Our Interstate Holiday for Six - Under $2500!

Now that the boys are getting older, planning family holidays is getting harder and harder.  This time we had six out of the seven of us and Matthew was definitely missed :( It was six days of beautiful Gold Coast weather (of course it rained on the last day) which was a lovely escape for the Melbourne chill.

Being forever budget conscious, I enjoy taking time to plan holidays and looking for deals to get the best price possible.  I booked our flights last year with Jetstar, making use of their price guarantee. Total cost for 6 return flights from Melbourne to the Gold Coast  $323.52.

I had a great time researching accommodation. I kept looking at deals online that would accommodate the 6 of us.  So many deals look really good until you read that they are only for two adults and two children which does not translate into any kind of deal for five adults and one child! I’m signed up for all of the “deal” emails – Groupon, Scoopon, Spreets/OurDeal etc and OurDeal is where I found our accommodation. We stayed at the Gold Coast Holiday Park in one of their beautiful two bedroom luxury villas for six nights. Included in the deal was four kid’s breakfasts, which Jacob enjoyed down by the pool each morning, four x pedal car and kayak hires and two hours hire of their tennis court.  They also put on a pancake breakfast for guests on Sunday mornings and a sausage sizzle of Tuesday nights! Total cost for the six of us $848.

Getting around on a holiday involves a people mover for us which excludes us from getting “upgrade” deals so I had to hunt around for a deals that involved extra time.  I was pretty happy with the deal I got at Budget. A Hyundai iMax for the week set me back $488.40.  Got to say, I loved driving it and it had sooooo much room!!

Of course what is a trip to the Gold Coast without a theme park visit.  We decided on Dreamworld even though we had been there before we knew that we wouldn’t have to worry about height restrictions on the rides for Jacob.  The tickets we bought are valid until November, which is good since two of the boys look like heading back up later on in the year and that’s money they won’t need to spend.  Our tickets gave us entry to Dreamworld, Whitewater World and the Skypoint Observation Deck.  Total entertainment cost $574.89

An unexpected saving was finding out I could prepay for my airport parking at Tullamarine Airport.  The cost for leaving my car parked for a week $53.86 opposed to nearly $80 if I had simply paid on the way out!

I had set myself a budget of $2500 for this holiday and ended up under budget at $2288.67 so I was pretty proud of myself. Now to look for the next deal…………….

A Secret Holiday

In September 2012, I booked flights for us to go to Queensland. Today, we finally headed off on our holiday. While my older boys knew that we were going, we kept it a secret from 8 year old Jacob. At first it was to simply save us from the constant "how much longer???" questions that none of us were willing to listen to for months on end. After a while, we decided that it would be fun to surprise him with the holiday.

He has talked about the last time we went to Queensland a lot over the last few years and reminds us in great detail about just how much fun he had and that he would love to go back. So, this morning, which was a miserable, cold Melbourne day, we headed off on what he thought was a special day trip since Zac had come home from Uni for a few days.

To see his reaction watch the video below :)

2013: The Year of Doing

I never make New Year resolutions.  As far as I’m concerned they can only go one of two ways for me. Either fail miserably or completely obsess over reaching the end goal. Instead, I have simply declared 2013 to be “The Year of Doing”. There’s no set goals other than just doing things rather than thinking or talking about doing them.
To start of our year with our first “do”, last weekend we headed off to The Royal Melbourne Zoo. I love going to the zoo and we hadn’t been since Jacob was in a pram, but we had talked about going quite a few times last year. The day wasn’t planned. I simply woke up and decided that it was a lovely day to visit the zoo, so off we went.

We all had a wonderful time and Jacob enjoyed being the leader during the day, getting to make the decisions about what to visit. For future reference, not the brightest idea I have ever had as this meant we did many laps of the zoo. Next time simply option A or B :)

This blog post would not be compete without some cute animal pics.

Spot the difference :)

One of our favourite things at the Zoo was the Keeper Kids area. here the kids can dress up as zookeepers, researchers, veterinarians and horticulturalists complete with activity area for each job.  Jacob had an absolute blast playing vet.  He bandaged tigers and kangaroos, took temps, gave medicine and checked out x-rays.  Glad we headed here last as he didn’t want to leave.

              

I think one of the reason’s we kept putting off the zoo was money, but it really wasn’t that expensive.  During school holidays, weekends and public holidays kids are FREE! It cost $26.50 each for Jeff and I (the big boys politely declined the invitation) and car parking was only $2.00 for 5 hours.  There are beautiful grassy picnic areas where you can sit to eat either food you have brought with you or bought from one of the many kiosks.
So, what have you been talking or thinking about doing but just haven’t got around to? Let me know in the comments and then try to make it happen for you and your family.

