Tan Family Blog

Anne and the children came to visit me during the school holidays: we spent six days together in Melbourne and another three back in Brisbane. Photos here.

Oscar and Adeline could scarcely contain their excitement for the two weeks leading up to their trip. It was the first time they had travelled since mid-2008, when we returned to Australia from the United States. The children coped well during the flight down to Melbourne, thanks to a large supply of lollipops. Later that day, we attended a wedding and after that we decided to dine at a teppanyaki restaurant we were passing on the way home. We had taken the children to a teppanyaki restaurant in Rochester a few times, but they were much younger then and frightened of fire. Now, Oscar is a keen student of Japanese language and culture at school, and his interest has been stoked further by my brother's and sister's visits to Japan this year. The children really enjoyed the show and the food this time and so that will expand our options for dining out in future.

The next day, we visited Melbourne Zoo. The main attraction was the baby elephant, Mali, but it was a busy day and the queue to see her was too long. Fortunately, the children were satisfied with the other exhibits and enclosures. In anticipation of future visits (including the trip to Werribee Zoo mentioned next), we took out our third concurrent zoo annual membership.

Two days later, we travelled to the Werribee Open Range Zoo, which was if anything even better than the Melbourne Zoo, the main attraction being a "safari tour" driving through the various animal habitats. Later we dined with my boss's family; our two children kept themselves occupied with his four (older) children.

The next morning we spent at Melbourne Museum in Carlton, and the following morning at Scienceworks in Spotswood. Oscar and Adeline enjoyed the planetarium show especially and this gave me the idea of taking them outside to see the stars at night (once we returned to Brisbane). As my knowledge of astronomy is patchy at best, I downloaded the excellent open-source program Stellarium to help me identify the planets and constellations.

We had muted celebrations of Oscar's birthday: it's hard to find store-bought birthday cake when your children have egg and milk allergies! We purchased a digital camera as his birthday gift, as he is very keen on taking photos. We had dinner at a local restaurant, although he fell asleep before the meal arrived!

Our return to Brisbane was marred by two mishaps. Firstly, I left my portable hard drive on the plane. (Qantas has been unable to locate it since, so most likely some other passenger has decided to keep it. Fortunately, all of that data is backed up elsewhere and there were no personal files except for a lot of family photographs.) Secondly, it was a bad day to take a taxi home, as there had been an accident that closed the Gateway Motorway. It took about an hour to travel home in the resulting congestion.

On Sunday, Oscar obtained his swimming certificate and advancement to the next class. Consequently, although Adeline remains at the same level, they will both have their classes on Saturday morning for convenience. (Since the other two boys in her class are slackers, I expect this will be good for Adeline's continued progress.)