It's the most wonderful, stressful, downright busiest time of the year.

 

As always, this time of the year is the busiest for me.  Between holidays and birthdays, I am usually up to my eyeballs in to-do lists, shopping, school parties, baking, etc. To add to it, this year marks a new occurrence in all of the holiday hub-bub....SUMMER VACATION.  Yes, we have four more school days left before the girls are finished with the school year and summer break starts.

With all that has been going on, I am way behind on blogging, so I am going to hit on some of the highlights of the past month. 

Lake Currimundi

We went up to the Sunshine Coast for the day with some friends.  The weather forecast for Brisbane was calling for rain, but the beach we wanted to go to was an hour north so we headed out anyway.  Lake Currimundi is a tidal estuary (aka a lake connected to the ocean), so it is protected and the kids can swim without mom having to sit and worry about riptides, undertows, sharks....you get the picture. 

This was a beautiful Black Cockatoo that squawked very loudly, and continually for quite some time in the tree behind us.  This is not one of the birds we see commonly around our house, so it was fun to see one outside of the zoo.



Black Cockatoo

Lake Currimundi

 

Currimundi Beach

The day started out very overcast and dreary, but eventually was sunny and beautiful.  Brisbane, on the other hand had terrible storms, which must have been why the beach was so deserted.  We were glad we decided to chance it and enjoy the beautiful day at the coast.

Stormy Weather

Mother nature did not want us to miss out on experiencing a Brisbane storm, so the following day it decided to unleash another assault on the area.  This was just after I was commenting the week before about enjoying the fact we had been getting good torrential rains without any storms.  (Something that rarely happens in Texas.)

So, storm it did and we watched the gusty wind and hail from the safety of our many glass walls/windows.  Thanks to our metal roof, it was LOUD and it hailed for more than 5 minutes.  Here is a bit of  my very amateur video.

 

The winds were so bad at one point we were convinced there was a tornado and moved downstairs to shelter.  I have since been told that we will not see a tornado here.

Yes, Brisbane has bad storms too.  Point taken.

Thanksgiving

We had a lovely Thanksgiving celebration with some American friends. 

 The Ladies

 

The Gents

The spread included two fried turkeys, a ham, and all of the traditional sides.  Everything was made from scratch and so very delicious. 

Fried Turkey

 

 Veggie Turkey 

 

The kids table

 

The kids had a blast in the pool enjoying the warm Thanksgiving temps.

We even had a 'Thankful Tree" where we all wrote down what we were thankful for.

 It was such a nice Thanksgiving celebration and we were thankful we had such great friends to celebrate with.

Christmas Party

For the first time in three years, David was in town and we were able to go to the Fluor Christmas party.  The party was located right at the top of the Rydges hotel in Southbank and the views were spectacular.

The night started off with drinks, appetizers, and traditional Christmas crackers/poppers.  The wrapped tubes contain a joke, party hat (crown), and "prize."  The jokes are known to be the worst EVER and to give you an example, here is one that we had at our table.  "What is yellow and white and goes 100km per hour down the railroad tracks?  The train engineers egg-salad sandwich."  Wow! The others weren't much better, but seemed to get funnier as the wine flowed.

Party Hats

 

David's Prize Mustache

 

It was a very nice sit-down dinner with the choice of steak or salmon, but with one Aussie difference.  Although there were two different meals offered, we didn't get to pick what we wanted to eat.  You get what you get and you don't pitch a fit.  Unless of course you are served salmon and you really don't like salmon. (achem) Needless to say there is a lot of plate shuffling that occurs after service.

 

It was a fun night and a great kick-off to the Christmas season!