The 2012 Catch Up

As promised, here’s my 2012 catch up. I have procrastinated over the last fortnight about what to include in my catch up but I need to finish 2012 so I can move on to 2013.  It’s sad that I didn’t have enough time to blog these events individually throughout 2012 and give them their own posts but I have learnt from this and won’t let it happen again :)

The Summit August 2012

In August a group of mums headed of to The Summit for one of their “More Than A Mum” weekends.  I have never laughed and cried so much in one weekend!  A whole weekend of letting go, trusting others, letting others in and importantly for me, believing in yourself. Here are a few happy snaps from the weekend.

We had such a fantastic weekend that we’re heading back there this year!

YVMDFL Division Two Reserves Grand Final – Seville def Belgrave September 2012

I cried with pride and joy when the final siren went and Matthew had finally achieved his personal goal of winning a grand final. The look on his face says it all.

Footloose October 2012

Zachary performed in his second Panorama Theatre Company production.  The entire cast and crew of Footloose were incredible!

Happy 18th Zachary October 2012

Zachary celebrated his 18th birthday with a Chocolate Ripple cake shaped in to an 18

 

The Graduate October 2012

That’s three down and two to go! Congratulations Zachary on completing your VCE and receiving the awards for excellence in both Theatre Studies and VET Certificate lll in Acting (Screen)

Merry Christmas December 2012

Rejigging the system

Well, haven't I been absent for a while. After two years of agency night shift, I finally got a job with regular nights. You would think that would make things easier, right. I've gone from wondering all day until 6pm to find out if I have a shift to knowing exactly when I'm working and somehow have been left with less time to get things done.

My routine that I have pretty much stuck to for years and years doesn't fit in with my new working schedule and since I'm such a stubborn person and really don't like change that much I persisted in trying to make it work and all that did was leave me exhausted. When I finally gave in and realised I needed to rejig it, I had gotten myself so behind in everything that something have to give for a while so I could catch up and unfortunately that was blogging.

It has taken time to get into a new system for me and even longer for my family to readjust to it. I guess they have been so used to me being here and able to do things at the last minute, that they just didn't get it for a while that I couldn't do that anymore. A lot of the things were simple little things, like leaving notices from school to the last minute and expecting I could just deal with it. Previously, I would have gone through the bag when they came home and dealt with it then. But now two days a week when they get home I'm sound asleep and for some weird cosmic reason, these are the days that notices appear.

It took a ridiculous amount of time just to get them to pop the notices on my desk when they got home or have my hubby get them. It took even longer to get my hubby to tell me what he had taken out of the bag! It's a pain in the arse to come home from night shift to find out that one of the kids had a free dress day and needed a gold coin or they have an excursion that they either need to be there early for or picked up late from.

So six months later and we finally have a good working system happening. It's strange that only small tweaks were needed but they made such a huge impact. They were simple things like changing the day I change the linen, adding some things to the weekend, which I had previously always kept relatively free and keeping a stash of gold coins!

Over the next few days, I'm going to post a "year in review" so my blog reflects our family's year, then in the new year I will be able to add my blog into my schedule. To get back into the swing of things, I think I will look into some memes as that has previously helped me keep on track. If you're running one on your blog, let me know in the comments and I will pop over and have a look and see if it will work for me.

Footloose Flash Mob by Panorama Theatre Company

This year, Zac will be playing the part of Bickle in Panorama Theatre Company’s production of “Footloose”.  As always, we have taken him to rehearsal after rehearsal, so when we were told they would be performing a sneak preview at the Mayor’s Picnic today, I couldn’t wait. But, this is a theatre company, so this was no ordinary sneak peek.

To promote “Footloose”, the cast flash mobbed the Mayor’s Picnic at the George Pentland Botanic Gardens and it was awesome.  I just wish I had been able to get into a better position early so I didn’t end up with shaky video at the start :( 

Since I’m such a good sharer, here is the Panorama Theatre Company’s "Footloose” Flash Mob video

And, just a few more happy snaps of the day including the cast photo.

If you would like to see Panorama Theatre Company’s production of “Footloose”, tickets are available from the Frankston Arts Centre website. Hope to see you there :)

Performances dates: 
Friday 5th October 7:30pm
Saturday 6th October 7:30pm
Sunday 7th October 1:30pm
Friday 12th October 7:30pm
Saturday 13th October 1:30pm & 7:30pm