Easter weekend - Sunday

Alvan and I visited Tara's ward "Karrawatha Ward" this week. It was great to spend time with her family, Tara taught a wonderful lesson in Relief Society.. she's an amazing woman, mother and wife. And Perrin gave a fantastic talk in Primary we were able to be there for too. After Church The Andersens, Elly & Rick and Jaime & Rob all came over for our traditional "Easter Feast". It's based on eating the kinds of foods that would have been consumed during Christ's time on earth. We had shaved lamb kebab meat, turkish bread (drizzled with olive oil and garlic and toasted in the oven), hommus, dried apricots, almonds, grapes, dates, and grape and apple juice to drink, yummy! Afterwards, everyone just sat around and visited, it was a lovely night... simple moments are often the special times.

Easter weekend - Friday & Saturday

Alvan and I woke up to discover an absolutely beautiful sunny day so decided it was a good day to go to O'reilly's. (An area in the Lamingtong National Park that has treetop walks, and lots of native birds that you can feed.) It was a very narrow, steep, and twisty drive to get there, but we enjoyed being together, the bounties of nature, and feeding the birds. It was beautiful walking through the bush, and Alvan even climbed the ladder on the side of a tree that took him another 30 metres higher than the treetop walk. There's a fantastic tree called the Booyong tree, and giant fig trees with decayed trees inside that create a kind of lattice chimney inside the fig tree....amazing. But our favourite bit was feeding the birds...especially helping the younger kids and tourists by "giving" them the birds that landed on our hands and arms...and heads!! Our trick for getting lots of birds...sunflowers seeds bought at the supermarket! After leaving O'reillys' we headed to the Gold Coast were we checked into the Jupiters Casino Hotel for the night. We went on the Wotif website before we left home and found a bargin too good to pass up. We booked ourselves into the executive suite, which includes stunning ocean views, morning newspaper, breakfast for two in the executive lounge, and exclusive access to the executive lounge at anytime, which also included free drinks and canopies before dinner. All for less than half the normal price!! Gotta love a bargin.. :) We enjoyed a yummy buffet dinner together that night, and in the morning after our breakfast, we spoilt ourselves with a 60 minutes reflexology massage each...heaven!!

Alvan's Birthday

I decided Alvan's not the only one who can come up with great surprises. I had been planning on seeing Phantom of the Opera at the end of March with a bunch of sisters from Relief Society. Alvan had asked if he could come too.... I told him no "it's a girl's thing". But secretly I pulled out of the sisters activity, and bought us new tickets for the show. Preferred seating even, we will be in the stalls about 12 rows from the front in the middle!! I kept it as a surprise (which is much harder than you'd think). We don't actually go until April 16th (that was the earliest I could get with the good seats). But the anticipation makes it even more fun I think. He also got 2 surfing lessons paid for by Elly & Rick & Jaime, which he was sooo excited about. He had the first lesson last Saturday, and now he can't wait to get back out there again. It was the best weather we've had all year, so he had a great day for it.

Valentines Day ..better late than never

I just wanted to spend a few minutes catching up some pretty important days from last month. Valentines Day was great. Alvan had a absolutely gorgeous bunch of long stem red roses sent to my office. I was the envy of all the other women there. They were so beautiful, and they really smelt so amazing. Then he surprised me when he picked me up from work and took me out for dinner at a lovely restaurant. I had a delicious salmon dish, and Alvan had a fabulous chicken cordon bleu with an scrumptious mango sauce....Yummy!! What a romantic hubby I have, jealous everyone?? lol