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A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

Mahlia: LOVING the snow. We had one snowboarding lesson, and she was a natural. Daddy took her out a few more times and she picked it up so quickly. She didn't want to leave.

Leila: Leila's main aim of the trip was to make a snowman (see more photos below). She wasn't as keen on tobogganing this year, as they kept spinning around, but she settled for just sliding down on her bottom or tummy. She also enjoyed a trip up on the chair lift with daddy and a hot chocolate up the mountain.

Archer: Snowflakes on his eyelashes and icy cold cheeks, he just happily went along with all our little adventures (apart from the long drives there and back!).

Joining in with Jodi from Practising Simplicity. 

Unscheduled stop at the Big Merino

Sitting on an emu, as you do

Icicles!

View from our house

The snowman with bushy eyebrows

 Daddy found a friend when out snowboarding!

Yummy Brazilian BBQ dinner out - they served 16 different varieties of meat so Leila was in heaven!

Archer after his first toboggan ride.

Hubby thought he'd spray my with snow when we went skiing/snowboarding together. I thought we were going to crash into each other, panicked, stacked, and now have a suspected torn meniscus, hence carrying me to the car.

This happened on the day we were leaving!

We plan on making this a yearly trip. We all had so much fun.

Christmas Trip Part 2

Following on from part 1, where we left-off taking-off from Dubai and we are Gatwick-bound. This was only a 7-hour flight, but it seemed to take forever. To say I couldn't wait to get there was an understatement. My gorgeous sister was waiting, and it was like a scene from a movie—Mahlia went running into her arms and we were both crying. We had finally got there. I'd been eagerly anticipating this trip back home for long time. After a short trip back to my sister's house, Leila met 2 of her cousins and Mahlia reignited her love with Tom, her 9 year-old cousin. She followed him around and absolutely doted on him.

The following day, Christmas Eve, we took the 2-hour drive to my mum and dad's cottage with my sister and her family. We arrived just as it started to get dark. Another emotional reunion, again Mahlia ran into her Granny's arms, Leila gave her Grandpa a big cuddle before getting slightly overwhelmed. Thanks to Skype, Granny and Grandpa are regulars in our house, so the girls felt at home as soon as we got there. Mum had all the lights off, bar the Christmas tree lights, and had the house bathed in candle-light—it was magical. I was so relieved to be there, and felt 'Christmassy' for the first time in many years. I always have an overwhelming sense of homesickness at Christmas normally.

We spent the evening playing with childhood toys and catching up, before setting out the carrots for the reindeer and a mince pie and a cup of milk for Santa. The girls shared a room and excitedly went to bed.

Christmas morning started early (surprise, surprise!) and the girls came into our room to open their stockings. Mahlia was so excited—she totally got the whole concept of Christmas and Santa this year. Leila wasn't too fussed with her stocking, thanks to finding my phone (which she is annoyingly addicted to) but soon got into it!

Being in England, it was still pitch black outside (there was no white Christmas unfortunately), and we went to show Granny the stockings and the girls were allowed to open one present each from under the tree.

Once we were dressed, the girls in their new dresses from Santa, and after breakfast we opened our gifts to each other before the rest of the family arrived. Mahlia was wearing some of Granny's clip-on earrings—she loved them!

My sister and her family arrived not too long after, followed by my brother and his family. It was really special having everyone together again. After more presents and a scrummy Christmas lunch, some of us headed out for a walk to work off some of the food. Twister was played—hilarious, and very sore after.

So that was Christmas 2012—spent with my wonderful family who we miss so much.

Part 3 of the trip to follow (goodness knows how many parts there will be—we took thousands of photos... bored yet?!).

Christmas Trip Part 1

Well, it is now February and I am now getting round to writing about our Christmas. I promised a post about our trip here—we did obviously survive the jet lag and it took a good week to start to feel 'normal' again. Leila is still waking slightly earlier than before we left, but she is sleeping through the night, so I can't complain.

So, all my family are still in England (I moved to Australia in 2001). We hadn't been back since 2009 when Mahlia was just 8 months old. My dad, brother, niece and nephews had never met Leila (we last had a family get-together in 2010, where we all met in Thailand and Leila was a mere tiny bump!). So we booked our flights back for Christmas 2012. Flying long-haul with young kids will be another post!

We stopped in Dubai for 3 nights on the way over to avoid suffering jet lag over the festive period. The girls loved the hotel and the pool, and if they had it their way, they would have just stayed there rather than see the sights. But, we had other plans and dragged them out.

We stayed at The Arabian Courtyard Hotel & Spa, located in the older part of Dubai - thoroughly recommend it! The view above is of the Dubai Museum from our window.

We flew in at the ungodly hour of 5.30 am, and after a swim and a nap we headed out. First stop was the Dubai Mall—one of the largest shopping malls in the world. We visited the aquarium inside the mall, which the girls were amazed by.

We then watched the Dubai Fountains at the base of the Burj Khalifa—the tallest building in the world. The fountains are timed to music with light effects—it was pretty spectacular. Mahlia had fallen into a deeeeeep sleep by now and it took a loooong time to wake her... she was quite grumpy for the rest of the evening! Leila, on the other hand, was as happy as happy could be!

And then we made our way to the top of the Burj Khalifa, which was a waste of money in my opinion. It would probably have been better in the day time, but for the amount of time you have to queue to get up there and then back down, I definitely wouldn't do it again. Exhaustion had really caught up with Mahlia by this point and she was feeling unwell, so we managed to skip the queue on the way down (we escaped and hour wait!!). See the grumpy face below. Leila also flaked at this point.

And that was only day 1!! After a good nights sleep, we headed to the Atlantis Palm, located on the man-made Palm Islands. Mahlia's and hubby's Christmas prezzie was a dolphin encounter. Mahlia was initially very reluctant to go in, but after some coaxing/pressure she relented and enjoyed it! Leila and I watched from the beach (she was very good not running into the water).

Entry to the water park, Aquaventure, which is part of The Atlantis Palm, was included—Leila absolutely loved the slides and kids areas. Mahlia didn't. It is an awesome water park, and I don't even like water slides! Hubby took Leila down the rapids, Mahlia screamed down the rapids. Didn't get many photos here, as the camera was in a locker most of the day for obvious reasons, but I did get a photo of hubby in front of the ridiculously tall (27.5 m), long (61 m) water slide that he conquered—it goes through a shark-filled lagoon! Not a chance in hell you'd get me on that! I was not ready to take a photo of him on the slide... below is all I got as evidence that he did do it! (Wedgie?!)

Day 3 was a little less energetic—we went on a private abra (a traditional wooden boat) along the creek, and then across the creek to the gold and spice souks. Just near our hotel were the textile souks—beautiful fabrics and souvenirs... haggle, haggle, haggle!

We flew out on day 4 to Gatwick. I've just realised that we took no photos at airports or on the planes—yes, it was that constant with the girls the WHOLE time on the plane, that we didn't get a single photo. I really loved Dubai. It's easy to get around, and relatively cheap to get around as well, especially the metro. There's plenty to do for kids, and we'll definitely stop there again when the girls are older.

Part 2 here!