We just got back from our Christmas holiday, camping up at Blowering Dam, in NSW, the bottom dam in the snowy mountains river scheme. It was beautiful country side, good fun people, a lot of heat, lots of food and swimming and sleeping.

We traveled up on the 28th, a couple of days later than planned due to a funeral we attended. Haley came along for the trip and it was great having her to pick on, poor girl. We only just had enough room due to all the camping equipment, but luckily Graham and Kris had room to take our tent and camp cooking gear up with them when they went up on boxing day. Pete and Ben flew up and were there for a couple of days before having to get the plane back. Played some water volleyball… which I was on the winnning team, tried to swim to the other side of the dam… which I was rather unsuccessful at.. even with the blow up crocodile. I’m sticking to my story that it was creating drag, so it actually made it harder for me!! Laura also flew up with Pete but came back in the car with us.

Al and Lys and Nicky also drove up and it was great to have a big group. Lots of cards were played, some poker, some mongrel and lots of Rummy. Unfortunatley it wasn’t really my week, I didn’t really win anything. Got lots of sun, it got up to 47 degrees in the sun according to Al’s temperature device! ouch.

New years eve I brought some rocket engines and Al and I made some rockets to set off. Both the test ones worked awesomely, altough the second one did a big arc and caming crashing to the ground. But of course, murphy’s law, when it came midnight and we went to set off the proper big one (named affectionately ‘Apollo 12′ - as written on the side) … nothing! The thing didn’t launch, we had a dud engine! grrrrr!!

Oh well, it was fun trying different methods of getting it to launch.. ending with settting a fire under it and watching it burn… there’s always next year!

Yesterday was windy as, and our poor tent didn’t hold up to it, it bent the poles and brought our lovely tent to its knees. We ended up spending three and a half hours packing up and moving the camp site to more sheltered ground… not exactly how I’d imagined our last day, but oh well, thats camping for ya. Al and Lys were kind enough to let us camp a night in their tent. It was Millies first encounter camping, and I think she absolutely loved it. It was Bo’s first camp too, all four dogs had a ball.

Today we drove home. Back to work tomorrow.