New Years Day evening, and after pondering what to do, Howie suggested that I take him on an adventure.
So Debbie and I drove round and picked him up, and headed for Milsons Pt for some walking over the Harbour Bridge, and then some awesome pancakes at Pancakes On The Rocks. And then lots more walking back to the car.
Christmas ‘09 up here in Hervey Bay has been and gone.
We drove up here on the 23rd and 24th – long drive, but it wasn’t too bad. We were on the F3 by about 7:15 and heading north. We made it to Old Bar to visit Debbie’s grandma by about 10:15 and had some morning tea with her, and then it was time to keep driving. I was really happy with the time we were making… until we hit Kempsey. About 2km out of Kempsey, the traffic just stopped. And for about half an hour, we crawled into and then through Kempsey. Very annoying. But after that, there weren’t really any other hiccups. We got into Tweed Heads at about 6:30 and checked into the City Lights motel. Nice place, and the right price. After unloading and sitting down for a minute, it was off to the South Tweed bowlo for some dinner. It was a pretty decent place, and the meal was fine. It had a nice view looking over the river that Tweed Heads sits on.
We started the final leg about 8am the next morning, and a few minutes up the road as we hit Qld, it was 7am… so we were already ahead! Thankfully, getting along the freeways through the Gold Coast and Brisbane was smooth. As we neared the exit for Eumundi and Noosa, I felt a little nostalgic, and enjoyed remembering times in the late 80s / early 90s when we had holidays in Noosa. And so I exited for Eumundi for a little reviver break, and to hopefully find some coffee. And happily, there were quite a few cafes, and one serving some nicely made Toby’s Estate coffee. And then the drive continued, finally arriving in Hervey Bay at about 11:45. Very nice drive. Christmas Eve arvo and evening was just a bit of unpacking, saying hi to Hervey Bay and its beach across the road from our appartment, and a little napping too.
Then Christmas Day was up and off to visit Hervey Bay Baptist in the morning, before coming home, having some presents, and then heading out to lunch with everyone (Mum & Dad, Jenny & Ryan, and my grandparents). After a very big lunch, a nap was definitely in order… and I think I was still incredibly tired from the driving. So I slept for two hours. And then it was off to Dundowran Beach, where my Aunt & Uncle live, which is a suburb to the west of the main bits of Hervey Bay. We had dinner there with all the family who are up here for Christmas, and most of the extended family who live here in Qld. It was a nice evening seeing cousins who I haven’t seen in many months and catching up with them.
And now it’s boxing day… and the morning was spent with a visit to a coffee shop down the road, and the rest of the time has basically been on the couch watching the boxing day test, and playing card games with people. Just what I needed… and it’s helping me to slowly get over the tiredness that has been plaguing me for the last few weeks.
Sam had been talking about Indigo Ridge wine for a few months now. He found it at The Rocks’ markets one day a few months ago, raved about it, but then hasn’t been able to find it again since.
You’re able to order cases of their wine from their website… but where’s the fun in that? So with Debbie away for the weekend just gone, Sam and I thought it would be fun to head out to Orange (where Indigo Ridge is) on Sunday to buy some wine. We were greeted by a very friendly middle-aged couple who own Indigo Ridge, and who loved to chat, tell us about their winery, and about Orange too. They are very focused on the land they’re on, and about making the most use of it without damaging it – you should definitely check out their website (even if you aren’t into wine) to see how they are “greener than organic”.
They talked us through their 6 wines and gave us tastings of each – and they were all very impressive. Finding little wineries like this is fun; they don’t sell to bottlos, and basically don’t supply to Sydney at all, except through people ordering wines through their website. They just sell to a few restaurants and boutique bottlos in Orange, and then rely on cellar door buyers (like Sam and I) to sell their wine. They told us they prefer it that way, cos it means they get to meet most customers that drink their wine – I thought that was pretty cool.
Sam and I made mix tapes for the trip… not necessarily for each other – that would be a bit too romantic. Anyway, I was pretty proud of my mix. I thought I’d post the track listing:
- The Resolution – Jack’s Mannequin
- 1,000 Strands – Eliza Magill
- Santeria – Sublime
- Thump – Bertie Blackman
- The Hard Road – The Hilltop Hoods
- Until You’re Over Me – Maroon 5
- The Mixed Tape – Jack’s Mannequin (oops, two JM tracks!)
