The Best of Times

I often find beginning a post difficult. Every day is busy - my mind is always racing. Between work, sleep and sightseeing (yes, we are still tourists), it's hard to sit down, collect my thoughts and put together an interesting (and organised) post.

In the last month alone, Dylan came to visit for over a week, we travelled north to Cairns and Port Douglas to see the Reef, Conor and I moved into a new apartment and we hosted Thanksgiving dinner for over 30 of our (closest) friends. I snorkelled in the Great Barrier Reef with two of my favourite people, settled in to a cute new apartment in Paddington (a lovely suburb just west of the city), celebrated my 27th. birthday and cooked two turkeys for a handful of our friends and 20 (of my 24) staff from French Twist. It's been a hectic month.

First off, Dylan's visit was great. Although we were hosting two other Americans at the time, we managed to squeeze everyone into our two bedroom apartment, enjoy a couple games of Settlers and spend some quality time catching up and exploring one of the amazing natural wonders of the world. The three of us headed to Cairns a few weeks back (I flew separately from the boys, first class, of course - thanks to Dylan's miles). We attended a two hour lecture on the reef, rushed even further north to Mossman and camped out at a lovely B&B for the night. The next day we drove to Port Douglas, hopped on a boat, with about 25 other tourists, and sailed two hours to the Reef.



The Great Barrier Reef is, without a doubt, great. The fish, the coral, the colors - amazing! We went on three separate dives and rented a digital camera for the excursion. I think we took over 400 photos in just eight hours. We had a fabulous time floating on the surface together, in the middle of the ocean, for an entire day.

After Dylan's departure, Conor and I started packing up our belongings and the company's furniture, and a week later, moved into a one bedroom apartment in Paddington. We signed the papers on the apartment before I had a chance to see it in person. Although it's smaller than the last and fairly plain, the Paddo apartment feels much more like home. The neighbourhood is quiet and we have great folks living next door. I'm currently sitting on our balcony, staring through palm trees at the CBD. What a difference location makes...this apartment has improved our lifestyle quite a bit. We are surrounded by boutiques, cafes and restaurants, art galleries, movie theatres and there are two grocery stores within walking distance. We share a great bbq, patio and pool with only about twenty people - the common spaces are clean and always full of friendly people. We love our Paddington apartment.

Thanksgiving deserves a post of its own, but since I am such a terrible blogger, I will summarise the big day now (because who knows when I will sit down and write again). We started cooking the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I don't think I stopped, except to sleep for six hours, until the following day at four o'clock. Conor and I made pumpkin and cranberry bread, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, butternut squash soup, two turkeys, bread rolls, gravy, cheese platters, pumpkin pie, apple pie...the list goes on. Although we have cooked Thanksgiving dinner for our families the past two years, we have never cooked a dinner so large, for so many people, in such extreme temperatures. There was no turkey trot this year. I could barely trot the 20 metres to the pool to toss myself in after the long, long day. We ate and drank and ate more. We crammed over 20 people into our tiny apartment. We drank more beer, more wine and more gin than I have ever seen one group of people consume in one sitting - except for maybe Dog Head.

Thanksgiving was a success. We introduced our Australian friends to a fabulous American holiday. Fun was had by all. And I am still getting asked for the recipe for my cranberry bread!