Still Call Australia Home

Now, we have some news that we excluded (to keep it a surprise for our Aussie relatives) from the last blog post... We've moved back to Australia!! WAHOOOO! We've been so blown away by how welcoming and wonderful everyone's been, we really couldn't be happier with our decision! 

When we told the kiddos they were completely speechless (which never happens with Eddie) and Eddie's eyes welled up with tears. A couple days later, she'd obviously been processing it, she said "so now we'll be like real sisters!" Over and over the last two weeks Eddie and Will have just been such sweet, funny, amazing little things and we're SO glad that we won't be missing out on their lives anymore. Truly all the validation we've needed - and we've gotten tons more validation on top of that! We totally lived up to the big sis role at Eddie's dance recital where we screamed our hearts out for her! Such a proud moment, she did soo well!! 

Totally worth sitting through the 2 hours of other kids, but hopefully next year she'll be in more than one dance.. We're also still trying to convince Will to take a boys hip hop class, he's shockingly coordinated, it's quite amazing.

A few days after we arrived Sue and Sir (Claire's parents) had their 50th wedding anniversary and took us all to an incredible seafood buffet lunch at the Hyatt! We caught up with the whole Dace clan and it was really lovely - great atmosphere, food, and company!

That afternoon we had the whole Dawson clan over for an early Christmas dinner - prawns, lamb, sausages on the barbie, the traditional Aussie feast! It was amazing to catch up with all the cuzzies (especially Phe! Looking forward to our "Single Summer" with that awesome chick!) and we had such a lovely time exchanging pressies and stories.

Another highlight of our first week back was catching up with old friends. Lucy and her former (and maybe future) best friend Ali spent the afternoon and evening hanging out around Canberra, shopping, walking around the lake, filling each other in on all the goss, and spent the evening at Ali's watching Love Actually. Han and Claire went out to a funky bar, Public, for a cocktail and a chat. So lovely! A couple nights later, on Christmas Eve, we both went out to the Kingston pub with a bunch of our old friends from high school! It was SO surreal seeing them all, they haven't changed a bit! 

From left to right: Fairlie (super athletic and fun), Courtney (the biggest sweetheart and so gorgeous), Luce, Paige (the absolute life of the party, totally hilarious), Ali (very funny and so nice), Han, and Georgia (absolutely lovely with the most killer bod). We had a wonderful night catching up, drinking, dancing, and having a fair bit of trouble wrapping our heads around us all being back in the same place after so long! 

We also saw Grandma and Grandpa earlier that day for a yummy lunch, Christmas pressies (thank you guys!), and a couple fun rounds of cards! We got a bit lost driving back without GPS but it was actually nice to get our bearings and have a drive around Canberra - it took us a while to realize that the average sized road we were on was, in fact, the freeway and that we wouldn't be able to just turn at the next set of traffic lights haha. We made it back eventually though, with a minimal number of dangerous moments!

The next day was Christmas!! YAAYY! We were hosting so we got to spend the day at home, bonus! Eddie and Will put out milk and cookies on Christmas Eve and in the morning Santa had come!!

Woo! We totally weren't expecting stockings and we're thrilled to find ours full of lovely little things. Eddie and Will are truly the cutest two kids and we had a wonderful morning unwrapping the prezzies in our stockings and all our family ones.

Karen, Zac, Sue, and Sir came over for Christmas lunch and we had yet another delicious feast cooked up by dad! 

Everyone left in the early afternoon and we spent the rest of the day playing board games and card games with Eddie and Will. Such a lovely day!

The next day we partook in the Boxing Day sales with great success! We also ran into Emma Pullinen and our auntie Louise which was kinda crazy..! They're so lovely, looking forward to catching up with them properly in the new year!

In the last couple days we've been mostly hanging out at home by the pool, riding bikes and reading books. We went and saw Big Hero 6 with the kids and it was SUCH a sweet movie, we all thoroughly enjoyed it! 

We also had lunch at Sue and Sir's to celebrate Samantha's 25th birthday (so nice) AND we all made guesses about whether or not she and her hubby Grant would have a boy or a girl - they were finding out the next day..! We both guessed it's a girl buuut we were wrong! A new little baby boy will be with us in a few months, yeee so exciting!! 

Yesterday we drove to Thredbo, a little skiing town a couple hours from Canberra, where we're having a mini-holiday and spending New Years. We have a lovely little apartment and we're planning on cloning Mount Kosciuszko (the tallest mountain in Australia) tomorrow! We had a delicious dinner last night at a restaurant with a gorgeous view of the mountains!

