Now That's More Like It!

This trip is finally starting to go the way I had imagined it! Before we arrived I had dreams that once a month we'd be off on a weekend trip to explore a new city.  As funds have been tight, that hasn't really happened.  But next month I will be making up for it!

Yesterday I booked a long weekend trip for Joel and I to the Whitsunday Islands at the end of July.  These islands are supposed to have to most beautiful beaches in the country (and rank in the world's top too) and have been highly recommended by everyone who's ever been to Oz.  I got a wicked deal online, so I thought we'd go for it while we're still up in Queensland.

Next week my parents are here!  They'll be up on the Gold Coast with us for under a week, then we're all flying down to Adelaide, which is on the southern coast.  We'll check out the city and do a winery tour (this is where a tons of Aussie wineries are located), then drive the famous Great Ocean Road (a highway along the coast) to Melbourne.  Should be an interesting road trip!

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself, I haven't felt homesick once this month!  When we were debating  about getting longer stay visas I was so stressed that I couldn't enjoy my time here, but now that there is a return date in sight I have a totally different outlook on things.  I feel more confidant about life now, especially my work.  I'm starting to like and appreciate Australia alot more and just enjoy every small moment, like being able to walk to the beach whenever I please and having a winter without snow! 

I found this great quote today which I think really applies to the adventure I'm on.  (I wish I had this a few months ago when I was regretting being here.)

I've been doing so much research on all the amazing things to see and do in Australia that it makes me wonder why so many Aussies haven't traveled around their own country to see these places.  I had a chat with my boss about this and she said that Canadians are probably the same, and would pick visiting the treasures of another country rather then our own. This is so true!  Now this has got me on a kick on researching Canada's sights to see how many I've been to.  I've seen almost all the main "tourist" places in the west (including alot of the "world's largest"- shout out to Dewey), but nothing further east then Ottawa/Gatineau.  Maybe my next trip will be in my own backyard to check out what my amazing country has to offer?

Sunshine!

The rain, wind and clouds we've been getting have finally moved on and we have some beautiful sunshine!  Yesterday I went and sat at the beach to enjoy it (I haven't been for a month!) and it felt so good to feel the sun on my skin and hear the waves crashing in.  The water is still quite rough and not as clear due to the wind we did have last week, but the beach is still pretty nice.  I have to do my best to enjoy living so close to such a beautiful place.  Funny, I thought I'd go there everyday, but the novelty has sort of worn off.  Today I intended on going out for a walk to enjoy the sun, but ended up spending all afternoon on skype with Baby Sister and Merissa.  Oh well, I enjoyed the catch ups.

I got myself a new side gig!  I overheard one of the clients at the salon saying she needed a baby sitter for her girls so I told her I'd be interested.  I went on Friday night for a few hours test and the girls loved me, so I hope I'll get to go back again.  This was my first time in a real Australian home.  So far I've only been in little apartments, so it was cool to see how a real family lives.  There kitchen made me miss the beautiful kitchen we had back home!  Oh, to have a normal sized fridge again.

My parents arrive in Oz in eighteen days!  I'm really excited, I have a countdown going lol.  They're going to spend under a week up here on the Gold Coast to see where we've been living, then we get to do some travel!  I'm so excited to finally get to see another part of the country.  We'll be flying down to Adelaide, which is in the south, and will get to check out the city and the famous wineries nearby, then drive the famed Great Ocean Road to Melbourne.  Hopefully we'll have some time in Melbourne to check out the job scene, as we are planning on moving down there towards the end of August.

I'm also counting the days till we move.  The Gold Coast is a beautiful place, but it is just not home to me.  It's one of those places that's cool for a week or so on vacation, but not to live.  Joel loves it here (mainly for the golf I think) and I am so glad he is willing to move to another city for me!  Joel's legal last day at Audi is Aug 21 (on our current visa we can only work for a maximum of six months for one employer), so we will be packing and cleaning up the apartment that week and heading south to Melbourne!  

