A trip to Australia - Armidale

Now that we had put Daddy safely on the plane back to China, we headed north to where Mummy grew up. From Sydney it is a long drive and both children were quite good for the majority of the drive...but those last couple of hours...the less said the better!

We had plenty to do at Grandie and Poppie's including gardening, surfing sand, decorating their Christmas tree, celebrating a belated first birthday at Dorrigo with extended family, and visiting a friendly wombat. Oh, and planting Sebastien's special tree to go with Alex's tree we'd planted almost 3 years ago.

I was under the impression that I had many more photos - but as I didn't have our camera and was kindly lent Grandie's - they must be located on a computer somewhere else. But of the photos that I do have:

Here is Grandie getting into the swing of things, using the pick to dig out rocks so Sebastien's tree can be planted.Alex learned that it is important to put a full bucket of water into the new hole so that the tree has a chance to drink and establish its root system.
Then Alex helped Grandie fill in the dirt around the tree and helped to water it (I'm sure Grandie or Poppie will add in the comments what type of tree it was that was planted).Poppie helped hammer in the stake to mark where the tree was - don't want any accidents when the lawn is being mown! He has years of experience skinning knuckles doing this in many gardens over the 5 acres of their property - so by now he knows the best way to do it without skinning your knuckles!Sebastien had been held back, out of the way of flying picks, shovels and buckets of water, and it was now his turn to get in on things (after all, it was his tree) and help "push in" the stake - nice helping big sister!
Alex was curious (and so was I) about her tree and how big it had grown. So we walked down the slope to see it. It is well over her head now! Alex decided to give her tree a drink of water though she needs to learn that you water it at the trunk, not the leaves.
Then we were heading off back down through Sydney on our way to Canberra. We were going to stay with Aunty Kylie in her new apartment. But first, we needed to recover from all that hard outside physical labour!