4th of July Weekend

On Thurday Daniel and I took the kids I nanny for a walk to the park & a picnic. I couldn't help snapping a picture of this adorable house down the street. It's the traditional Queensland style home.

You can't really tell, but there are magpies in that tree on the left. The magpies here are massive and freak us out! Cyclists have to wear these crazy helmets with spikes coming out of the top to prevent magpies from swooping down and attacking them. It looks pretty ridiculous. Seriously though, what isn't dangerous in Australia?!

On the 4th we set out in our 1985 Toyota car named Pearl and drove up the Sunshine Coast.

Australia lesson #1: Sunshine coast is the coast north of Brisbane. Gold Coast is the coast south of Brisbane. Both are amazing.

Too bad the tuner radio or the 8 track player doesn't work in this beaut of a car we have! We just popped in our headphones and belted out the most American songs we could. For a while it actually felt like we were back in America. Besides the fact we were driving on the wrong side of the road :)

We were planning on getting hot dogs and burgers and having an American picnic at the beach but...

The weather wasn't cooperating and we couldn't find a decent beach for surfing. We needed to drown our homesickness with some good waves. We were seriously missing celebrating the 4th in the great US of A. We decided to drive down to the Gold Coast to our favorite spot SURFERS PARADISE.

Goodness I love that place. We stayed the night and woke the next morning ready for some waves.

I surfed. Daniel body boarded. We both swam and laid on the sand with some good books. It was THE perfect day.  Warm, sunny, no wind at all, almost like Australia was helping us feel better about missing our home country's birthday.

Right here is why I work 12 hour days. Even though I am still learning and only surfing small waves and whitewater, there is nothing like the feeling of catching a wave! I have moved to a smaller board-7'6" which means I am improving! I seriously love it.

It was such  fun weekend, but definitely different than a good old fashioned American BBQ and firework show. We would be lying if we said we weren't homesick that day. But who wouldn't be?

We love England and Australia to death, but there is no place like the Land of the Free. Happy birthday America from two crazy wannabe surfers living far away from your beautiful shores.

3rd Anniversary

Our anniversary was back in May, 3 days after moving to Australia. We were jet lagged, lost in a new city, and not to mention sharing a room with a guy and a house and car with 3 other guys, We were just so exhausted and tired of traveling to do anything or go anywhere. We made up for it a month later by doing a fun beach trip to Noosa Beach on the Sunshine Coast, which was so fun! Our 3rd year has been the most epic yet. Our 2nd Anniversary was spent making the cross country move from Pennsylvania back to Idaho, with every possession we owned in a trailer towed behind our car, which we slept in. That was the first day of the most intense year of traveling and moving ever. Living in Idaho that summer was amazing, and being so close to family is something I still cherish. That was the first time we had ever lived close to family, even if it was only for a few months. We had so much fun, but also went through many trials that summer as well. But it is a summer we will never forget.

And then came the move to England. Where we spent the best 9 months of our lives. I can't even describe it, I don't know if there are words. But it changed us for the better. From riding the tube in London, road trips around the UK in a tiny car, listening to bagpipes in Scotland, dancing to a jazz band on the French Riviera, trying new foods, creepy hostels, not understanding what the heck people are saying most of the time, I can say with confidence that we lived it up this year. We ended our 3rd year with a giant leap of faith, moving to Australia. I am so grateful I get to do all of this with my best friend by my side and not to mention with the support of our families constantly. It makes all the difference. Through the best of times, and the hardest times, I know the people I love the most are always there. Here's to 3 years! I can't wait to see what the rest of year 4 brings.

Koala Park

Dingos. The prettiest wild dogs. They look so harmless and cute!

Baby kangaroo in the pouch!

That neck scratch must have felt real good!

I am pretty impressed with how often I have been able to blog the past couple weeks. One of the reasons for that is, Daniel and I have our own car now! We were using the car I was given for work, but it would get awkward trying to ask the people I work for to use it every time we wanted to go somewhere, so now we get to use an extra car that Daniel's soccer team owns, and that nobody drives (for good reason, haha). It's a 1985 Toyota, that has an 8 track player! Pretty sweet huh!

We dig it.  The family we live with live in a wealthy part of town, so we get some awesome looks from people as we come clunking down the street! Everyone is so chill here, so they don't care. Anyways, we usually drive to the library after work so we can  use wifi to catch up on emails, blog, and let our families know we are still alive. These next two weeks are "winter break" for every child 

in Australia. So this would be like our Christmas break in America! It still throws me off that the seasons are opposite here! This means, I get to entertain two kids alll day long for two weeks (instead of the older kid going to school all day). Today was an awesome day though. Daniel and I took the two kiddos I nanny to a Koala Sanctuary, also called Koala Park. They have tons of Koala's that they have rescued but tons of other animals too. Basically a zoo. It was amazing, and we got to feed Kangaroos which are now officially my new favorite animal. They are seriously the cutest little things. They were so gentle eating the food out of our hands, and their fur was so soft. I'm pretty sure we had  more fun than the kids did!  We can check that off our bucket list!