Perth: Day 4, Sunday at Fremantle

It has become a routine for the kids to jump out of bed and seek for their friends. This meant that the husband and I may or may not need to wake up when they do, which was nice. This Sunday morning, the husband woke up and hooray, was no longer in pain! He went to grab Maccas breakfast at drive-thru for everyone and while I tried to snooze, I woke up eventually as the yard was getting too noisy. The children had been fed their Maccas breakfast, and the yard was abuzz with activity as the men decided to prune the trees.

Adults hacking away the tree, little helpers waiting below

Picking up branches

And dragging them out to the collection point outside the house

I loved how such simple activities were refreshing to the children, because we do not have any garden in our home. Plus, I think the fresh cool air does wonders to everyone who feel instantly refreshed and energised to keep moving. This was definitely apparent in how the children were naturals at playing gardeners, helping to clear lots of the branches quite efficiently. After 3 hours of manual labour, we all got ready and prepared for the next half of our day.

Next up on the agenda, was to visit Fremantle on this Sunday. I had arranged to meet some friends today and arranged to meet them at different timings at Fremantle. Lunch was a rowdy affair - not just from us, but also from the place that was bustling with food smells and other patrons.

Food was in abundance (huge portions) and the chilli mussels which we ordered was not as nice as what we had on Day 1. I feel that the experience at Cicerello's is more for the ambience and a must-have since we were already at FreO. It was nice to see our friends too and the kid's highlight was probably the OD of fries plus the gelato they had post-meal.

Meeting with the Tans

After saying our goodbyes, we headed across to the beautiful park for free play.

Crossing the train tracks

They insisted on riding the ferris wheel, only to declare afterwards it was "so boring"!

The boys found their own spot to watch skaters

While the girls stayed at the playground for play... then my gf and I moved to a cafe for some tea. The catch-up was short but it was nice to see my gf's daughter for the first time. When the family visited Perth 6 years ago, I'd only seen her baby boy (then) and she'd also only seen K when she was 6 months old.

Joli and I with our children (her son did not come)

After bidding goodbye, we started to walk to the markets as part of the 'tourist must-do'. Unfortunately, we made it only as far as mid-way when the skies clouded over and it started to drizzle. The weather reports had already forecasted it would rain about 3pm, and given that it was already 4pm before it hit us and we did already enjoy a good part of the day, I was quite fine to not visit the markets after all. Just as well we made the decision because the drizzle progressed quite quickly to rain and we pretty much drove home in gloomy, wet weather.

After the past nights of cooking, we decided to buy in Nando's for the evening to keep things simple. The husbands went for a quick pint at the pub then to grab dinner and our night ended with the usual.

It has been 4 days of casual, semi-planned activities which suited me just fine. The time and stress I'd been experiencing at work had really gotten to me and by this day, I had managed to leave all the baggage behind. I felt extremely thankful that I could be spending my time so leisurely with the loves of my life, and even though we were doing pretty much daily activities, I still felt very happy. I believe that simplicity has its beauty at times, especially when things can get so overwhelming, and I'll like to end this post for the day with a family picture that we took outside a cafe in Fremantle. We didn't take many pictures (I wanted to rest than be busy snapping away always) and it's always nice to have at least a few decent ones - just look at how happy and relaxed we all look! Simple pleasures rock.

The Seahs, at Fremantle, 12 Jun 2016