Our holiday in Perth!!

Hello!

We are back from our first ever family holiday!! We went to Perth WA for 8 days! Matty was going over for a kayaking race (which i went and watched him race last year!) so we thought we'd go for extra long and make a holiday as well as racing!!
I was a tad nervous in taking Liberty on the plane. I was scared that she wouldn't like it, especially that when you fly virgin, you dont get given one of those baby cot thingys, the baby has to sit on your lap the whole time!
The flight to Perth took approx 6 hours thanks to a very strong head wind! Liberty was perfect on the flight! She ate, slept, pooped and then did that all over again! We were so lucky!!!

When we arrived in Perth, it was wet and cold! Matt's friend was so kind and let us stay at his place and also gave us a car to use for the week! So kind!!!! Liberty has started sleeping through the night, she slept 9 hours and I woke up in AGONY! Yep, I had mastitis again! So the begining of the holiday wasnt good with me sick and waiting for the antibiotics to work again, I wasnt well for the first couple of days.

We ended up hiring a baby car seat, a stroller (a Jeep Liberty!!!!) and a porta cot from Perth Baby Hire, for a great cheap price!! - thanks for letting me know about this Shell!! - If anyone with a young child or baby is thinking of visiting Perth, leave your stuff at home and hire from here! They were great and the products they hired us were in awesome condition!!

On the friday we started our drive up to Northam so Matt could drop off his kayak for the weekend's race. It was still raining which was good news for matt's race! The more water, the faster the race and the bigger the rapids!!! So we decided to stop and visit some of the rapids Matt would be kayaking down on the weekend...

Matty & Liberty walking down to one of the rapids

Found it!!! Ahhh! Looks scary! (Emu Falls)

Me walking to another one of the rapids! Love this Jeep stroller, it goes anywhere!!

The water was flowing very fast!!

and another of the rapids! I dont think Liberty wants her Daddy to do the race looking at these scary rapids

Liberty and I walking along one of the tracks!

So, the race started on the Saturday! We only JUST made it to the race before the start! We didnt time manage the fact that we have a 2 and 1/2 month old! lol! At least we got there! Liberty and I watched Matty take off at the start, and then walked the long walk back to the car. Liberty wanted a feed so I was sitting in the car feeding her..... all of a sudden.... Matt comes running up!! What the?!! He broke his paddle on the first rapid only 100 meters into the race - sh*t! So he took his spare paddle and off he went (about 15minutes behind now).
I drove down to one of the rapids and waited for Matt to paddle past! I unfortunately couldnt get a photo of him taking the rapid as they are very popular and crowded with people, and with a big stroller I wasnt able to stand too close on the bank near the rapid! But I got one of him in the flat water...

I needed to be like this man, to get a good shot of the rapids!!!

The Avon Descent race will be shown on Channel 10 during the day sometime on August 16, 2008.

These following photos were taken after day one of racing...

On day two, we managed our time a lot better!! And off Matty went! A few hours into the race I got a phone call.... Matty had fallen out of his kayak on one of the rapids. He grabbed his boat, then let go of it to get his paddle... then went to get the boat, but it was too late... the current had got hold of it! He found it wrapped around a tree in the water, split in half (so much for the brand new $15oo kayak!!). Luckily Matt was okay and thats the most important part!!! However, he was (and still is) very disappointed not to have finished the race.

We stayed in this lovely little town - Toodyay - on the friday and saturday night!

This was taken from the car.. the yellow is a field of flowers - Beautiful!!

After the weekend... we were so lucky to have beautiful weather!! It was even warming up a little!! On wednesday it was 20 degrees!!! yay!
So, on monday we decided to take a trip down to Freemantle and had a walk around there. I love all the old buildings, and history of Freemantle

We also went back to stay at Matt's friends apartment! He actually left for NZ over the weekend so we had his house to ourselves, it was so nice of him to let us stay!! Its in the nicest location! About 20 minutes drive out of the Perth CBD in Scarborough right on the beach!!!Look at the view from his apartment!!!

It was so nice to watch the sunset each evening from the loungeroom!!!

Look at the sunset this day... it looks like the Aboriginal Flag!

On Tuesday we went to visit a little surburb of Perth called Guildford, it was so so pretty there! (no photos though) and we also went into Perth to visit this thingy... It the Perth Bell Tower..

We had a greta holiday together!!! And Liberty was an angel on the flight home too!! We are very lucky!! She is now chatting and smiling all the time, very cute and entertaining for us!
Today we took her in to have her immunisations, poor little thing, she's been very grizzly this afternoon, and is sleeping a fair bit, so im able to blog inbetween loads of washing!!!

One more piccie of Liberty...

Xx Jess