We are back from our beach holiday, filled up on sun, swimming and games of barefoot cops 'n' robbers. I've been off work for almost four weeks and have only brushed my hair twice: the last time was for a wedding just before New Year. Soy's glandular fever which has laid him low since October is just starting to abate, although it hung around long enough for him to spent much of the summer in front of the tests against India. Zac has a new cricketing hero in Michael Clarke.
And me? I had a moment last Saturday, when a long held ambition was finally realised.
Before we had kids Soy and I used to snorkel every weekend. We tried to keep up our snorkeling in the years we were parents but let's face it - there's no taking off to hours to tool about underwater when you have little ones. Especially little ones as pale as ours. But each year we have wondered would this be the one when all four of us would snorkel together? Would we be able to share our love of the underwater world with the kids this summer? Last year we snorkeled a little in Fiji - but the water was incredibly shallow and the kids never wanted to do it together.
This year, on our holiday near Currarong, I took each of the kids out snorkeling with me. Both of them are now confident in deep water, but are excellent at spotting schools of garfish or tiny iridescent squid. And on our last day we hiked out to Shell Beach near Currarong with our snorkeling gear and all four of us swam together. We saw rays, big fish, little fish, crabs on the rocks, jelly fish in the deep, acres of sea weed and lots and lots of sea urchins. I took a moment to look about at the legs of my whole family, all equally enthralled with the sea life, and know that we have reached a milestone.
