HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It's 2015!!!!!!! Wahoooo!! We had an absolutely wonderful New Year's Eve - we climbed mount Kosciuszko with the fam, went to a lovely bbq for dinner, and danced the night away with Claire, 3 glasses and a bottle of Mumm champagne! 

(Our ears were freezing..!)

(Top of the mountain!! Highest point in Australia! So proud of Eddie and Will - and us - for walking 14kms up and back down this incredible peak!)

(Will and Han on the bobsled)

(Oh, and we introduced Claire to Jagerbombs..!)

Happy New Year to you beautiful friends and family - and anyone else! - reading our blog! We've so enjoyed sharing our adventures in LA with all of you, it was one crazy, intense, wonderful ride! Now that we're starting a new year in a new place, we've decided to continue living life to the fullest but to stop writing it down for a little while. This will be our last post - wow! - but tuned for a Travel Edition of the blog, coming in April!! May this year bring us all happiness, love, excitement, and tons of fun! We couldn't feel more positive and excited about this new direction our lives are taking and wish the same and more for everyone else! 

Lots of love,

Hannah and Lucy xoxo

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!!!

365 DAYS!!!

It's officially been a year since we started writing the blog!!! WOO! As of today we've done almost 100 blog posts and racked up 15,000 page views (pretty proud of that statistic!!) and we want to say a huge thanks to you guys for being so amazing and interested in our lives, we really appreciate all of your support! We thought this would be the perfect moment to take a trip down memory lane and look back on 100 of the most wonderful, meaningful, exciting, and epic moments of the last year..! Enjoy!

1. 

Starting the adventure! ROAD TRIP!!

2. 

Breaking down in Tennessee..!

3.

Saying goodbye to Mum and Q :(

4.

4th of July with Ollie! :)

5.

1st dinner with Lucy's roomies!

6.

Surprised the fam with a trip to Australia!!!

7.

Hanging out with our wonderful family <3

8.

Will's 5th birthday! 

9.

Blast from the past seeing our oldest friend Nick

10.

Goodbye Australia :(

11.

1st time IKEA struggles...

12.

First Disney trip of the year! (many more to come...)

13.

Helloooo Ladies! First day ever of Extra work..!

14.

Our wild 19th birthday celebrations ;) It was perfect!

15.

Luce got all dolled up 50's style for Mob City...

16.

...while Han got dolled up for Revenge in a Malibu Mansion!

17.

Jet-skiing in Santa Barbara, Happy Birthday to us!

18.

Leaving each other for college - totally emotionally unprepared...

19.

LUCY'S REACTION TO GETTING HER FIRST LINE ON TV

20.

Han all moved in to Chapman! 

21.

Partying it up at Chaptown, woo! 
(Luce partied at college too - she just didn't take any photos haha)

22.

Reunited after 3 weeks apart! And Luce got to meet Han's beautiful roomies

23.

Fountain hopping, a Chapman tradition, with the amazing COPA crowd!

24.

Dapper Day with the Dapper Dans <3

25.

Han's breakout role: a corpse('s arm)

26.

Feeling villainous on Friday the 13th

27.

WE'RE ON TV!!!!

28.

The Goober Gang back together

29.

Feeling spiritual with the lovely Laynie

30.

Thug life in Acting Class

31.

Yeah, we're actresses not models.. But we gave it a go!

32.

"Tell me about it, stud" ;)

33.

SAG eligible babyyy!!

34.

Feeling like a million bucks in Beverly Hills - shame our bank accounts say otherwise..!

35.

Fambam back together for Thanksgiving - Mum and Q all moved into their Cali home (the next best thing to Sleeping Beauty's Castle!)

36.

Hilariously fun times with Chase, the Peeta to my Katniss

37.

Best. Final. Ever.

38.

Dysfunctional pic of dysfunctional us. Leaving college behind for the real world!

39.

Chrissy trip to paradise...

40.

Christmas eve with this amazing fluro green duster-tree!

42.

We love Thailand

43.

Loving the sister time and banana pancakes at the Thai street markets

44.

"Goodluckgoodluckgoodluck" - feeling blessed

45.

Too incredible for words

46.

Sisterly love

47.

"I WISH TO BE COOOOOL" - Will's wish on his lantern

48.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

49.

Nan met us in Singapore, what a legend!

50.

Idiot competition in Legoland, it's a tough call...!

51.

Our first set of professional headshots

52.

Mailing em out to talent agencies: the biggest effort EVER

53.

Moving out of one apartment.....

54.

...... And into another!

55.

And we made this one truly feel like home <3

56.

First rehearsal for Greasy Grimey Gopher Guts

57.

Ghirardelli Club with Mike, one of our first LA friends

58.

We signed with an agent!!!!! Celebratory dinner with Mum and Q!

59.

Ali came to visit and us 3 clowns explored LA,

60.

met Harry Styles, 

61.

and did a Disney trip like no other!

62.

GGGG Opening Day!!! Our first show in LA and we got to do it together AND with the most amazing cast we could ever have hoped for!

63.

A year later and on the other side of the country, we still manage to go out for "Explore Sunday" - love you guys!

64.

Under 21 on St. Paddy's Day.. and we STILL managed to have a great time!!

65.

Seeing our future boyfriend, Theo James, with one of our best girlfriends, Ali Rice!

66.

SPRING BREAK!!!

67.

Beach babes

68.

"Optimus's Angels"

69.

Sex and the City: Los Angeles

70.

Celebrity sighting!! Josh x2 (Radnor in the foreground and Bowman in the background, amazing!)

71.

Beginning the Austrian adventure

72.

The family Von Trapp

73.

Hen's Night with the bride-to-be!!!

74.

Team pic in the Rufi Passage club! Best. Night. EVER.

75.

Excited to welcome Nadine into the family!

76.

Fun and games after the wedding

77.

Blockenspiel at the Glockenspiel

78.

Making marvelous Munich memories with Mum!

79.

Octoberfest 2016..?!

80.

Exploring a fairy tale town at the end of our fairy tale trip

81.

Never above, never below, always beside.

82.

Lunar Eclipse - one of many fun times with JT

83.

"Nature, it's all over me! Get it off!" 

84.

Bronzed Aussies

85.

Chikity China the Chinese Chicken - Barenaked Ladies concert..! Whatta throwback!

86.

ANZAC Day! 9:30am = LA's version of a Dawn Service

87.

Mother's Day in Malibu

88.

Catering the cricket

89.

Took it back to the 80's on an all night shoot!

90.

Beauty and the Geek audition and callback

91.

First time clubbing in LA!!!

92.

We really did meet Lena Headey..!

93.

Wednesday night out on the town - feelin' fab!     

94.

Lucky Strike with the gang!

95.

Super fun Father's Day in San Diego

96.

Getting the star treatment on a shoot for a commercial!

97.

Love you Sully!!! Taking on LA wouldn't be the same without ya babe!

98.

Final day of GGGG at the Hollywood Fringe Festival!

99.

The Watcher on the Wall for the Game of Thrones finale! Our GoT nights with Nick, Mike, and Eddie were SUCH a highlight of the last couple months!!

100.

Continuing to take Hollywood by storm! #twinning