Blessings from Above

me! what?!?! another year has gone by again!?!? some of you have been asking... so here it is - my present from dh this year (he thinks i've been hoarding his for too long! keke...) don't ask me why its in orange - its not my fav. color - i'd blame it on dh's habit of buying presents last minute... tsk tsk! *how abt a digital SLR next year (or maybe as a push present for our next baby)* wink, wink! :) photos from my 'celebratory dinner @ mingles la brassarie - big splash ' using the new camera yummy lobster pasta - unfortunately the lobster is tiny so its more like crayfish! li'l princess part of our celebration this time round - she was sleeping in my sarong sling same time last year so no photo for comparison!

our flight today leaves brisbane at 2pm so we weren't left with that much time - fortunately, we managed to get the packing done last night so we could spend the morning leisurely. one of the reasons why we never spend unnecessary money on accommodations when we travel is that its really just a place for us to rest our heads after an exciting day out (so really, the bed is the only highlight for us)- dh hates hotel breakfasts and more importantly, we rarely even use the facilities within the hotel/apartments premises. haha... we only explored the facilities at tiki village just before we checked out (mostly just to capture some photos for keepsake!)... :P lovely view of the river from the roof top daddy & bb tan at the rooftop jacuzzi (i'm not sure if anyone uses that coz all the apartments come fitted with one!) me & dd at the pool side after checking out, its an hour's drive back to brisbane city - dh just had to have his katsu don once more before we headed...

how time flies - we're on the last (full) day of our holiday - we've to be at the airport around noon tomorrow. i left the day 'unscheduled' just in case we were unable to cover any of the attractions that we set out to do but with God's blessings, we were able to cover all the places we wanted to go and in good time! we did not even need to activate any 'plan b' aka 'emergency plans'. so we left the day again in the hands of God - Praise Him! he made our family holiday a truly enjoyable and memorable one with a beautiful ending. we woke up early, enjoyed a good breakfast in the apartment before heading out - byron bay is roughly an hour's drive away from gold coast, roughly at the border of queensland & new south wales. its a nice, little bohemian town with excellent diving (i started off my passion for diving here) and gorageous beaches. cape byron is australia's most easterly point and on a good day, you can see dolphins frolicking...

after spending slightly more than one morning at the koala sanctuary, we made a pit stop to the nearest mall for lunch and also some clean shoes and sock for my little princess. we then headed over to cleveland , where my friend resides. she has a lovely house facing the beach - at the back of the house was a nice,small pool and a river where her family yacht used to be berth. the yacht has since been sold though. i'm sure hers is a holiday home that many of us can only dream of. :) i didn't get a chance to snap a photo of her nice house but i did snap some photos of her cute little kitten - soda. claire loves animals - she's always excited and happy to see them - she was giving soda a kiss in the above photo. after resting at her home for a while, we headed out to hog's breath for dinner - miao insisted that we have to try the steak - we've never tried it back in singapore so we really cannot compare the standard. we invited two other friends to join us ...

how can a holiday to australia not include visiting their native animals, right? as planned, we drove an hour+ north to the lone pine koala sanctuary . after five days of relatively mild winter with temperatures hovering around early twenties... i decided this was how claire should be dressed and what do you know? the rains came falling down and the temperature went below 20 degrees... our 1st stop was the barn animals - claire was really excited to see the animals - she couldn't stop squealing in delight and kept pointing at the animals for us to give her the names so we didn't manage to take many shots of her looking at the camera! and after a while, her hands felt really cold so i took off my jacket to let dh 'wrap' it around her. a photo with the free roaming skippies - you can't actually tell that it was raining but it was! many, many skippies! close up of a skippy - can u spot the joey? daddy & bb tan with the other key res...

we managed to cover all the exhibits, shows & rides in sea world that we wanted to cover in good time and decided then to make a detour to the beach - absolutely doesn't make sense for us to be staying on surfers paradise and yet not explore the surrounding beaches right? more importantly, i will never bring claire to the dirty beaches back home ('cept maybe for those artificial ones at sentosa) so she won't have many chances to 'play with sand' - i even brought along a 'sand castle kit' from singapore but we never found a chance for her to use it! :P 2nd time she actually 'touched' sand - she played on the beach on our last trip to krabi. after feeling and touching for a while, she decided to taste the sand! yikes! i quickly took her to the nearest water cooler to wash out the sand from her mouth. talk about over-protective parents! haha... after that 'sand eating' moment, we 'moved on' to the playground just by the beach an...

once again, we managed to start the day early as we'd hoped to cover all the shows, exhibits and rides in sea world at a comfortable pace. note that i've never been there prior to this (i covered the other 'worlds' on gold coast previously) so i imagined it to be like disneyland - big & with plenty to do (i never managed to complete disneyland in a day, ever!) - i guess you can say i was pretty disappointed. before the trip, i spent some time on the website and it 'appeared' to have plenty to do but was not really the case. fortunately, we got a 1-for-1 coupon (A$69 for 2 pax, instead of 1; FOC for claire) from our car rental company for the admission ticket so that made me feel slightly better. :) me & my lil' princess at the entrance... daddy & bb tan queuing for tickets daddy & bb tan onboard the sea world monorail 1st exhibit - the dugong the battery for the camera died after this point and luckily, we brought along the video c...

since we started the day earlier and we didn't get lost finding natural bridge (arch), we had plenty of time to explore the other 'touristy' stops nearby. we had no particular destination in mind but my dear friend who visited us on day 2 (the one who brought us lots of yummy seafood) did mention that the flowers in the botanical gardens on the mountains shd be blooming so we decided to check it out. along the way, however, we made several pit-stops... 1st up was Mount Nathan Winery - a small boutique winery that was apparent churning out winners - several of their wines won gold medals in competitions and their secret? additive free honey extracted from bee hives established on site, resulting in some rather unique wines. while dh was busy tasting the wines, i took claire to check out the sheeps that they reared on their premises... and also sang her 'baa baa black sheep' to help 'associate' the song with the animal (now she keeps singing 'baaa ba...