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[Reminder: click on any picture to enlarge.]
The last five days of the month, we spent in an aunt and uncle's beach house in Eastern View on the Great Ocean Road. Piet had been there before (in November 2008, see second paragraph), but then the weather was poor. This time Emma came along and the weather was good enough to go to the beach.
Both Piet and Emma loved the beach. Piet would walk around over the sand, splash around in the sea, give mum instructions on taking the pictures, point out little currents to dad or take in the bigger picture. The wind could be chilly, but after dressing up, Piet would continue digging up sand, dropping it in the water (the beachhouse is the house with the 'triangular' roof in the background) and facing the surf.
Equally, Emma loved to sit in the sand, eat some sand, crawl around in the sand and get so dirty with sand, that dad decided to carry her around.
The other attraction of this short break was that the beach house was fully carpeted. This makes crawling for Emma a lot easier. Piet came up with the crawling train idea: he would crawl to some part of the house and the rest of the family was supposed to follow, on hands and knees that is.
Otherwise, we had plenty of time to hang out together as a family on the sofa, on the carpet, getting our socks on, and being read the Gruffalo book with audience participation. The first night, Piet even got some great-aunt-Jo-time, who managed to read Richard Scarry in Dutch with Piet. Emma discovered that she could play the peek-a-boo game herself. Her parents are unable to remember when Piet started doing this himself - he still enjoys it - but he was certainly a lot older.
After five days on the beach, Piet and Emma enjoyed coming back home to their cars and - in superwoman outfit - their own sandpit.
