Busy Weekend

We are getting closer and closer to 8 am wake up time. Tina has figured out how to make it to the kitchen and fire up a pot of coffee without waking me up. Nikki and I have, in turn, learned how to ignore the noises of her moving around us to make coffee in the morning. I’m thinking we may even be able to make it to 8 am by the end of the week!
As for activities, we have been some busy folk. Both Tom and Tina dig Melbourne. I know I mentioned that before, but I can’t stress it enough. Out of all the visitors, they really appreciate the city. We may be on some corner anywhere in the city and Tina will ask “what is the name of that building?” We have been in Melbourne for 11 months... as you could guess; I do not know every building in the area. There are other times Tom may ask a question, such as: “what part of town are we in?” Then wish to God he had not asked the question because I will lay about 30 minutes of drivel on him. He just may kill me by the end of their stay!
On Saturday we hired a car and cruised on over to the Yarra Valley for some wine tasting. Nikki certainly deserved it after finishing her thesis. I drove and the three of them drank... all three had a pretty good buzz going before lunch. At lunch Tom and Tina finally sampled the delectable, delicious, delicacy that is the meat pie. They approved so no one sleeps on the balcony. After lunch, we sampled a few more wineries and cheeseries. As we were driving out of the valley we happened across a helicopter flight and Tom and I had to have a go (Tina was scared and Nikki was too cheap). What a cool ten minutes that was! The poor helicopter pilot couldn’t get a word over the little headphone thing, because I dominated the airwaves with my school girl giggling! It was incredible!
On Sunday, we went to two different art markets. Melbourne has several of them and Nikki loves them. Anyone that has gone shopping with Nikki and her mom should know the pain and fear I was experiencing as the day approached. Surprisingly, it wasn’t all that bad. The girls rolled through fairly fast. And to reward them we all gorged ourselves on piles of dessert at the cake shops in St. Kilda, and then followed that up with a lovely pizza dinner on Lygon st. with Tim and Carol. As if there wasn’t enough sugar floating around in everyone’s veins, we had some gelato after dinner and discussed the difference between tipping in Australia (only for exceptional service) and tipping in America (for EVERYTHING!).