Since deciding we are for sure coming home at the end of our year's stay, this huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.  I don't feel so homesick or sad now because I know there is an end in sight.  I always thought I wanted to leave Canada, but now that I have I realize it's a pretty awesome place to be! (aside from the horrible winter weather, but that's why there are all-inclusive vacations!)  Now I'm going to do my best to enjoy every day here and all that Australia has to offer.  I made a list of all the places in Oz that I'd like to see, so I hope our wallets allow us to get to them all!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Love you lots.

(Apple strudel isn't popular on the Gold Coast so I went for the Danish).

Scrapbook Overload

OK, as promised, here are more layouts from my SMASH book!  (Like ALOT of layouts, so if you're not a scrapper you may want to skip this post).

Coming to Oz I knew I'd be limited on what I could bring with me.  I picked up two SMASH books, (which are basically like journals with patterned paper), two 6x6 My Minds Eye paper packs, a bunch of Authentique and Glitz mini alphas, some Kaiser bling, and a few of my favorite leftover scraps.   I also brought my paper trimmer and some adhesive.  All the supplies fit in a large Ziploc bag.  I was lucky enough to get some goodies sent from Jill and Chantel at TM, and I picked up a few more alphas and mini paper packs from the one decent scrapbook store I found here, but I've been doing my best to work with what I have.  I was worried my two books wouldn't be enough, but I think they'll be fine.  I'm at month four and still have a quarter of book one left to fill.

So here we go!  Months one through four of scrapping down under.  I didn't include all my page, because that would be an even longer post!

 

  

I saw this Month In Numbers idea on Ginger's blog and fell in love!  I thought that would be a great thing to incorporate each month to record the little things that didn't merit their own page.

 

 

I really love these books!  The odd page has print that's a bit too crazy to work with, but I've gotten creative and found ways to cover them up.  There is a back pocket at the end where I plan on sticking all the mail I've received. 

 I hope these books will be a positive keepsake and memory of our big adventure to look back on.

Rain, Rain and More Rain

Queensland is supposed to be the Sunshine State, what's wrong with the weather!  It was so windy and wet today.  Seems like most of the country is this way.  Lovely way to end a long weekend.

Joel still was up bright and early to golf.  He said he golfed so bad due to the crappy weather conditions that he stopped counting his scores.  He never does this, so it was a really bad day on the course.

I stayed in and did the only thing I could think of to kill some time.  Cleaned the house from top to bottom and got all the laundry done.   Tomorrow's mission- reorganizing the closet.  I need to put away some of the really summery things and bring out some jeans for all this wet weather.

I did a great workout (I moved up to a harder series last week and have so far followed it to a tee!) and now am hoping that will help me have a better sleep then I did last night.  I'm working on the Debbie Siebers Slim Series and they are awesome!  I bought them just before coming to Oz, so I didn't get a chance to fully get into them till now.  I always like having lots of workout videos, because I get bored of the same one day after day.

This evening I caught up on some scrapbooking.  I didn't really have many pics to scrap, as the last month wasn't that exciting for us.  I realize it's been a LONG time since I posted any of my pages.  I'm ready to fall asleep now, but I promise I will post some tomorrow!  And update my 365 blog...

A Foggy Trip to Nimbin

Today we took a drive about two hours south to Nimbin.  This is a small village in NSW that was highly recommended as something to see by many of our friends.

It was a grey cloudy day.  Melba took us through the back roads, which was actually pretty cool.  We drove through clouds and fog up into the mountains on some really curvy roads.  Views were awesome, and on a sunny day I can only imagine how much more amazing they'd be.  Every other car that we passed was a Subaru, so the drive became the Subaru Safari.  We were both pretty impressed with how well Brutis held up on some of the tight corners and steep inclines on the drive!

Nimbin is a weird, hippy town with a population of 350.  It became popular in 1973 when the Aquarius Festival brought in a bunch of free-spirited Uni students seeking an "alternative" lifestyle.  Nimbin is also famous for it's yearly Mardi Grass Festival.  There's not really much to see here, just the main street of "local" goods.  Most visitors create their own adventure, if you catch my drift.  We saw some real Bogans chilling and dancing in the street. 

Check out the Rasta man in the bottom right of this picture.  Wonder how he ended up here? 

