spoilt

We are being spoilt rotten this summer.

First there was our 'proper' family holiday on the Bellarine peninsula, then home for a couple of minutes days to unpack, wash and repack before the boys and I headed off to my folks' house in Queensland for 8 days. While we were away, the mister rang to say he had been asked if we'd like to house-and-dog sit for a week at a beachfront house on the other side of the bay from where we'd been earlier and seemed too good an opportunity to pass up and should he say yes?

Well, duh. I didn't even bother to unpack this time.

And so ... here we are.



Roughing it in a Mt Eliza mansion with amazing light ...

(well, ok maybe I exaggerate, but there are mansions here like you wouldn't believe, and anyway the house is significantly posher than our own)



... a bountiful garden



and a rather special attraction who likes to wake you up at five past dawn by leaping onto your bed and enthusiastically licking your face. (The boys like this bit more than I).



There have been lazy days on the beach,



(that's not me, that's someone who set up in front of me at the beach. I liked the look of her umbrella against the sky).

knitting time in the evenings in front of the biggest tv screen I've ever seen in my life,



and best of all, a gingerbread house to celebrate the newly minted teenager (Son #2).



The gingerbread house had been secretly purchased the week before Christmas and stashed away in the top of my wardrobe, ready to be majestically produced on Christmas morn. Two weeks later in Queensland I woke up at 3:00am with the stunning realisation that there was a magnificent sugary confection still sitting in my wardrobe. I rang Mr Soup and told him the whole sorry tale, which he thought hilarious; while we were still on the phone he got out the stepladder to climb up and peer into the top of the wardrobe. Miraculously the little house was unmolested by the mice and bats that reside at our place and make occasional nocturnal excursions down from the roofspace into my wardrobe (TMI?), and so it travelled to Mt Eliza (again, secretly) and became a birthday cake instead.

Suffice to say we have been blessed, and I don't dare complain that I'm sick to death of my suitcase.

Believe it or not, while writing this post, I received a text inviting us to stay at Wye River (yes, in that house, Sue!) this weekend. Good grief.