Life's a Beach...

Or in our case, several beaches and an amusement park! The Australian school system works year round, 4 terms with approximately 2 week breaks in between each term. Except for the break that starts before Christmas, that break last 4-5 weeks. With the girls off for 2 weeks, my neighbor and friend (Jen) and I thought in would be nice to take her girls and our girls to Coolangatta for part of their break. Reservations were made and great little place with 1 bedroom apartments for each family...women and girls left on Wednesday and the men folk came down on Friday after work. Overall we saw some beautiful beaches and scenery, ate some great food, had some TERRIBLE weather, experienced a few firsts (more on those later) and had a great time!

Kenyon in one of the pools at the Resort. What you can not see in this picture is her blue lips and shivering body. Weather was mostly cloudy and/or rainy and cool the whole time we were there.

Ashtyn and her friend Evana in the wading pool at the Resort. Cold weather did not seem to bother these girls. Mean while, Jen and I stayed warm by wrapping ourselves in towels and sitting on the side of the pool (s) watching the girls swim.

One of the "firsts"! My girls eating their first Thai food! Ummm... not sure it was a hit. It was a good thing I had brought some peaches and oranges along, oh... and a granola bar. They were troopers though and at least tried the food. They thought the rice was pretty good. This meal was followed by an after dinner snack of strawberries and popcorn. I think it may be awhile before they eat Thai again.

Sleeping Beauties. Another "first". This was the first time our girls had shared a bed. They did pretty well. Except that when Ashtyn woke up, she insisted on waking up her sister as well.

Breakfast in bed. Now mommy did not get breakfast in bed, but our two little princesses were served cereal and fruit in the comforts of their fold away bed.

Evana, Ashtyn, Annaka, and Kenyon having Kit Kats and Baby Chino's for their morning snack. We had to bribe them to get some shopping in. BTW, baby chino's are marshmallows and the foam from cappuccino's.

We live in the state of Queensland. Coolangatta is on the border of Queensland and New South Wales. So, I have 1 girl in New South Wales and 1 girl in Queensland. BTW, I hope you like their jackets and Kenyon's pants...thanks to the weather, they had to wear the jackets the whole time we were there. I had to go to Target and buy Ashtyn some pants because it was so cool.

This was the Coolanagtta beach, outside our hotel. There was a break in the clouds for about 15 minutes one day...YAY! Sun!

Ashtyn's favorite part about the beach is the sand. She can do WITHOUT the water. She does not like the waves.

Night #2...MEXICAN FOOD!!!!!!! My margaritas were great, food was OK, however, it took care of my craving.

Getting ready for some fun in the sun...make that fun in the rain! On our way to play in the "warm" pool.

SURFER GIRLS!!!! Bought the girls some boogie boards. The boards were a huge hit

Big "A" climbing some rocks on the beach.

Taking a look back at Coolangatta beach.

Just our luck...a little amusement park was in town while we were there. And wouldn't you know it...our kids saw the thing before I could direct their attention elsewhere. Kenyon, Annaka and Ashtyn waiting to get on the jumpy castle. This was the 2nd night we were at the amusement park. The first night ended as soon as it began. We had been there for 5 minutes when it started to rain. The girls got soaked, and then cried the whole way back to the hotel. Night #2 was much better.

We even fell for the amusement park games...

SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!

What big sister does...so does little sister...

SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!!

Pilot in training.

YAY! Bumper boats!

Even Ashtyn gave the boats a try...and LOVED them!

On Saturday, our friends (Jenn and Matt) took us to Byron Bay. We did a scenic drive, and drove through this little town. James and I loved this sign, so we had to pull over and grab a picture. No...we did not stop for wee wee's, but should have!

Byron Bay! James and I got up the nerve to take a swim. It was about 66 degrees outside, windy, cloudy, and rainy...but we joined the swimmers and the surfers and braved the water. Byron Bay is a wonderful little hippie town! San Fran...only smaller! No, more like Haight Ashbury. Great shops, great character and great places to enjoy the surf. While we were there we saw a pod of whales. It was my first whale sighting.

Picture taken from a scenic look out above Byron Bay. Australia has both the male and female world champion surfers (at the moment). Both the surfers are from Coolangatta, where we stayed. Byron Bay is very popular with the surfing crowd. We also learned that Byron Bay is the eastern most point of Australia.

That would be a Bush Turkey. So.... I am thinking we head back to Byron Bay around Thanksgiving and make this guy our dinner??

Another glimpse of Byron Bay.

Now, I did mention that this trip held some "firsts" for our family.

1.) First Thai Food for the girls

2.) First time the girls slept together

3.) First time Kenyon said a full fledged, big time CUSS word!!!!

Oh...did I not mention that Kenyon has obtained the mouth of a sailor?? It was such a proud moment for me...I thought for sure I would have mentioned it...

So...day 2...we are getting ready to head to the beach. Jenn and her girls are in our room, we have loaded up towels, sand toys, boggie boards, water, and we are on our way. When Kenyon breaks out with a word that rhymes with suckers, puckers, muckers, duckers...catch my drift??

To be exact, the sentence was something along "Come on you F@$&ERS"...

After I picked my mouth up off the floor, Kenyon and I had a discussion about certain words. She denies having heard the word from anyone (I tried to blame dad, since he was not there.) She said she had NOT heard the word from mommy, daddy, any of her friends, or on TV. She told me she made the word up. Hopefully this first will also be a last!

Overall we had a great trip to the beach. Girls are very excited about going back, and the whole family is ready for some beach weather! Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie...Oui, Oui, Oui!!!!!