- If You Believe Me – Relient K
- Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running) – Foo Fighters
- The Feeling – Kutless
- Guerilla Radio – Rage Against The Machine
- King Of Wishful Thinking – New Found Glory
- Dancing On The Inside – Antiskeptic
- Stray – The Ross Irwin Soul Special
- Break It Out – The Rocket Summer
- Alarm Bells – The Lyrical Madmen
- Waiting For Us – The Porkers
- Forever Now – Pete Murray
- Cailin – Unwritten Law
- The Only Exception – Paramore
- Lord, Save Me From Myself – Jon Foreman
- Song For Elias – The Cat Empire
While it wasn’t deliberate, I just realised that just under half of those tracks are from Australian artists. I do love me some Aussie music.
Finally got around to getting back on to blogging.
Our wedding was awesome – it was a big blur, but it was a heap of fun. And Fiji was incredible as well – so relaxing, so humid, so expensive. Well, sort of expensive – things were basically the same cost as $AU, and the exchange rate was pretty much 1:1. But then you go into a resort where there’s no restaurants outside or around the resort, and all the food inside is very expensive! But it was very nice.
The resort was pretty awesome all round… very luxurious and relaxing. There was plenty to do, and heaps of Fiji culture too, which made it great. It tended to rain for about an hour each afternoon, but from what I understand, that’s pretty normal. Thursday then poured absolutely all day. Didn’t think much of it, and found other things to do in the resort that day, which was our last full day there.
We headed up to reception very early on Friday morning to get our bus to the airport. But were told that we weren’t going anywhere – the roads to the airport were flooded after all the rain. Friday morning was spent in a bit of a stress trying to organise flights… but by lunchtime it all seemed sorted for Saturday morning: helicopter flight to the airport; get on a waiting list for the 9am flight (cos it was full) hoping that someone else wouldn’t show up; getting to Sydney by 12:30 for James & Deby’s wedding at 2pm. Easy!
That was the theory.
The helicopter didn’t show up at 6am like it was supposed to – the winds were too high apparently. Then a bus showed up to take some other people. The driver reckoned he could get through the floodwaters, and we were all a bit sceptical about that. But he called a driver who’d left another hotel a few hours earlier and confirmed with him that he was at the airport. So after convincing him to take us too, we decided to take a risk on the bus.
And it paid off – we made it to the airport, and headed for the check-in desk. I explained why we didn’t make our flight yesterday and that we’d love to be able to get on this flight if people don’t show up. He very efficiently put all our details in the system and said we’d probably have to wait another 15 minutes until he might be able to allocate us seats. It turned out to be about half an hour, but during that time, I asked how many seats were left; he said 55. On a 400 seat plane, and with no one else coming to the check-in counters… I liked those odds.
We got our seats, very excitedly, and headed for the boarding gate lounges. But the plane was then delayed about 2 hours. It boarded at about 11, and finally took off about 11:30 or so. But that put James & Deby’s wedding ceremony well beyond reach, and even making the reception was going to be tight. But after landing, getting our bags, getting through customs and then picking up Micky, we were on our way home just before 4:30.
And we made the reception – got home at 5 to get washed up and changed, picked up the Howies, and then headed for the Berowra Waters ferry, where we ended up crossing the waters on the same ferry as the newly married couple :) And despite the tiredness that kicked in about halfway through the night, it was great to see everyone and celebrate with our Pennant Hills Rd buddies!
And so now we are in our second week of honeymooning. Not doing a whole lot… just hanging at home and relaxing. And putting away and to use the masses of wedding presents (we have some amazingly generous friends – we are still getting over it). Tomorrow, we’re heading down to Jamberoo with Sam and Lachie, which should be a heap of fun – I get to drive the Royal National Park road in Micky!
What a brilliant day Sydney turned on today. Just a tad hot for the James comfort factor, but I was happy nonetheless. Certainly awesome that it wasn’t raining… cos today was a day for a pic-a-nic.
Debbie and I got together some of our closest and most dear friends and headed out to Bicentennial Park in Homebush Bay. Everyone brought some food and a picnic blanket, and we sat around for several hours just eating food, chatting, taking photos, and just enjoying each other’s company. It was very wonderful, and I had to stop for a moment every now and then and just look at everyone that was there and be amazed at how much God has blessed Debs and I – He has provided some incredibly amazing people around us; people who we call friends and count as family [and even are family].
