Sunday, May 9, 2010

Cinco de Mayo, of course!

Don't think we forgot about the the Mexican holiday. A chance to celebrate Mexico's victory over the French? Sure, why not? Australia may not be too keen on the holiday, but that didn't stop us. We toasted the night with tequila, tacos and taco salad. Okay, we may have left out the tequila (it's a work night kids, come on), but we did enjoy a delicious Mexican inspired dinner. Arriba!




Birthday Week

May 4th marks the actual date of Jeff's birth. So, we had a celebatory evening of delicious food, dessert, and gifts. Thanks so much to all our family and friends who sent Jeff emails and cards. He had a great day, and it was wonderful to hear from our loved ones. See pics below from our birthday celebration evening.








The fun didn't stop here...

We had (yet another) birthday celebration on Friday evening with some of our new friends. We hosted a dinner at our place, and celebrated in style with a late night Cranium battle. Our friends were kind enough to bring the entertainment, so we mastered the British version of Cranium. We had heaps of fun, and are grateful to already have wonderful friends to invite over to celebrate. See some photo highlights below.






Car Talk

I'm somewhere I thought I'd never be... in the drivers seat of an SUV. I must admit, I'm loving ever minute of it! We decided to give in and get the stereotypical Aussie automobile, the Landrover. It's fantastic! I've decided to name her Disco. See photos below.
Disco



So I know I'm in the passenger seat here... but this is what it looks like to drive on the right side...



Disco was meant to be ours. The previous owner, Brad, who is one of Jeffs co-workers, is also on secondment from the US, originally from Georgia, and moving back in July. He gave us a great deal on Disco. Thanks Brad.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Noosa Weekend!

First off, I'm terribly sorry for the delay in updating the blog. I started work, we moved, and still don't have internet at home, and I've been having some technical difficulties with the camera... okay, so really, I have no good excuses, but I thought I'd list them anyways to provide some explanation. I promise to stay committed going forward, thanks for sticking with me.
Onto the fun stuff... cause I do have a lot of it with this blog entry.
We celebrated our second long weekend (3 day weekends, something I could get used to) with a trip to Noosa for Jeff's birthday! Noosa, is a beach town 2 hours northeast of Brisbane, and is absolutely exquisite. See photo evidence below.

I could lie and say I took this picture from a helicopter, but I won't...

Okay, so we sorta had a photo shoot on the beach. It was too gorgeous to resist. See the bizillions of pics below.














Yep, that's Jeff waving

















We arrived to Noosa on Saturday morning, just in time for the food and wine festival, which we had no prior plans to attend. Lucky for us, accidentally visiting a town in the middle of a food and wine festival is never a bad thing. So, we did what any other good patron would do, we attended the festival, and oh what fun we had (see before and after pictures below).








Here it is...
Before


And After.
Little disappointing, I know... but trust me, we were feeling before and after



At the festival we sampled food, wine, and beer from places all across Australia (mainly the south and east coasts, but some vineyards were from as far as Perth--- see map of Australia below to clarify any questions).



Our new friends, Lindsey and Lawson, joined us in Noosa and spent the weekend there with us. We attempted stand-up paddling... which was surprisingly a big success. It was quite the core work-out, and all in all a very enjoyable adventure. Sadly I didn't get action shots of us stand up-paddling, but I found some online and posted them below... just picture Jeff and I while looking at the pictures.

Jeff. Amy.





Jeff, Lindsey, and Lawson.




Jeff and Lawson had a successful morning of surfing, minus the chest rash Jeff left with. We also had a very delicious dinner at a lovely beach front restaurant, Bistro C. Lawson and I shared a seafood medley, pictured below. Think of a hodgepodge of any and all seafood you could ever ask for, that's exactly what is was. The menu just should have read, "Absolutely Delicious". Ask me if I liked it?

The surf heros










I introduce to you, Absolutely Delicious.







And to conclude, please take a look at the warning sign on the left hand side of the road that we saw on the ride home (yes it was raining). Yes folks, beware of kangaroos crossing! I know the story would be better if I told you we saw a kangaroo crossing, so I’ll leave you in suspense and end things here…