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.