Ah, good times indeed. God is quite awesome.
There were some fun photos… I’ll put them up on Facebook, and maybe put some fun ones up here too now that I’ve worked out how to put photos on here reasonably.
After everyone had gone home, we headed to Ikea. The Howies and Cathy & Grant were heading there too, and it was time for a group Ikea date. The Three Tops Toonie Chicks had decided the same thing too :) It was fun wandering round looking at different bits of furniture and thinking that very soon we’re going to get to start furnishing our own place. That said, we still have to find one… and we probably should start looking. People tell me it’s difficult to find somewhere to rent at the moment.
It’s awesome that there’s still Sunday to go. The V8s are racing 500kms at Phillip Island tomorrow, and I will look forward to that race starting at about midday so I can watch a decent chunk of it before band practice. I will also look forward to watching it with B2 and Steve… seems ages since we’ve done that together. They apparently had two 14-lap races today to decide the grid for tomorrow’s big race, and that would’ve been brilliant to see. I’m counting on my Dad having recorded it… and I’ll try and catch up on it during the week :)
edit: photos from today are below (with a “more” link so I don’t hog the blogfeed front page)… (more…)
I’m really enjoying the new Relient K album. The first 13 tracks are all original, and they have a very ‘country’ feel to them. Still quite punky at times, but the country flavour makes it very different indeed. The rest of the tracks are all b-sides and acoustic versions. Quite cool as well. But I am greatly enjoying the new sounds.
Yesterday was quite the busy, but awesome day…
Got up nice and early and headed to Hornsby station to leave my car. I jumped on a train and found Sammy at Beecroft station and we headed into the city. The Aroma Festival was on in the rocks. It’s apparently for lovers of coffee, chocolate, tea and spice – but all we cared about was the coffee. We started with some turkish coffee, but that was a big mistake. We tried some awesome 100% fair-trade and organic Republica coffee, which was pretty brilliant. But the peak of the day came a few moments later when we had a perfect latte from my friends at Velluto Nero. It’s quite possibly the closest thing to coffee perfection that I’ve tasted, and perhaps will ever taste. I will definitely miss that place with not working in the city anymore. After having some Danes Gourmet Coffee to finish it off, we headed back to Wynyard and back on a train to Hornsby… Just slightly buzzing.
edit: Forgot to add here in the middle that I had lunch at Cathy Bell’s place. Hang time with Thornleigh people was quite fun :) It was a pity that I could only stay for a couple of hours… but it was still a great time. I got in trouble for not including that.
I headed back down to Toonie for band practice. I found out about half an hour before practice was due to start that there was no drummer. It was a bit frustrating to hear… but surprisingly, it didn’t actually get me down too much. I told all the musos straight up, and just suggested that we focus on working each song acoustically, and just really listen to each other. The first run-through was very rough, but once we worked out an order, and then decided how each song would be done, it sounded tops for the final run-through. It was a challenge and a half, and I was definitely feeling exhausted by the end of the service… but it was a great experience. And importantly, it was a great time to sing cool songs to God :)
And then it was dinner time at Hogs Breath! Debbie was visiting, so she came with all of us Toonie people. And it was a really fun night out hanging with those guys. We had some good times reminiscing about old House of Bach days, and all-night LAN parties and Bathurst challenges on the Xbox. Ahh good times :) But then it was time for James to go home and clean his room. It looks good now though!
Monday has gone fairly quickly. I’m loving the fact that I woke up at 7:30 this morning, left the house at 8, and was still early to work. Love it.
On the 1st January 2008, I met an amazing woman. And I felt amazingly blessed when I realised that she loved me, and that there was something pretty special between us from very early on.
On June 21st, I asked Debbie to marry me. And she said yes :)
The last 5 months and 21 days have been some of the most amazing in my life. Through my relationship with Debbie, I have grown so much closer to God, and started to really learn what it is to rely on God, His strength, and His timing.
And friends, having God at the centre of your relationship is so awesome. It’s one of those things that you realise is just so good that you never want to be so stupid as to do without it.
But about today; here’s the story:
Today was an adventure that was part of Debbie’s birthday present. She didn’t know where we were going, or what we were doing.