Today we rode the chairlift up part way and had morning tea, then came down and went on the bobsled! Han filmed it on the GoPro which was very cool, we're loving our new little camera! It's pretty quiet here but it sounds like new year should be a lot of fun! We're really enjoying the family time and are just overall very happy with how we're finishing up this crazy, challenging, wonderful year!

Highlights of the High Life

The last few weeks have been crazy! We've been SO busy packing and getting ready to go to Australia, but have managed to squeeze in some seriously yummy food (as always) and a few really fun little outings! Here're the highlights:

- The most delicious Cuban food you can possibly imagine! Pulled pork in a citrus marinade with rice, black beans, and caramelized plantains, amazing!! We drove over 45 minutes to get to the restaurant and it was sooo worth it!

- Bread pudding at Urth Caffe (finally!) it was out of this world good

- A Thanksgiving feast cooked up by our amazing Mum, the domestic goddess! Turkey, stuffing, broccoli/cauliflower au gratin, sweet potato with marshmallows on top, mashed potatoes, sautéed brussels sprouts with bacon, corn pudding, and 2 pies, cherry and pumpkin, for dessert! YUM!

- Black Friday shopping with Mum! We left the house at 4:30 and had SUCH a successful morning shopping. Sooo many bargains and minimal impulse buys, love it! 

- The Theory of Everything at the movies; it was absolutely outstanding! 

Eddie Redmayne was incredible and the whole film was totally mesmerizing, we'd highly recommend it!

- ARROW! It's such a great show and we've gotten mum and Q totally hooked! So fun rewatching with them..!

- We reattempted a juice cleanse with much more success! We lasted two days and, while it wasn't ideal, it wasn't awful and we were very proud of ourselves

- Followed up the juice cleanse with Sprinkles cupcakes at the Americana at Brand and did a little more shopping at H&M and Victoria's Secret while we were there.. We went a bit nuts these last couple weeks!

- We also followed the cleanse with a huge Dim Sum dinner at our favourite place, Lunasia, and it was as delicious as always!

- Our last little treats before heading back out to mum and Q's were Dulce de Leche cookies from Porto's Bakery. So good.

- Back out at mum and Q's we caught up with Luke on Saturday which was absolutely lovely and then spent the last week relaxing and getting pampered! We had a glorious spa day at Glen Ivy hot springs with Mum and then went out for holiday mani/pedis together the next day. What more could a girl ask for?!

- Luce and Mum baked up a storm of delicious holiday treats for us (which Q are waayy too many of) and it really started to feel like Christmas time!

- We got the rest of our packing done and, even more exciting, started to really plan our Euro trip! Woo!! We booked our first flight and chose the others, planning on having it all booked in the next couple days!

- On Friday we went to the Mission Inn for dinner and had a walk around to see all the Christmas lights. It was absolutely stunning! So festive!

- Saturday was our last full day before heading to Aus and we spent it relaxing and hanging out, with the yummiest pizzas you could imagine for dinner and got 22 Jump Street to watch (hilarious!)

- Sunday was our early family Christmas and it was so, so perfect. A couple stocking pressies each in the morning, just a taster, then our bigger presents for each other. Mum and Q gave us our backpacks for our trip (they're SO great, we love em!), a new bag each, lovely little decorative boxes and a bunch of other special little things - what really took the cake was Q's extra special pressie.. A selfie stick! Haha you put your phone on the end and it lets you get a wider reach for the pic, too funny. This was our first attempt, not bad!

We also gave Q season 2 of Arrow, did a special jar of love notes for Mum, and gave each other a new gopro to share! So great!

We all had brekkie and got ready then Sara, Darren, Joya, Rumi, and Liam arrived to spend the afternoon with us! We all opened our stockings and presents, drank and ate yet another delicious feast! It was all over too soon and at 6:00 we had to say our goodbyes and head to the airport..!

We're writing this post from Sydney airport after a really pleasant flight from LA - we had a mini row with lots of legroom all to ourselves! - while we wait to go on to Canberra. 

Our flight here was delayed so we missed our connection but we got on the next flight and only have to wait an extra 15 minutes! Woo! We'll be in Canberra in no time, can't wait to see Dad, Claire, and those gorgeous, crazy kiddos! Yeeeee we couldn't be more excited! We're nearly there!!!

Merry Christmas!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! We've had the most wonderful couple days here in Koh Samui! We arrived to this dinky little airport in the morning on Christmas Eve. There were little shuttles driving us over to the baggage claim and uhh immigration? Haha it was a very different experience to US or Aussie customs.

