holidays * part two

Part two of our annual holiday roadtrip entails camping on the Central Coast.

Our camping days started way back on my husband's bucks weekend (17 years ago). Mr Flowerpress' brother in laws and friends took him camping at the National Park campsite down the hill from his parents' house.

Mr F is the youngest of four kids, and a few months later all four siblings and their families came together to camp at this park situated on the most beautiful beach. Some of us were kid free in those days!

From there it quickly became an annual tradition, and every year since then we have camped together.

It gives our families who live in different parts of the state a chance to come together and time to catch up on all that's happening in our lives. Mixed in are friend's families who came to camp one year and just kept coming back.

We swim together, we cook together, we walk together, we laugh together and we live together.

There's no housework, no school, no work, no tv. There are waves and stars and bush turkeys and trees.

Some years it rains, some years its hot. Last year they shut the park to daytrippers when it hit 46 degrees. Another year we celebrated Miss A's birthday under a flooded tarp after a week of solid rain. A small tent collapsed under the weight of the deluge while we were singing Happy Birthday. You have to laugh!

One year I camped while six months pregnant with twins and well, this year those twins are going into high school.

I think it really hit us this year how long we've continued this tradition. We understood again how blessed we are for this special escape and company. And we celebrated that the big kids with lives of their own are still coming back to camp and still dreaming of this magic place.

I really hope I'm camping in another 17 years.

p.s. yes that is beer on tap, peroni actually, courtesy of an a b-i-l who was a publican for a while. And pps, pretty beach is on the bay, but still quite a pretty beach!