There was a free museum, where we met some more special people.  It was a "living" museum, which meant there was real foliage and spiders inside.

After walking the main strip and checking out the museum, we had lunch and headed home.  I was pretty happy to get out of here and get back to the city, but it was good to go on a road trip and check out something new.  I feel like more of a traveler now, as we haven't checked many new areas lately.

Looks like the rest of the weekend will be rainy.  Tomorrow is a public holiday here in Queensland, the Queen's Birthday.  I don't know why it's called this, as her birthday is actually in April.  It must have something to do with her coronation date, however every other Commonwealth country celebrated it last Monday.  Queensland is a backwards place most days.

The Q1 Skypoint

Yesterday afternoon after golf Joel and I headed to the Q1 building and took the elevator up to the Skypoint Observation Deck.  At 78 stories high, the Q1 is the highest residential building in the world.  It is taller the Chrysler Building in NYC.

Even though it was a cloudy day, we had some amazing views of the Gold Coast.  I knew there were lots of waterways, but didn't realize HOW many until we were up here.  There are nine times more canals on the Gold Coast then in Venice!

 Look Dewey, I wasn't scared of heights!

 Look at that loser car down there!, Oh, it's Brutis!

 You can actually climb the top of the tower.  Lucky for us there was a group going up there!  They are latched onto the rails for safety.

 We enjoyed champagne and snacks at the little cafe.  The sun decided to come out so we got to see the coast at sunset, which is the most popular time to view (cue hundreds of Asians).

 

The top of the tower has a ring of lights going around it.  It's usually a different color each night.  (Sorry for the crappy picture, Joel was photoed out here!)

Master Chef?

Here's something you don't see too often- me cooking! (and wearing my glasses).

I decided that since I have so much free time here, I'm going to attempt to cook one meal a week.  I was flipping through pinterest (you can follow me here) and saw some interesting recipes and thought, I can try that.  For my first attempt I thought I'd make something easy that didn't require spending a lot of money on ingredients.  I saw this penne with asparagus and balsamic butter and decided it was the one!  All I needed to buy was the asparagus, shredded parm and balsamic vinegar.  I walked over to Coles for some sunshine and picked up my ingredients for under ten dollars.  (I also needed a little bit of brown sugar, so swiped some from a coffee shop!  Thrifty thinking.)  I started cooking about ten minutes before Joel got home, and he was happy to have such a nice surprise to come home to after a tough day at work.  All in all my cooking turned out pretty good!  Joel loved it and said he'd eat this dish again.  (He's a tough critic.  Last time I cooked for him he said never to do it again).  I overcooked the asparagus a little and had some trouble reducing the vinegar, but I was pretty proud of myself for making something edible that required more then just boiling plain pasta.  I think I'm hooked!  If anyone has some tasty and easy recipes for me to try, feel free to share!

Joel and I have a nice, long five day weekend.  Monday is a holiday here, the Queens's Birthday.  I took off Saturday and Joel took off today because we were planning on going away for a weekend.  Turns out all the prices go way up for the long weekend, so we decided to save money and just do some day trips instead.  He went golfing this morning and when he's home we're going to go to the Q1 observation deck (finally!) for drinks.  I have cleaning to do, but am feeling lazy so I think I might go back to bed.  That's what days off are for, right?

Sunday Morning Surprise

This morning I was paying my bills online when I had a surprise skype call from Jill and Kirsten!  They were getting ready to go out to a party and decided to call me and say hello.  Totally the highlight of my week!  Here's their proof that life's not the same with out me.  Love these two.

This morning Joel went golfing (even though it was pouring) and found out he won a new Puma golf bag!  I guess all the winners of each week's competitions (of which he has now won three) gets entered in a draw and he won.  What a lucky guy!

Usually Joel is really unlucky, but since we've come here his luck has changed!  He got (a good job) on his first interview, has won tons of vouchers at the golf clubs he's joined, and now this bag.  Looks like I've inherited his bad luck- tons of failed job applications, a speeding ticket, and a big phone bill.  Hope his luck continues and he gets an Audi job in Melbourne!