THE BIG 3-OH!

So if you remember I wrote about turning thirty (click here) and now that's next on the list of my catch-up adventures. Varian planned a surprise day and my requests were somewhere beautiful and beachy that we hadn't been to before. I didn't even try to guess but was excited to see wherever he wanted to take me. We loaded the car about 4 am and started driving, all the way till we drove onto the CAR FERRY that would take us to North Stradbroke Island. YAY! I've never been on a car ferry and so that alone was way cool, but South Stradie is one of my favorite places here so I was excited to see the North Island.

Then we stopped for just a few minutes here where we didn't see much of a spring, but did see these creepy spiders (oh, but it's a mommy and baby spider, that's not creepy). 

 

We went on a hike to Blue Lake. Here are some photos of the hike, we didn't seem to manage to get any of the lake.

I think those trees are so cool! And again, I can't get over the funny expression of that kid!

After getting back from our hike from Blue Lake we then went to picnic at Brown Lake. There weren't lots of flies, I just thought this one was kind of pretty (and huge).

Varian's birthday treat for me. He was making me a cake later (for my "nothing day" celebration) but I told him I'd love him to put candles in anything so I could still blow them out and make a wish on my birthday. And he knows I have a thing for cold pizza, so this is one of the things he brought for our lunch.

After lunch we walked on these cliffs. It was so gorgeous.

This is my view that I had while nursing Jaren. I felt very "one with nature" and my child as I sat here. It was breathtaking. We had left our things in the car and Varian went back to get Jaren's bottle (we've sadly had to nurse and bottle feed him). But Varian didn't see that we were off the path a bit and missed us and then I started looking for Varian who was looking for me, all the while Jaren is getting more and more ravenous and ornery. It was a tad stressful, but in the end we finally found each other and Jaren was able to finish his lunch. 

A kookaburra we came across. No this particular one is not sitting in a gum tree, but they often do here so it's a fun little tribute to that song. And they really do sound like laughing. I used to do a pretty mean imitation of them...but too much teasing from Varian has stunted my natural kookaburra call. :) 

We then went swimming at this lovely beach. The water was warm and the waves were the perfect level to bounce around in. Jaren mostly slept in his car seat and we took turns staying with him. But after swimming Varian came back and gave me an amazing back massage on the beach. HELLO! Happy Birthday to me!!! It was heavenly! I'm so spoiled! (TMI alert - it was wonderful and a sweet gift, although being a breastfeeding new mom I discovered that the sandy beach is a lot more comfortable/relaxing in theory than it is in reality. Ouch!)

lkj

We got back home in time to do a quick "freshening up" and then Varian took me out to dinner at this Thai place that we've been wanting to try. Oh, I love Thai! We got different curries and they were fantastic! As was the Jasmine Coconut Rice that I'm Vanna Whiting in this photo.

My birthday is the day before Anzac Day. It's like our Veteran's Day but bigger. In fact it seems to be the most patriotic I've ever seen Aussies get. They have crack of dawn ceremonies (maybe one day we'll go if we can make ourselves get up.) But we do fully enjoy the public holiday. So we used it as my "nothing day" celebration and This is the photo of this amazing 3 layered Chocolate Mousse cake Varian made me. Yum!!! He also made me sausage gravy on biscuits here (something they don't have here so it was a special treat and one of my favorite breakfast items). We had a yummy lunch and snacks as we watched movies (??? I can't remember exactly what they were and Varian and I are laughing that I'm being so specific. This is like Elementary school when I used to write down what I had for school lunch that day. But I wanted to write about how Varian spoiled me.) So needless to say the middle of the day was yummy food, followed by a meatloaf and mashed potatoe dinner (again one of my favorites) and then that yummy cake. And although I'm not that big of a fan of cake, with all those layers and mousse it was fantastic.