Weekend away

That's right! We went to Mary Poppins on the weekend and it was FANTASTIC!!! The whole cast was SO good. It was great to see Matt Lee in action after seeing him on So You Think You Can Dance. The whole performance was brilliant.

Ian got me the tickets for Christmas so we thought we'd make a weekend of it and be brave enough to leave the kids for two nights with my parents. I was apprehensive about leaving the kids for two nights as I'd only left Zoe for one night before but of course they had a wonderful time and didn't pine for us at all!

We stayed at Ben & Naomi's Friday night so we could make the most of Saturday in Melbourne rather than travelling for most of the day. First stop Saturday morning was of course Ikea! It was Ian's suggestion too by the way :) We spent a few good hours wandering around and having lunch there. Then we headed into the city, settled into the hotel, then went for a walk around Southbank.

We found lots of stalls celebrating Chinese New Year. We don't often get a chance to experience Asian culture at home, and we loved every moment of wandering around. There was so much to look at. They had performances of martial arts, many goods to look at, and oh my goodness - the food!!!

Couldn't walk past the Korean Food stand without getting something! We bought some Mandu, which is a Korean style of dumping.

It was SOOOOO good!!! The flavour took us right back to Korea.

Again, could not go past the Taiwanese stall! We were surprised to see a Taiwanese stand as it is very rare that we see their food around. We bought some 'interesting' looking shrivelled Taiwanese sausages on a stick. They were about the size of a cocktail sausage and cost $4 each!! They didn't look very appetising and I wasn't going to have one, but Ian convinced me to try it.

I am so glad I did! It was delicious!! Looks can be deceiving, even with food.

We saw so many people munching on these and we used our detective skills to track down the stall :) They are potato Twistos. They are to die for!!! (And no, I didn't have two, one was Ian's!)

After totally filling up on yummy food for afternoon tea, we certainly didn't need any tea that night! We wandered around the city before heading back to get ready for the theatre. It feels so different walking with just the two of us without little hands in ours or having to swivel your head around constantly to see if the kids have disappeared or wandered off somewhere! SO relaxing.

Chinese dragon made an appearance.

There was a bit of this happening :) (Ian's taking pictures if you can't tell!)

We had a wonderful weekend together, recharging our batteries and spending some quality time together. It didn't stop us from being eager to see the kids again! Their welcome was wonderful, with both running towards us and hanging onto us like they'd never let go. Seb said how much he missed us and Zoe said 'Mummy! Mummy! You're back!' We got lots of hugs and kisses. It was nice to see our babies again and hear about the great time they had with their grandparents.

We also came home to our neighbours front yard looking like this. We have a lake over one driveway and front nature strip, but our neighbour needs a 4WD to get to their front door. In comparison to a lot of houses though, with Mildura getting 147m of water in a few hours, this doesn't seem like much at all. So many streets are flooded and houses with water at least ankle deep. We have never seen this much water around these parts - EVER!

Thank you my wonderful, caring husband for taking me away for the weekend. I love you so much.