We headed up to the Blue Mountains. I took Debbie up to Mt York, just near Mt Victoria. There’s an amazing lookout there that we’d visited before. We had some morning tea there, including cheese and biscuits, and even prawns, and some Maison too. But after sitting outside in the 7 degree temperatures for a little while, we got back in the car to finish our Maison.
We headed down to Blackheath, and out to Perry’s Lookdown, which has some quite amazing views. And Micky did well on the very rough and pothole-filled dirt road out to the lookdown. Then it was lunchtime, and so back into the centre of Blackheath for lunch at an amazing Italian restaurant. We were lucky enough to be the only people in the place for most of the time, and had a table right in front of the open fire. Really awesome food. Definitely on the list of places to go back to.
Then it was afternoon tea time. So off to Leura! We went to Everglades historic gardens. I hadn’t been there before, but it’s quite an amazing place. There was a wedding happening just off to the side in one of the gardens (ironic?), but we headed into the house that is there and had a nice hot chocolate and coffee before going for a wander in the gardens.
After a short walk, we found this small natural pool with a waterfall coming down into it. It was quite amazing and very tranquil. And everything just fell into place, and before I knew it, I had proposed to Debbie, and she’d excitedly said yes :)
It was quite funny… cos we were pretty quick to get out of there, and all excited about calling parents and family, and then messaging all our friends. So our trip back down the mountains felt very quick, because we were on the phone almost the whole way down, and then reading lots of messages too.
It’s all been quite a blur, but an exciting blur :)
Can’t believe I haven’t blogged since Wednesday. The end of this week has just flown by.
Both Thursday and Friday were pretty good days at work. I spent quite a bit of time creating a couple of proposal templates for us to use at work – well actually, there were a couple floating around, but they needed tidying up and updating, so I made them pretty and easy to edit for each customer. It was actually quite fun.
Thursday night was Kedron meeting #2. Great evening… and feeling quite a lot more relaxed now that there’s a bunch of program ideas in the air and written down. But now the pressure’s on me to put them into a program. And I’m feeling like I want to do something quite different with the structure this year… which is hard cos I have to work in with the Senior High program as well. But we’ll see what happens :)
And then last night was off to Wenty to watch Les Miserable being performed by the Holroyd Musical & Dramatic Society. Mum got a part in it, so it was awesome to go and see her perform… but I definitely enjoyed the musical for what it was. Never seen Les Mis before, but it was brilliant. And incredibly well done – a very high standard for an amateur production!
Today was glorious – did nothing really. Well, had nothing planned. Debbie and I were having dinner last night and suddenly realised that there was absolutely nothing planned for today. After getting my haircut, I headed round to her place to hopefully see Jen & Howie, hear awesome stories, and maybe even get presents… but Howie wasn’t feeling too wonderful, so it had to be postponed. So we went on an adventure out to Fagan Park, where I’d never been before – that was a bit of fun – and then seeing as we were already sort of north-ish, we kept going and went to Pie in the Sky for lunch. I was very excited on the way :)
And then it’s just been hanging out back here at the House of Bach, watching AFL, playing keyboard and making fun music in GarageBand, and now just having had dinner and watched The Italian Job. Nice day.
Second mountains adventure in just over two weeks! And it was Micky’s first real big drive today… and he did great!
Debs and I headed up to visit the Turnbulls and associated other halves for the day. We met them in an awesome little hippy cafe in Katoomba called the Elephant Bean Cafe. The coffee was amazing, and the toasted sandwiches for lunch were quite brilliant too (albeit just a tad expensive). I guzzled down two lattes in the space of about half an hour, so I was feeling quite wired.
It was lots of fun chatting with and properly meeting Zoe and Tom (whose wedding I’d been to having really never met them before!). And it was awesome to catch up more with Sam and his wonderful Canadian girl, Jenn :) We then excursioned over to Leura for some cake and more chatting.
Zoe and Tom had to head off, but Sam, Jenn, Debs and me all went on a bit of a drive out to Blackheath, and to Govett’s Leap for a look into the amazing valleys, and even went for a little walk too.
Such a fun day! And now Debbie and I are off up to Berowra for a seafood buffet dinner with her parentals… what a great way to finish a Saturday!
I’m so sick of trying to find what stupid bit of CSS code is stuffing up the images in the post, and inserting them inline when I don’t want them inline. So I will just direct you to the photos on Facebook. I’m thinking I might get a new theme soon anyway – which will hopefully make future images behave.