Tom and Katie Down Under: A sunny weekend in Canberra...

Despite being Australia's capital, Canberra is not a place that many tourists (or Australians for that matter) tend to visit. Tom and I have a particular love for the place however, and as a result we've just made our third trip in three years, the most recent being our first as a family of three. We were there for three days and... erm.. ok that's enough with the 'three' theme.

Before I start typing about why we go to Canberra, I thought I'd check if I've blogged about it before... and it turns out I have. Back in 2012 I wrote, 'A weekend in Canberra: Part One'. My apologies if you've been on tenterhooks for Part Two, because it appears I never wrote it... I also didn't blog our 2013 visit, but I'm back in force with a summary of our weekend in Canberra, 2014.

Quick recap on why we repeatedly visit Canberra:
- the Western Bulldogs play one game there each season; and
- it is home to my dear friend Christie...

.. and this year we also went as a 'practice' flight for Sienna before we make the long trip back to the UK in May.

The good news is that Sienna was an absolute angel on the plane. We were in the air for all of 30 minutes. She now just needs to replicate that behaviour for 48 times as a long, and we will be ok for our 24-hour flight to the UK!

It was wonderful for Christie and I to get together with our families. Last April we spent a weekend together in Melbourne and both of us were pregnant - she was 30 weeks and I was still a secretive 10 weeks along. Now she has 8 month old Fred (brother to Eliza, nearly 5), and I have Sienna, nearly 6 months.

We share a love of our babies, a passion for photography, and the pain of sleepless nights. She is a very talented photographer and shot my pregnancy announcement for me (click here for that post). During this trip she did some family photos for us which I will share in due course, and I snapped away throughout the weekend to capture some memories.

Tom and Michael, Christie's husband, did the manly thing and watched the Bulldogs storm to victory. Then they kindly spent Saturday night watching their respective broods so that Christie and I could go out for pizza. It was my first evening away from Sienna, and I was all of two floors away in our hotel restaurant!

Here's some photos from our little mini adventure...