Surfer Dudes!

Last week I didn't take my camera to the beach.  And of course, that was the day Oli decided that he wanted to surf too, and proceeded to catch several waves in a row, ride them into shore and even give us a great "hang loose" sign as he was doing so.

It was pretty darn cute.  I will definitely get the camera out there next time.  

Beside Oli, Evan was learning to stop and turn his board to avoid others.  He gets up pretty much with out fail and even caught a couple of waves without help last week.  It is such fun to see them go.  Both kids are so comfortable in the ocean now.  It makes me really happy as I foresee lots of family beach vacations this year and for years to come.

We may miss surfing this week as we're planning to go to the Brisbane Racecourse and catch some horse racing action.  It's a special "dollar" event with fun and deals for the whole family.  We'll let you know how it goes.

Hope this post finds you smiling.

Jules

Kookaburra sits on the...telephone pole!

I've been trying to get a "sound shot" of the kookaburras since we arrived, and this morning I caught them yacking it up in the telephone pole in front of our house.
You can't see them well, as my camera is really for close ups, but you can sure hear them.  This might explain why we're generally up around 5:30 am!
I hope you enjoy it - I love them.

So - what are you up to this week?

Adam's after work routine!

The last couple of weeks have seen lots of fun on the weekends and some good weekday routines.

The kids are both signed up for soccer on Tuesdays, Oli has a "multi-sport" bootcamp on Wednesday and Evan is in cricket on Thursday.  

Adam starts ultimate this week and he's still biking to work both ways.  He's shaved about 5 minutes off his time in the past week and is feeling good.  He starts ultimate this Thursday.

As for me, my morning routine is to drop the kids off, go for a run, and then jump in the pool to cool off before I do my errands.  I'm also working on my book and I'm almost done...really!  Hopefully I'll get to the final chapter this week.

Turtle spotting at Brisbane Forest Park with Ryan, Bennett, Victoria and Penny 

Evan spent his birthday money on a skateboard.  Thanks everyone! 

  

Surfing lessons at Caloundra - practicing the stance.

Oli playing on the beach at Happy Valley

 Now to tell you about the weekend routines.  We signed Evan up for a "Surf Groms" program for the next 8 week.  For those of you who don't know, in Australia, a "grommit, or "grom" is a good young surfer.  Hopefully Evan will be one by the time we finish the program.  He is on his way.
So, that means we've committed to going to Caloundra, about an hour north of our place, every weekend.  Not such a hard decision as you can see by the pics!

 The first week we just went up for the day, which was good.  We had an interesting experience at the beach beside the one where Evan has his lessons: we had had just arrived and got set up, when there was an announcement that everyone had to get out of the water due to a shark siting.  Yikes!  Let's just say we built a nice sandcastle that day.

Evan on a wave

This past weekend we camped at a National park nearby.  The first night we were entertained with some interesting drama from the family across the way (several adults and their kids).  Without going into details, let's just say there was plenty of blaring music, every nasty word you can think of, people leaving, coming back, screeching tires, leaving again, coming back, yelling, making up and...finally the decision around 10pm that they would all leave and go the F@#$ back to Brisbane.  Well, let's just say that if we had had some night vision cameras, we would have been able to make a killing off the reality television show we could have produced, except that there wasn't one sentence with less than 2 obscenities, unless the sentence had less than 2 words.  Yeah.

Lorikeet in the tree above our dinner

 So, we spent the day between King's beach (previously of shark fame) and Happy Valley, where Evan surfs.  We cooked breakfast at one park, ate lunch under a tree, and bbq'd at the park in front of Happy Valley.
Happily, after a great day, we returned to the campsite to find lots of happy families peacefully enjoying their camps.  Ahhh...
The funny thing too, is the people next to us were from Quebec, but the guy had lived in Canmore most of his life.  Small world.

Our "Restaurant with a View"  at Happy Valley, Caloundra

Oli gets ready to plunge at Gardiner Falls

There he goes

Yesterday, we headed up from the beach to the mountains and Gardiner Falls, which had been described as idyllic and a great place to swim.  Well, they might have been, minus about 300 people, their garbage and butts and... yuck.  The kids jumped in, but I skipped it this time.  We gave them a good long bath last night.

Evan's turn

Bomb's away!