Saturday Night Fever

It's spring here, and everything seems to have gone into overdrive as a result. More work, more clients, more sport, more chaos. And more rain. We've been trying to get up to our favourite camping spot for Phoebe's September birthday for years, and something always goes wrong.

This year, we had to change the booking to a different weekend, then half her friends couldn't come, so we threw her a surprise party last Sunday afternoon. I only decided to do this on Wednesday, and trying to organise it with Phoebe home on school holidays and a stack of work deadlines was, um, challenging. But it happened and she pretended to be surprised (we think she'd worked it out).

Undaunted by one party, we persisted with the camping plan. We were supposed to drive up Friday afternoon, but we'd had people for dinner Wednesday and Thursday, plus I had an urgent job come in at 9pm Thursday, so we postponed to Saturday morning.

We drove up to Palm Beach. It rained. We looked at the rain. We ate egg and bacon rolls and watched miserable people getting off the ferry. We turned around, drove home and pitched the tent in the backyard. Then, in a break in the weather, we went down with all the kids to the tiny beach in our nearby park and everyone (especially the dogs) got soaked and had a great time. The girls camped in the backyard overnight without mishap (it poured) and we finally packed them up and sent them home about ten on Sunday morning.

Thank goodness she only has one birthday a year.