Holidays are:
– Packing up vehicle and trailer, with clothes and bedding and food for three days away
– Strange holiday houses, and small too
– Six children sleeping in a room designed for two
– Different smells
– Instructions at the beach, “don’t get your shoes wet”, followed by children emerging within minutes wet to the waist (oh well, they *are* children)
– Smaller spaces to play
– No office desk, ergonomic chairs, large screens, fast Internet. Actually, no phone at all.
– New views of hills, and harbors, and heads, and water (lots of water)
– Constant watching of little children in houses with stairs
– Shrieks of delight from 3 year olds as the wave crash down and rush in
– Looks of amazement from toddlers on seeing and hearing the sea for the first time … and tentative giggles as the wave crash loudly – very loudly – down.

– Warnings to 3 year old dare devil girls that high bunks are for big boys (after they’ve climbed up and down already)
– One toilet for 9 people, rather than the normal ratio of 1:3
– Boys inventing a myriad of ways of going up and down stairs.
– Toddlers discovering “stairs” and ways of going up and down
– Nine eating dinner, squashed around a table built for four
– Secret passage ways and new hiding places in holiday homes and in places around the section
– Boys claiming that they won’t get lost on the section, even when you can see the fences from pretty much everywhere
– Dads with hairy faces, due to a failure to shave
– Long walks on hills, through grass and trees to lookout points
– Rocks thrown into the sea, from vantage points high and low

Holidays are … all too short.

We were staying at Wainui …