Day 56: Cairns Coconut-Day 2

In writing this block I generally do a brief summary of the days events, highlighting the key activities and occurrences. I write the blog knowing that it enables friends and family to track where we are and how or what we are doing, but my primary motivation in writing is to remind us of our holiday of a lifetime, a memory jogger of all the adventures we are experiencing.

Saying that, today's blog will be a little more detailed. We didn't do much today, but the detail will be necessary to fully capture the essence of the day.

The day started like any other when we don't have to rise from our slumber early to pack up and set a path for our next destination.

I was up at about 7am to do washing, Darren was enjoying a rest whilst the kids were still asleep as not only is he exhausted from travelling so much but he unfortunately experienced a sleepless night.

Our site, whilst lovely, is situated under a beautiful big tree that the bats just love to inhabit during their evening escapades. I slept through all of the raucous but Darren was awake from 3am listening to it. He even went for a walk to try and tire himself out but to no avail.

His morning rest didn't last long though, by the time I got back from putting washing on Ethan was up and in bed with his Dad. Brandon soon followed.

Bacon and egg rolls were the order for breakfast so I set about cooking up a storm.

After breakfast Darren volunteered to clean up while I took the kids to a snorkeling lesson run by a local cruise company. Micaela and Ethan are pretty adept at snorkeling but appreciated the extra tips they received, whilst Brandon seemed to benefit quite a bit. Whether it is just due to him being a bit older now I'm not sure, but he is more confident and capable than he was when he last used his snorkel.

After the lesson the kids enjoyed a bit more of a swim before getting changed out of their swimmers to ride bikes and play on the playground.

When I returned to the van, Darren was getting ready to wash the car but was sweating profusely so decided to go for a swim first. Now for Darren to initiate a swim he must have been hot.

The kids came back just in time so they returned their clothing to swimmers and we ventured our way to the pool.

After swimming for a while the kids decided they wanted to go to the water park. Darren hadn't seen it properly yet so to the water park we went.

The kids had as much fun as yesterday playing on it but this time Darren and I joined in the fun. We ran under the water spurts and slid down the slides like little kids. We even raced to the drop zone to be in position to be drenched by the tipping pineapple. We had fun and we didn't care how silly we looked. Our children enjoyed their parents being big kids too, they didn't even complain when we said it was time to go back for lunch, I guess 3 hours or so of swimming was sufficient.

The remainder of the day was spent at the van either reading, watching a movie or playing games. Originally the kids had wanted to go to the jumping pillow after lunch, but they forgot about that.

Mid way through our lazy arvo, Micaela and I walked to the shop to buy treats for everyone.

Darren did finally get back to washing the car, at 5pm once the sun was setting and the temperature had dropped a bit.