Holy Rain!

  It has been raining for days! I have never seen so much rain. Already had to drain the pool twice. So that means we have had at least 5+ inches of rain so far. It has been so dry here that we needed the rain. Just not sure we needed quite so much at one time. The radar has been solid green since Friday.
  Cyclone Oswald caused  this so I guess it is similar to when a hurricane goes over land and drenches the surrounding areas as it losses momentum. Places are flooding along the coast. There have been tornadoes all over Queensland.
  Next time I will be better prepared to spend days stuck in the house. Plan some indoor activities for the kids and stock the house with food (been putting off the store for a few days. Now there is no way I am taking 3 kids and getting soaked!) When it finally stops raining I will see if I can get a precipitation total.

Look at all that green

We have tried our backpack on and our new shoes

 played with our hair

 rearranged our stickers

 Had a few moments when we needed to be alone

 watched way too much tv

Kid Cam 1

MA got a camera for her birthday. So I thought it would be fun to let her have her own posts here as she takes pics. She has already mastered the self portrait :-) Enjoy a peek of what a 7 year old captures with her camera.

Splash, Splash

  Last week swimming lessons started back up for all 3 kids. I also signed the other 2 up for a couple diving lessons. How to enter the water type, not jumping off a diving board. So that meant we were at the pool Monday thru Friday. EL was happy to get back to her lessons and I think DB & MA learned a few things too.

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 Matt and I started working out last week too. The kids like to workout with us and that is pretty entertaining in itself.
  We hung out at home Saturday. Did some work around the house and swam. I took a 3 hour nap, thanks to some benedryl I took before working out in the yard.

Sunday, we got up and moving 1st thing. We headed down to Surfers Paradise to watch our friends participate in the Surf Life Savers Club. It is like a swim lesson in the ocean! We are hoping to get our kids involved in it next season. DB had a couple tries on a boogie board and really liked it. EL tried it out too. MA had another run in with some jelly fish and kept the beach company for most of the time. After playing in the water for a while the kids were hungry. Our friends invited us to their house for lunch. The kids played and swam after they finished eating. Finally, we decided it was time to hit the road. EL was asleep before we hit the M1. DB wasn't far behind her. MA started to doze off just as we got home.

 EL was all about having her picture taken in her new pants I made

 Just checking the weather back in the States. Brrrrrr!

Summer holiday

  So we have 3 weeks until school starts for the year. The kids are adjusting to having just boring old mom at home with them. It was a pretty quiet week around here or as quiet as it gets with 3 kiddos. Grocery shopping with them- I could tell it has been a while since they have all gone with me. But we survived. MA & her 2 best friends all have birthdays within a week of each other. So it was nice to see some of our school friends we haven't seen in a while. A laid back weekend at home swimming, some yard work, organizing the garage & a couple NFL games.

  3 weeks flew by. Christmas, New Years, birthdays, side trips & sightseeing, and just enjoying the family! I am so glad they made the trip and we got to share our new home with them. Now they will have a better idea when we say we went here or there. We are already looking forward to a trip back to the States but it's too far away to start a countdown on the fridge. We hope that we get to share our home with more family and friends.
  I think we had 3 ipads, 6 iphones, and a couple cameras. I can't even begin to guess how many photos were taken during that trip. Here are few more random ones I wanted to share.

 Papa getting DB

 Don't worry, he's a chemist!

End of an amazing 3 weeks

  The crew headed into the city to do some more exploring and check out the Citycat. I made my kids stay home and nap before we all met up at Southbank. We walked around, Matt met us when he got off work and we grabbed dinner. No vacation is complete without ice cream at some point.
 

 He was all about trying different foods.

 My dad just can't be normal in any photo, but he has his shirt on at least!

 I think they are best friends now!

 Their last day in Aus, we hung out by the pool during the day. Then caught the bus to Southbank one more time. The kids played on the playground, the fam got a couple more souvenirs, we stopped at the Plough Inn for a bit. We tried a new Greek restaurant for dinner. My dad said it was one of the best meals they had in Aus. Next we did the Wheel of Brisbane. It was fun to do it at night when the city was all lit up. The Treasury building looked amazing. It was getting late and we ran out of time to try Maxx Brenner, a chocolate restaurant. One last bus ride home and a nice walk up our street.

 LB was so much fun!