Goodbye 2011

Have I told you what wonderful friends I have?

I have just had the best four days I've had in a long while!!

A wonderful beach holiday with my family. The perfect remedy for Black Hole Week!

It was bliss!


Now how did this come about?? Facebook of course
(you all know I have a firm testimony of facebook ;)

so I was on there whining about how I couldn't find a nice holiday place :
1. in my price range
2. available the weekend I needed it
3. The cheaper ones had me shaking in my no doona's from the 1980's boots.

so that blessed little chat box popped up and my friend said

"we are going to sydney, would you like to stay in our empty house?"


ummmm that would be YES!

so the very next day we packed our bags and headed off to a lovely four day vacay!!

woo hooo!

I want my friend to know that she is the sweetest giving person ever and so thoughtful.

She really gave me one of the best gifts I've received in a while.


Hopefully I can be just like her. So who wants to stay at my house ?



3 different beaches, road trip to Gympie, new years eve.. what a four days

Late night (8pm :) walk along the beach

With small kids that are usually tucked up in bed at night, I found this night time walk along the beach one of the best things we did. I loved it and want to include some more things like this on the to-do list for this year. Sometimes I forget there is a nightlife out there, for this family who are usually all in the house by 5pm!

Next stop calm waters. The Mr and I said how we couldn't believe hours went by with no one complaining or whining at us. I noticed on our holiday that we took no toys with us and few 'digital' distractions, YET the kids still kept themselves occupied. A good reminder to me for what is really needed for prolonged happy play (new environment, water, outdoorsy, other kids to 'make instant friends with') something I must make sure to include more regularly too.

We spent half an hour watching the most gorgeous pelicans. We were able to walk right up to them as they waited for fishermen to give their offcuts. These two pelicans were as large as our 8 year old. They were HUGE and a little scarey! (even though they were completely friendly!) We got to see their stretchy veiny beaks in action.

The next beach we hit up was a surf beach with nice dumpy waves. The girls were only in about 50cm of water and were getting rolled around big time.

 Watching this black wall of rain head towards us was pretty fun

Next stop New Years Eve - we opted for a quiet night in of dinner, games, Wii, sparklers and glowsticks. We headed up to the local lookout thinking we would be able to view the 3 sets of fireworks at the coast. There were about 100+ other people there hoping for the same thing. However it turns out we couldnt see ANY of the fireworks! We did get the odd glimpse of the top of a firework and we could see the clouds reflecting different colours but that was IT! Most anticlimatic firework viewing I've ever had.

And we ended our holiday with church. How nice it was as someone pointed out that it is very rare to start the New Year on a Sunday. A good beginning for a new year with the right focus.

I had a wonderful end to 2011. Did you?