“We’re not naked,” Tracey assured our kids over their protests.
“Speak for yourself,” I said even more loudly.
“DAD!!!” came a chorus from our troops.
I love, Love, LOVE when I can play them like my hollaback girls.
I’d been lying in bed reading and had decided to let Tracey in on a really good idea I’d just had.
She’d been editing photos at her computer only four meters away, but I’d decided instead of bellowing down the bus I’d quietly message her.
I typed Spoon? and pressed send, hearing it ping suggestively onto her computer screen.
Her chair scraped loudly even as her reply came back to my phone with its own cheerful ping.
I read, Fork yeah! and grinned happily.
If there’s anything more wonderful than having someone who will drop everything just to press themselves into you and sigh with the satisfaction of a truly appreciated and contented life I don’t know what it is.
But then there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know.
Case in point, I was completely in the dark how everyone in the family was at that moment on one of several of the family’s electronic devices linked to our Messenger accounts.
“I saw that,” Miss14 shouted over her shoulder from the front of the bus.
“Me too,” Miss8 added from the dinning table.
I was about to ask how they saw a Facebook message when they were supposed to be doing their Mathspace work, but things escalated too quickly.
“I know what it means,” said Miss8. Miss6 wanted details. “It means they’re going to get naked and make a baby.”
“Yay!” squealed Miss6. And then, because she’s been playing a lot of Sims4 lately, “Can they make me twins?”
Despite my attempts to fill our children with dread, Tracey assured them we weren’t naked.
“OMG, that means she checked,” said Master13, covering his ears. “Just stop talking.”
Like that was ever going to happen. Not even sleep can stop my wife from saying what’s on her mind some days.
“Spooning just means we’re going to snuggle,” she explained. “It means we’re going to hug. It’s what couples do.”
“So you’re saying I was wrong about the naked bit?” said Miss8.
Tracey assured her there were many, many layers of clothes between my skin and her own.
“Well, that’s the first bit sorted,” Miss14 said to her siblings.
“And she didn’t deny the second bit at all,” nodded Miss11 cheekily, totally catching on to the point her big sister was making. “So I wonder, does that mean Mum’s pregnant already?”
“Yay!” squealed Miss6 again, even as Tracey and I took in a lungful of air to make some noise ourselves.
“NO!” we hollered back in panicked unison.
Oh touché, kids. Touché.
Some big changes planned for this part of the bus when we stop for a bit. Hopefully it’ll be a little easier to keep clean.Check out the artwork on this beauty! Been trying to catch up with a bus buddy of mine I met online for ages. We were going to meet next week in Brisbane, but I sent him a message when we pulled up in Ballina for a few days to let him know we were on our way. “Mate,” he said when I explained we were staying at the Lakeside Holiday Park, “I’m literally seven minutes away. In fact, that place is my last job before we take off.” What are the odds?! So he pulled in beside us and I gave him a hand for a couple of days to finish fibreglassing the water park, giving it a new, bright lease of life. Fibreglassing upgrade: UNLOCKEDNot sure what I was saying here but it’s clear my kids had heard it before. We’re about to pull up back at home for six months to recoup and this family is about to take off on theirs, having just finished four years of work building their bus. Follow their adventures on Family Freedom in a BusNot by accident I’ve sat myself in front of the fancy Woolworths’ platter with the goats cheese and prosciutto and Maggie Beer quince paste. And those awesome Ob crackers which I can’t ever justify but crave so so much. This fibreglass stuff has a whiffiness which assaults your nostrils all the way back to the middle of your brain, but for once the answer to ‘what’s that awful smell?’ wasn’t me.Sorry it’s been a while since I last posted but my site wouldn’t let me upload photos. Finally got it sorted but I think you’ll agree this post would be nothing without this photo, aka The Money Shot. Tradie level UNLOCKED: Tiling. Well, handing up tiles to the guy putting them on. But I’m pretty sure not dropping and breaking them is ‘the’ key skill for tilers, so totally nailed it.“Can I have a photo for my page?” Troy asked me. “I’ll show a bit of leg,” I said. “That’ll get the punters in.”Troy LOVED my purple unicorn & rainbow tee. His exact words were, “You’re a unit.”One of the fun, free and relatively unique things to do here at Ballina’s Lakeside Holiday Park is mini-golf. Kids have played almost every day.Then there’s the huge pool where the kids & Tracey could swim and watch me work at the water park a few meters away.
Standing on the North Wall at Ballina staring back towards Ballina Head. In search of whales and dolphins. A couple of minutes walk from where we’re staying. Incredible. We saw something like six or seven whales breaching out to sea and a couple of dolphins darting around the wall – one even ‘waved’ with its tail. This is the free app we use to know when there are whales about – Wild About WhalesLittle Miss6 posing in the perfect spot to show how messy the shoes and jacket area of our bus looks if people sneak a look in. “I know you like it when I lose a tooth, Daddy, so I’ll smile with my teeth for you.”After more than a year of being dragged around the East Coast of Australia, several of our bikes are doomed to the scrap heap. Which is where they came from in the first place. Miss11’s is still going strong though.
