the again one story) huge beautiful home. We had a nice chat to the parents when they came home with a cup of tea and David's favourite Timtam chocolate biscuits (like our version of the penguin).

Jess got back and we packed a picnic basket of cheese and crackers, picked up some wine and picked up her work friend Matt, and went and sat on the grass up at the lighthouse, chatting and watching lightening as a storm was coming in. Afterwards, We dropped Matt back home and went onto another friends house where they cooked dinner for a big group of friends, something they rotate with every other week called 'Fat Thursday'. All of her friends were now coupled up and two of them had brought their youngest son, 10 month old Max, who was really cute and we were playing with at the table. By the time the courses were finished we went home and climbed straight into bed - I was happy to be able to stretch out and the bedroom made me feel like being at home.

xxx