Last Thursday we woke up to a beautiful, sunny day. The forecast showed rain was going to move in on Friday morning and make for a very wet weekend. We decided that we would make the most of our sunny day on Thursday and spend it all outside.
We headed out to the St. Kilda neighborhood in Melbourne around lunchtime in search of a good spot to grab something to eat. We stumbled upon a hole in the wall that ended up being a great find! It was little taphouse called The Local that had a great rooftop garden and is apparently one of Australia’s most awarded craft beer venues. Lucky us…as if we really needed an excuse to grab a pint with our lunch! Their fish and chips were amazing and we may have done some lunchtime learning with a few science experiments that revolved around our pints. Hey, it involved volume, measuring and evaporation so that counts right?
After lunch, we decided we would wander over to the St. Kilda Botanical Gardens. We decided to stay awhile and found a sunny spot on the lawn where we proceeded to spend the next 4 hours or so reading, napping and playing. By “napping”, I basically mean Matt attempted to nap and got a solid 2-3 minutes in before Jack ran and jumped on him and started a wrestling match! The two of them also had loads of fun throwing around a rugby ball that Jack’s new friend, Daisy, let him borrow. Matt tried to explain rugby to Jack, but it quickly turned into Jack just wanting to run routes and play American football with the rugby ball.
One of my favorite things about this trip so far has been the lack of schedule and the beautiful absence of demands on our time. We’re slowly detoxing from our former life, which was very schedule driven, with two working parents in the tech industry and a 7-year-old involved in lots of activities. I used to start my day looking at my calendar, scouting out which conference calls I had and determining what I’d need to get done to prepare for my day and figuring out any Jack-related logistics with Matt. I haven’t looked at my calendar once since I’ve been here, which is both odd and awesome at the same time.
Obviously you don’t have to travel halfway around the world to spend a day at the park, but there was something really different about it with no limits on our time. Nobody was distracted or thinking about what was coming up later. I was thinking if we’d done the same thing back home, it would have probably been much more “planned”…at the very least, I’m sure there would have been a blanket and snacks involved! And it likely would have been time bound by some other commitment or activity. So while we have these days, I will relish them, appreciate them and soak up every last minute! At the end of the day, we had one happy kid…dirty knees and all.
The Detour Diary 
Love the boy with those dirty knees and that picture of him!
LikeLiked by 1 person