4 Stray Katz: The coldest Perth December in 50 years!

We booked a week in Perth to coincide with the annual Christmas pageant, a huge parade through the main street which I wanted to take the kids to. Unfortunately our visit to Perth also coincided with the coldest December days they'd had in 50 years complete with storms and a lot of rain. We could handle the horrible weather but were devastated when the Christmas parade was cancelled. It was the first time they'd cancelled it in the history of the event (42 years) so we managed to be a part of two Perth records.

We still had a great week in a Perth though as we were surrounded by some great friends and we stayed in a lovely park. The caravan park had several small lakes with a heap of ducks, swans and other water birds (many with babies). They were very bold and would come right into your camp hoping for some food. The kids spent the days playing with the friends they made at Sandy Cape and some new friends from the park. We did some Christmas shopping and car and van maintenance for the first few days. We also explored a few local beaches and enjoyed the 3 resort style pools at the caravan park. On the rainy day we were very grateful for the local Bunnings who kept the kids and Daniel entertained for a few hours (they had Xmas craft, face painting and the usual indoor playground so we were set).

Our friends from Adelaide, Martin, Kelly and Alexandra, whom we'd met and spent a lot of time with on the trip were visiting Perth to collect their puppy and were another reason we had chosen the first week of December to visit the capital. On Saturday we went around to their holiday apartment to see them and meet their gorgeous puppy, Louie. We spent a lovely afternoon catching up and we were all smitten with little Louie, Rascal may be getting a friend when we get back.

We spent the next few days with them, at Kings Park (where the kids ran amok in the great playgrounds), at our caravan park (on the jumping pillow and in the swimming pool) and then on Tuesday took ourselves and our van around to their lovely holiday apartment in Cottesloe where we got to stay inside an actual HOUSE on an actual BED! What a novel experience it was. We had a great day at a local park then on the foreshore of the Swan River watching Martin windsurf before the kids crashed and we sat up eating delicious Nepalese (and a lot of chocolate that Kelly and I got on a late night run to Woollies where Kelly had to sprint into the closing store and just grab whatever she could find. As she didn't know what we would like she came out with an armload of ice creams, chocolate and biscuits, it was a seriously lovely sugar overload).

We also got to meet Santa at Perth's Christmas Place. Emilia was happy to talk to him but Jackson preferred to keep his distance. We did manage a few photos but he was pulling away ready to run to me! The kids got to make snow domes, decorate gingerbread biscuits, play in fake snow and meet some Christmas characters so it sort of made up for missing the parade.