A Whole Week Without Boredom!

Saturday August 10th - Saturday August 17th
My Mum, Sister and I went to visit my Nan who lives in Newcastle while my Dad was in Grafton doing a work related course. We got to go in a car provided by the company Dad works for, it was a Toyota Aurion, I'd definitely recommend that car to anyone by the way.
6 hours of each Saturday was spent on the road, I love being on the road. My sister and I were in the backseat listening to music, reading, watching Skins on my ipod and playing our DS's blah blah blah. Anyway, we got to Nan's house at about 4pm on the 10th the rest of that day was spent unpacking the car and settling in.
Sunday, I admit, was kind of boring Dad left to go to Grafton and Nan went to visit Papou (he's in a home because he has Dementia) That meant Mum, Ash and I were at Nan's house on our own, with no car, for most of the day. We just sat around eating M&Ms and reading magazines and doing find-a-words.
Monday Nan decided to have a day away from Papou to spend time with us, we went to Glendale to do some shopping...a lot of shopping, I think we wore Nan out. Nan says that my Mum was born to shop and she's never seen anyone else who can spend half an hour in a shop and come out empty handed. Nan also is mind boggled by how badly behaved my sister is whilst out shopping and how hard she is to please. While shopping at Glendale we found this Japanese shop where everything in store was $2.80 and I found some letter writing sets, something I'd been looking for for months, so I was super happy with that. I also got a bunch of other stuff but my second best purchases were a suitcase thing from the reject shop, which unbeknownst to the check-out chick had 2 smaller suitcases inside it. And some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, which I'd never seen in real life before...They are divine! After shopping we all went to Darby's and ate an immense amount of pies and sausage rolls.
Tuesday Nan visited Papou again, but this time Mum dropped her off so we could use her car. Mum then took my sister and I to Nobby's beach...Yes we went to the beach (for the first time in like 6 years I might add) in Winter, Go home Australia, you are drunk. Anyway, the beach was absolutely beautiful of course. I've always said Newcastle has the most beautiful beaches in Australia. I'd take Nobby's over Bondi any day! So my sister and I took a LOT of photos. We walked around Nobby's beach for a few hours taking photos and running away from the waves until it was time to go pick Nan up. We then went op-shopping (My Nan's favourite passtime aside from garage sale-ing) it was a lot of fun, I got a bunch of old books and the Mary Poppins soundtrack on vinyl. We went to all the op-shops in Wallsend, which is a lot compared to the 2 op-shops in my town. Tuesday made me re-consider my plans to move to Melbourne, I've started thinking maybe I want to move back to Newcastle instead.
Wednesday Mum and Nan both went to visit Papou, thankfully my sister and I were given the choice to go with them or not. There's no way I would be able to handle seeing him how he is now, so Ash and I stayed at Nan's house while they were gone. We cleaned up the room we had to share while we were there, I tried to turn the TV on but it was just far too technical for me so we went out on the back verandah and I read my book while Ash did more find-a-words. That afternoon my favourite cousin, Korey came to visit for a while. He's almost 30 and has been smoking for a few years, Mum offered him a smoke while Nan was inside, he replied with "Nah, Nan doesn't know I smoke" When Nan came out my Mum proceeded to dob Korey in for smoking. It was quite funny.
Thursday Nan had another day off visiting Papou, we went shopping again. This time we went to Jesmond and Waratah, it was a pretty epic shopping expedition. My best purchases of this day were some awesome Bras (this is a big thing, it's pretty hard to find bras that I like in my size) and in this one shop I happened upon a bunch of cheap Australian post-cards to send to my penpals, and a calligraphy set :D Thursday afternoon my cousin Josh visited, bringing with him his fiance for us to meet. In my opinion she's, as my Nan would say "Not a full quid" and a bit of a bunny boiler haha...My first impression is that I don't like her much.
Friday actually followed a similar format to Tuesday, except on Friday Mum took us to Stockton beach. We walked along the break wall and saw two enormous coal ships being tugged in to the harbour, naturally I also took a bunch of photos. After watching the ships we went down to the beach itself and collected a crazy amount of shells and some driftwood, with the intention of taking them home to make wind chimes...unfortunately we ended up forgetting them when we left Nan's house on Saturday. After we had satisfactorily combed the beach it was time to pick Nan up. That afternoon Josh visited again, this time without his ditsy fiance. Josh's stepfater, my honorary Uncle also visited and then my Nan's "Bestest Friend" also popped in for a while. It was quite a chaotic and very loud and amusing afternoon. Korey and his Mum, who is my Mum's best friend were also supposed to visit, but they didn't.

So there, that's a summary of the best week I've had in years. I was very sad to leave Newcastle and very disappointed to get home to Tumut. The trip home was really good, but I could actually feel my good mood draining away as we got closer to home. On the upside though I arrived home to 6 letters from penpals so that made me very happy again for a couple of days :)