A Surprise!

Surprised? So were we! We are ecstatic however, and cannot wait to welcome this latest member to our family.

I am heading towards the end of the first trimester, and my evening-sickness (it’s always been afternoons/evenings for me!) is beginning to ease. My anxiety over something being/going wrong (which I think every pregnant woman experiences to some degree, but is even more amplified when you have suffered a loss), is also beginning to ease after the delight of seeing our wiggling little being (who has been nicknamed ‘Tadpole’) last week in an ultrasound.

My apparently very pre-stretched body has decided to look pregnant already, and I am barely able to do up my jeans, despite the fact that I have lost a further 2 kilos since finding out I was pregnant (That’s over 10kg since quitting sugar now!!).

Mayana is over the moon (in case you can’t tell) and adamant that the baby is a girl. I told her that she said the same thing about Reuben and she replied that she is right this time… God told her. I suppose we’ll see in another 6 months or so! We are undecided on whether we will find out the gender of this baby… we are leaning towards keeping the surprise baby a surprise. Knowing us we’ll change our minds about 354 times before the time comes!

We are feeling very blessed, and excited that our little family is growing once again!

Wonderful Weekends {Part Two}

Again with the amazing weather! We decided to make the most of it and do some exploring.

Ever since we’ve moved here, we’ve heard of this place called ‘Utopia’. Young people like to visit it after church, and it’s apparently one of the nicest places in the area. So after nearly three years of living here, we decided it was about time we found it.

My two sisters and brother-in-law joined us for the adventure, and we set off. ‘Utopia’ is actually officially part of the Mount Walsh National Park, and it’s nickname comes from the road you travel down to find it. It’s about an hour’s drive from here, on nice, quiet country roads.

It was certainly worth the drive, and we had a fabulous day in the perfect weather.

Utopia is home to a number of rock-pools and small waterfalls (they may usually be bigger, I don’t know – we haven’t had a lot of rain lately!). It’s about a 1.5km bushwalk up to the rock. The walk is reasonably mild, though steep and rocky in some places. Mayana was was able to walk the majority of the track herself. At the end of the walk you are rewarded with this gorgeousness:

We chose a nice flat section of rock in the sun to have our picnic, then spent some time exploring around the area, and enjoying the beautiful surroundings.

The water was crystal clear, and when you looked into it you could see right to the bottom. It was quite freezing though, and my brother-in-law was the only one brave enough (and appropriately attired) to actually go for a swim. We are all looking forward to heading back when the weather warms up and having a dip!

There was one other group of young people up there, and they were giving us heart-palpitations with their crazy behaviour! Poor Alexie (nurse-in-training) was trying to work out how on earth we would be able to safely get them out of there if someone broke their neck!

Both the kids really loved it, though I was probably quite over-bearing of them. It made me nervous letting them walk around the rocks with such tall drops down into the water, and I wouldn’t let them within at least 5m of the edge! I reminded myself of my mother when we were stopped at the Great Australian Bight on our trek across the Nullarbor!

My brother-in-law carried Reuben in a baby carrier for both legs of the bushwalk, and he was so zonked on the way back that he fell asleep after about 200m of walking!

Mayana walked the whole way back by herself, and was pooped by the time we got back to the car!

We had such a lovely day, and definitely will be back to Utopia sooner rather than later! It’s made me want to do some more exploring and see what other hidden wonders we can find in little corner of the world!

Wonderful Weekends {Part One}

Here in our little corner of Queensland, we have been having a lovely winter. It has been incredibly mild, and I’ve had friends tell me about how confused their gardens are, with flowers and strawberries already producing, thinking that we’ve gone straight into spring!

The past two weekends in particular have been just glorious. We’ve been having super blue-sky days of about 25 degrees, which is the perfect temperature for spending time in the great outdoors.

I ran out of time this week to post about last weekend, so excuse my two-weekend posts this weekend!!

Last weekend we woke up early to a perfect sunshiny day and decided it was too good to waste on housework! We packed up the kids, and headed out for a family breakfast date, then trekked off half an hour away to our nearby beach town, Hervey Bay.

Mayana asked if she could sit up at the breakfast bar looking out into the street, and felt very grown up sitting there by herself, enjoying her raisin toast and “cup-of-chino”.

We found that there was a lovely little markets happening, so we strolled through them before heading out onto the famous, almost one kilometre long, Urangan Pier. The sky was cloudless and brilliant blue, and the ocean looked like it had been sprinkled with glitter. It was glorious. We meandered along, looking into the water for fish and soldier crabs, and enjoyed peeking into the buckets of the fishermen set up for the day at the end of the pier. We felt like we were on holidays.

As we walked back, we had a message from friends who were keen for a spontaneous meet-up, so we spent the next hour or so playing on the beach with them and their kids, chasing soldier crabs, examining sand worms, and jumping in the puddles formed by the ‘potholes’ left behind by the stingrays when the tide is in.

I was amazed by Reuben’s lack of intimidation when playing with the crabs. He had absolutely no hesitation in picking up the soldier crabs and letting them crawl over his hands. Our friend’s six year old son was not so keen on them, and Reuben found it highly entertaining to chase him around holding crab in his outstretched hand. Actually, we all found that pretty entertaining.

It was nice to just step back, and let the kids explore and have fun. My kids don’t often have the chance to get wet and dirty, and they both enjoyed it so much… but especially Reuben. I think just having this huge space that he was free to run in and enjoy was pretty close to one of the best experience he’s ever had, and you couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.

He liked to squat nice and close to the puddles and peer in very intently. Occasionally his face would accidentally dip into the water and he would quickly stand up, blinking up at us with a face that asked, “what just happened?!!”

We wrapped up our fun afternoon with fish and chips (because it’s like a rule that you have to have fish and chips when you go to the beach – especially in Mayana’s mind!!), and then tripped back home for a much needed afternoon rest. It was such a lovely day, and made me want to make a bigger effort to get out there and have fun with the family in our beautiful area more often!