Back To Reality!

I'm BAAAAAAAACK!! Did you miss me??? I'll pretend you said yes! :0) Well, my beloved Geek Boy and I are back from our holiday travels of the last two weeks - and almost decided we were going away again, since the night we arrived home saw the temperatures dip to 4 degrees! Now, that may not seem too cold to some of you and it wasn't even the lowest we've hit in Toowoomba this winter, but after two weeks of coastal and northern warmth, it was a bit of a rude homecoming!

Still, we had a wonderful time away - saw lots, did lots, caught up with lots of family and friends  and (much to GB's dismay!!) ... SHOPPED LOTS! Tee! Hee! Hee! I won't try to tell you all about it in one post (did you just hear Chookyblue give a sigh of relief?!? Tee! Hee! Hee!) but over the next few days, I'll fill you in on a few of our adventures.

Firstly, though, I'll apologise for dropping off the radar for the whole time. I had planned to post a couple of times and keep up with emails, but we just didn't have reliable internet for most of our time away - The best laid plans of mice and men  etc! Thanks to all the OPAM gals who emailed their finishes to me. Never fear - even though you didn't hear back from me as you usually do, your finishes were added to the OPAM spreadsheet. And on that subject, I'd like to give a HUGE ...

THANK YOU!!

... to my OPAM partner in crime, the gorgeous Peg, who carried the bulk of the OPAM load this month due to my patchy internet access - thanks Peg! You're a Wonder Woman! :0) OK ... now on to our adventures ...

After much scrambling to pack ports, check lists, convince dogs they were NOT coming this time, write lists for house-sitter, get dogs out of the car, check lists again ... you get the picture! The usual 'going on holidays' chaos ... we headed north east to Noosaville, where we'd booked a lovely unit for five days of beach bliss. So, of course ... IT RAINED! Though there were patches of ordinary old overcast to break up the rain, it was WET! SIGH! This always happens when we head to the beach, but we figure it's still warmer than Toowoomba and rain is a bit of a novelty, so being veterans of wet beach weather ... we did other things! :0)

Our days started with a 'weather report' ... which involved stepping out on to the balcony to see what the day was like ...

Here is our balcony view - it's a tough job, but SOMEONE had to do it! Tee! Hee! Hee! Our unit overlooked one of Noosa's canals and that meant that some of our neighbours had weathers and webbed feet ... do you see that little torpedo speeding into the bottom of the frame?

He had friends! :0) It was a lovely way to start the day, communing with nature. :0)

Since it was a bit grey and cold at the beach, we headed inland a bit and up into the hills to visit one of our favourite places - Montville. If you haven't been there and you're ever in the vicinity, you really should include it on your itinerary. Set amongst rolling green hills that remind me of photos of Scotland and Ireland, you'll find a cute little village that has lots of wonderful shops to browse through, coffee shops to get your caffeine fix and restaurants to relax and enjoy a delicious meal. The best part? You can do all of these things while enjoying this view ...

Isn't it great!! I think perhaps it's good that I don't live at Montville, though, cos I'd spend so much time admiring the view that I would never get anything done! Tee! Hee! Hee!

Here's GB checking out the scenery from the deck of the restaurant where we had the YUMMIEST barramundi lunch ever! It's a bit hard to see due to the haze, but on a clear day, you can see the ocean from here too - the best of all worlds! :0)

This is one of the great buildings at Montville - very soothing to listen to the water splashing over the waterwheel.

So ... after a day of enjoyable browsing, view-admiring and shopping (forgot to take photos of my purchases! Oops!) what better way to end the day than ...

Feet up, canal views, a glass of my fave berry wine and a fave book .... AAAAAAAHHH!!! Life doesn't get much better! :0)

The next day was a quiet one, we slept in, communed with the ducky neighbours, checked out my Uncle and Aunt's new home in the area and generally kicked back - we have to do a bit of a balancing act when we're on holidays, cos while I like to be out and about having adventures, GB just likes to kick back and sleep/read/play on his computer ... So the quiet day was balanced by dinner out at a lovely restaurant where we met up with someone who I think many of you will know ... Lynette Anderson and her beloved Vince!

Here we all are, after enjoying a DELICIOUS meal at Lynette and Vince's fave restaurant ... the Blue Fish ... I think ... I'm not 100% certain of the name! Oops! We had a wonderful evening of good food, fine wine and LOTS of chatting! The boys exchanged geek-speak (techo talk!) and Lynette and I chatted about ... hmmm ... well ... EVERYTHING! :0) Definitely NO awkward silences! Tee! Hee! Hee! Lynette and I have chatted via email a bit, but this was the first time we'd met up and we had a fabulous time - look forward to catching up again soon, Lynette and Vince and thank you for a really enjoyable evening ! :0) Actually, Lynette and I will get to catch up a little in September when she comes to Toowoomba as one of the guest tutors at Marion's Stitchers' Dream Day Out event ... can't wait! :0)

After a VERY rainy night, we tossed up whether to go to the markets at Eumundi or not (they're only on Saturday and Wednesday and we'd missed the Saturday ones) but finally decided to brave the mud ... and mud there was ... in ABUNDANCE! Hmmm ... they really should consider paving their car park!!! While the Wednesday markets are a little smaller than the Saturday event, there was still plenty to do and see, including this guy ...

He was tickling the ivories on this spinet and it reminded me of the old western movies where there's a guy off in the corner playing a slightly out-of-tune piano. As you can tell by the photo ... he was a real character! :0) After picking up a few birthday gifties to put in my birthday basket, we enjoyed some freshly made Dutch pancakes with fresh local strawberries - YUMMO!! - then headed back to the unit when it started showering again.

And having come to the end of our five days 'at the beach' we headed inland the next day to my parents at Mundubbera for a couple of days before heading further north ... but I'll tell you about that next time! :0) Right now, I'm off to answer a few more of the 88 emails I found in my "In box" when I got home ... EEP! And there were over 100 blog posts in my RSS feeds folders, too - WOW! You blogging buddies sure had been busy while I was away! :0) I'm gradually catching up with my blog reading and answering the emails, so if you haven't heard from me ... hang in there, I'm getting to you! Tee! Hee! Hee! Til next time ...

BEAR HUGS!
CHEERS!
KRIS