Kate and Bryson have arrived!

After a short 14 hour flight, Kate and Bryson have arrived! I couldn't be more excited to see my little sister. We welcomed them with a champagne toast (yes, all of our visitors can expect this same, royal treatment), and headed out for a fun night on the town.

Their first day here was filled with site-seeing, delicious food, and a glorious game of lawn bowling. Somehow, Kate is a natural at lawn bowling (we all have our talents) and took the top scores for the day. Jeff came in a close second. We've been practicing ever since.

Winner!


Sometimes meditation helps.


Focused. That's my game stance.

Sydney Opera House, Brisbane Opera House, same difference. Kate, Bryson, Jeff and I were invited to join some of our friends to a night at the opera. We learned some Italian, had several drinks, and enjoyed a cultural evening together.

Our fun didn't stop at the opera... we'll need an entirely new blog post for the adventures that happened next...

Lessons Learned

Lesson #1- any sport played in Australia is called Footy. Rugby, football, soccer, cricket, bowling... all footy. We've been to a handful of "footy" games, not knowing what we're going to watch, or who we're going to cheer for until we get there (or at least that's how I feel). Our latest footy show was an AFL (Australian football league) game, my favorite of the bunch. Fun to watch, sort of understand the point of the game and Brisbane's team, The Lions, is pretty good. Photos from the footy game...

Lesson #2- Never play barefoot soccer. Jeff joined the KPMG soccer team, The Write-offs (accounting humor at its best). His first game was a weekend long tournament with 4 games on Saturday and 2 games on Sunday. One teammate had the brilliant idea to play a soccer match barefoot... I mean, why not?!? It's like football without pads, boxing without gloves, swimming without a speedo, or bungee jumping without the cord. Who needs shoes? Apparently The Write-off's do. They ended up coming in 2nd place, and Jeff's feet ended up looking like this...

The Write-Offs. Yes, those are KPMG jerseys





Lesson #3- When your wife is a bit lonely and misses home, bring her flowers. Big shout out to Jeff for coming home with flowers and a bottle of wine to cheer me up. Been getting a little homesick lately... but have a wonderful husband and city to keep me distracted.

Please excuse the vase... options are limited in Australia. My wonderful husband and beautiful city

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.

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…