We drove to the house and it's absolute paradise! Beautiful inside and a lovely pool and deck chairs outside. We spent the morning and early afternoon by the pool, tanning and relaxing.

Later on we went on a bit of an adventure and drove all the way around the island. Poor dad had to catch on pretty quick to the, uhh, different road rules in Thailand - it was pretty crazy. Just driving around we really got a glimpse of a whole other world. We passed markets and shops and food stalls - lots of places to go back to! We got somewhat lost and decided to pull over into a parking spot and explore on foot. 

We happened upon the Chaweng markets that were just setting up and continued on a little way to an absolutely stunning beach. We walked along for a while, taking in the sea breeze and serenity, then came to a Thai restaurant on the beach that looked perfect for our first dinner here. 

We ordered a feast of mojitos, satay sticks, spring rolls, pad Thai, green curry and for dessert, the highlight, coconut sticky rice with mango, yum!! 

We strolled back through the markets after dinner to the car and, by some miracle, managed to find our house again. The kiddies put out milk and cookies for Santa and we all got an early night, very excited for Christmas!

At 5:00am, we woke to excited whispers outside our door - "Santa's been here!" We ran out to share in the Christmas morning joy and did our best to keep Eddie and Will quiet for a little while before they couldn't wait and went and woke up Dad and Claire to do stockings. We got some funny and yummy things from Santa - Eddie told us we better enjoy it because "next year's your last year of getting stockings"... Not sure who decreed that! - and it was all over by 6:15 haha. 

We had a big brekkie of eggs and what we thought was bacon (it was actually pork belly and tasted just like crackling when we cooked it up, when in Thailand!). We did the rest of the prezzies a little later and it was so fun watching Eddie and Will getting so excited about everything, big and small. We got lots of spending money which is SO great, the best thing we could've gotten, really, and beach bags and journals that will also be perfect to while we're here!

We had a relaxed day and met up with the rest of the fam later for Christmas dinner at Mick's Bungalows. We chatted and sipped on drinks while we waited for the big roast dinner to be ready - it ended up taking 3 hours! It was worth the wait, though, and we had some delicious mussels and prawns to get us through. Since it took so long, though, we'd all had a fair bit to drink and we're getting rather loud and silly. We were all seeing who could whistle and asked  Sir (Roger, Claire's dad) if he could he said he could but wouldn't show us because he's "here to watch the idiots - not be one of them!" hahaha it was a pretty great line. We had our yummy dinner with Christmas Pud and apple pie for dessert then headed home happy and tired. Such a lovely day!

Today we slept in then went to a nearby beach. It was beautiful!! There were huts on the sand to lay out on, yummy food and drinks and, best of all, a Thai massage place! For about $10 US each, we had an hour long massage listening to the sound of the ocean - actual paradise right there! 

We ate, tanned, and had a swim in the Gulf of Thailand, then came home to get ready to go out to night markets tonight! Can't wait! Ahh we are absolutely loving Thailand!

International Travelers!

Woah! So much traveling! Our long haul flight to Hong Kong (15 hours!) was surprisingly pleasant! Slept for about 8 hours, read, crocheted, watched movies and we were there! We had an easy transfer and layover, fairly short flight to Singapore, cleared customs, caught the AirTrain and before we knew it we we're checked into our hotel that was attached to the airport - barely feeling tired or shaggy at all! We've come to the conclusion that after so many flights back and forth to Aus our bodies must just be used to it, nice one!

The hotel in Singapore was SO COOL! Beautifully decorated, super modern, and distinctively different to any hotel we'd ever been in. We found our room and threw open the curtains to a view of the most incredible pool ever! 

We quickly got changed and ran downstairs to have a better look! Ahh it was just so exciting to be in a new country, even if we were still sort of in the airport haha. The pool was a bit chilly so we went back to the room and both had baths and lazed around in our fluffy bathrobes until Dad, Claire, Ed, and Will's flight got in!

Before long there was a knock on the door! One high pitched little voice claimed to be "room service" in a thick Aussie accent and another was "the pizza guy" - we opened the door and we're overwhelmed with wonderful hugs and kisses from our cute little siblings! Ahh it was so great to be reunited with them and Dad and Claire!! We all headed downstairs to get some cocktails and dinnery food and have a good catch up.

Our flight to Thailand left at 8:40 this morning and so far so good! We're on the plane now (although we can't post the blog until we land) and can't wait to finally reach Koh Samui!!