Buy bananas…
Clean up after linen party….
Pick up Small Child and friend for swimming…
Book tickets for 12 on P&O Cruise around New Zealand….
Yay! We’ve gotten the gang together (finally on the same page after a little wailing and gnashing of teeth) for the
Second Not-So-Annual Cross Family Cruise Holiday!!!
We last went cruising with the Family in January 2006 – and by "Family" I mean…
My Mum and Dad
Mr K, Myself and Small Child
BigSal, Surly and Fishy-Bob.
LittleSis, Noisy BroInLaw and B1 and B2
Unc and SpiderMeg
and Poppa II of course.
We did a trip that went through the South Pacific to Vanuatu, New Caledonia etc. which was quite a departure from our usual style of family holidays. We used to be the 4WDing, National Park hopping, camping, bush walking, cooking over an open fire sort of family holiday people.
But when my Dad became wheelchair bound (from MND) we had to take a massive departure from our regular holiday program and do something that I never in my life thought I’d see my parents want to do… take a holiday on a cruise ship. The very idea of it seemed so off the planet for people who’ve put over 400,000kms on two very sturdy 4WDs over 40 years of camping holidays around Australia that I think my Dad shocked us all into agreeing to go! It probably didn’t hurt that he had decided to shout everyone’s the cost of their passage either! I found out later that it was a deliberate ploy on my Dad’s part… he’d tried several times to negotiate family trips and always one or more of us would end up going into work or taking laptops along to get some work done and he kinda figured if we were all stuck on the boat with no decent internet connection then he’d have our undivided attention…. and it worked a treat.
We had a huge time. The best thing about it? Being able to sit down to dinner every night with the extended family … all 14 of us (until we figured out we could feed the rug rats early and send them off to the kids play center and have nice adult dinners) without any of us having to cook, serve or clean up. It was fantastic – all fun conversation and no work! So here we are planning ahead and booking to do it all again in December 2009 – booking this far in advance gave us 2 for 1 prices which is great too. Just hope my back is up to it by then.
Shame Dad won’t be there with us next time… but I think he’d approve of our efforts.
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