Byron Bay, NSW

After our Surfer’s Paradise getaway from last post, we drove an hour south to Byron Bay, which was our first time in a state other than Queensland.  New South Wales was awesome! Only 6 more  hours south and we could have made it to Sydney! But that’s for another weekend J This place was the cutest little hippie town. And I mean real hippie. Like long hair, living in a tie die van, and surfing all day kind of hippie. It was nice to get a change of scene from our usual Surfer’s Paradise high rise buildings behind the water. This place was quieter and peaceful, although tiny waves so no surfing for us L

We took a hike/walk up to a beautiful lighthouse with the most amazing views.

Just look at that water! I could stare at it all day. The pictures don't quite do it justice. The color is unreal!

I spy a heart!

We saw so many dolphins swimming around in the clear water. This was definitely one of the highlights!

We also saw two surfers being rescued. They had been swept out, and the waves were large and dangerous, so that was scary. They were trapped on some big jagged rocks close to the cliffs, with big waves. They were rescued just fine.

Apparently the most easterly part of Australia is also the windiest!

 After our hiking adventures, we met up with our friends for burritos and lemonade in a little Mexican bar by the beach, then drove home while watching the beautiful sunset. Next on my list is to see a sunrise at Byron Bay, apparently since it’s the most easterly part of Australia, the sunrises are pretty spectacular. Til' next time.

Paradise with a View

As I mentioned with my last post, I am so behind on all my blog posts. I work nearly 50 hours a week, have no wifi at home, so can you blame me really? Daniel and I just spent the last hour looking through some past blog posts of our life in England. Sometimes I find blogging annoying, and put it on the bottom of my list of things to do, but looking back at our England pictures and reading the funny stories that happened to us, just warmed my heart and made me want to blog more.  

It also made me really homesick for England, and now I’m craving fish n chips and Cadbury chocolate…sorry Australia, you don’t do chocolate nearly as good as England. So here we go, this is another post from nearly a month ago, when Daniel had an entire week off of soccer, and no game on the weekend, so we got to have a nice long weekend in Surfer’s Paradise and Byron Bay. We drove the 40 minute drive to Surfer’s and spent the day surfing our hearts out. We stayed in a hotel with a beautiful view of the coast.

The view outside our hotel balcony.

About to go surfing!

I am so obsessed with surfing. 

There is nothing in the world like floating on your board in the clearest water you've ever seen, 

just waiting for the next wave to roll in. 

That night we ate steaks at a quaint Irish Pub…which again made us homesick for English pubs! Seriously, what doesn’t remind us of England nowadays.. 

But it was great food, and had a live band 

that was playing “Drops of Jupiter” by Train as we walked in, 

so we knew it was going to be a good night. 

They were awesome!

Afterwards, we were walking around the town and found a colorful looking restaurant called San Churros Choclateria. CHOCOLATERIA. WHAT. A restaurant dedicated to chocolate? WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE!! I think the waitress could see the wild look in my eye, 

as we eagerly took our seats and ordered from the menu. I ordered the Chocolate Fudge Biscocho. 

Chocolate cake with a thick layer of hot fudge, topped with strawberries covered in melted chocolate, with a heaping portion of white chocolate ice cream on top.  I go big or go home people. And you just gained a few pounds reading this, sorry! It was delicious, obviously. Daniel ordered their famous churros with melted milk chocolate to dip them in. He loved them. I am not even ashamed to say that we have been back to this same restaurant 4 times now…ok maybe a little ashamed. We discovered there is one only 15 minutes away from our home. Deadly I tell you! Good thing we have gym memberships!

 It’s a known fact that Australia has some incredible sunsets. But I have been dying to see a sunrise on the beach here. Well my wish came true. We woke up early to watch this beauty unfold. Sitting on the balcony in the early morning with my love,  watching the sunrise come up over this beautiful place was the perfect way to end our stay in Surfer’s Paradise. We ate breakfast at a cute outside café, and got a call from our friends who were an hour south in Byron Bay. They wanted to meet up with us, so we left an hour later. We had been wanting to see this place, so it was the perfect opportunity. Overall, it was a great weekend, and we had so much fun enjoying the Aussie life!

Catching Up

These pictures are from 3 weeks ago. Daniel and I slept in till 7am (woo hoo) and decided to go to the Brisbane outdoor markets, which is just down the road from where we live.

Freshly Squeezed OJ

Best acai bowls! Sold by Brazilians, so of course it was the best! Daniel was in heaven.

It doesn't get much better than fresh Aussie fruit.

Pao De Queijo. Brazilian cheese bread.

Bacon and Egg sandwich from a german food stand.

They have so many food vendors, 

any fruit you could possibly think of, 

and quite possibly the best yogurt.

There is something about the dairy products here, don’t know what it is, 

but they are like 100000x better here than anywhere we have lived.

 Don’t even get me started on the ice cream.

 I don’t have a picture, but they have a lemon myrtle yogurt from the markets that is to die for.

We left the markets (feeling really full) and headed to Lone Pine, the koala sanctuary/ zoo that we have season passes to thank sto the family I nanny for. 

All we did was feed the kangaroos, because lets be honest, there is no cuter animal out there.

Selfie with an Emu! I was kind of afraid to get  close to that thing. He was just staring at me!!

Baby kangaroo!

The Big Red Kangaroos are amazing!

Daniel had a game that night, and scored a goal off a bicycle kick. It was amazing, and I am so proud of him! He did a nice sliding celebration on his knees too!! On top of that, his team officially won the league, so they are the BPL champs! Way to go Brisbane Wolves! I love watching Daniel play. 

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!