Extremely Proud and Incredibly Tired

I've just come back from a short holiday down south. We spent time with my sister and then with friends at a holiday house in Preston Beach, a sleepy little beach town. Even though it is the middle of winter, we spent most of the time outside and the kids even had a swim at the beach, because they are kids and kids are a bit crazy like that. When we weren't at the beach we were busy with fire.

Reflecting back, the whole holiday pretty much revolved around fire. We were either collecting firewood or tending the fire. As we sat around the fire from morning until we all went to bed (because we had run out of wood), we mainly talked about the fire: what a great fire it was, where to place the next branch, what a great fire it was, how our wood stash was going, what a great fire it was and so on. I took 20 photos while we were away, 12 of them are of fire.

What was particularly nice about this holiday is that we felt that the kids could safely go and explore like I remember doing as a child. They came home when they were hungry, they walked to the deli (about six times a day), they climbed trees and played every version of hide and seek and chasey ever invented. They watched each other's backs and no man was left behind. Dead animals were discovered and given burials, pig mellon fields were harvested and old skeletons were collected.

Holidays like this are so rare for kids now days. Last year we went to Bali five times because I had forgotten that kids can have just as much fun staying in a simple beach shack and exploring in the bush.

It was an exhausting, but fun time, so now you know why I am incredibly tired. The reason I am incredibly proud is that an opinion piece I wrote for the West Australian Newspaper was published on Monday. My friend and I are doing all we can to get dyslexia recognised as a learning disabilty in Western Australia and the response to the article was great, I have a number of phone calls to return tomorrow and we have been asked to speak to a Rotary group about the issue, I feel like this could be the beginning of something. I'm incredibly hopeful that it will be, also incredibly tired...