Mooloolaba Hangs

Wow, life has been a whirlwind. The short summary is the other week I found out I was finally having my second (and more comprehensive) endo surgery.  I went in on Tuesday 25th, stayed in over night and was back in my own bed Wednesday evening.  It was my longest surgery yet (3+ hours) and yet recovery has been super smooth sailing.  I don't have quite the same energy levels I did pre-surgery but my pain is non-existent and I'm incredibly grateful.  Since I'm on "bed rest" it gives me some time to play blog catch up.  Today are some photos we took a few months back when Ben, Joop and myself went for a beach play date :)

 Patterns made in the sand by the sand bubbler crabs (so fun to watch them work, if you want a youtube distraction).

Excuse me whilst I go edit some more photos!

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Cyclone Debbie

The other week, Queensland (the state we live in) got hit by a cyclone (way up north) and we had the tail end of it down here. I was actually inside at the time, the power had gone out mid way through making a delicious Thai meal, so in my sadness, I grabbed a bag of burger rings, put on my head torch and stood on the verandah taking in the crazy storms. A few seconds later my neighbour knocked and asked if I just heard that massive noise - oops, must have been too into my burger rings :p We went out and checked and yup a tree had fallen on our roof. It looked pretty hectic at the time but in day light it seemed the tv dish on our roof saved the day, sitting just in the right spot to prevent any roof damage. 

 I took some photos to share :)

Our bedroom window does not normally look like that! 

The tree fell exactly above our bedroom

The day after, we had the SES (State Emergency Service)  come in super early and chainsaw the bulk of the tree so it no longer sat on our roof (super nice!)

The dish that saved the day!

Only half the tree fell (partly rotten inside) but it was still a crazy big clean up

The poor fence!

When Ben came home a few days later (yay Ben is home!) he chain sawed the remaining branches, fixed the fence and we stacked everything up nicely. I also got to keep some of the non-rotten branches for some future stools, which is a nice outcome to a sad event in my mind :)

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Booloumba

Christmas night and Boxing Day my family and I went camping at Booloumba. It's this really pretty spot just under an hour from where I live. The last few months have been pretty dry which meant the creek bed was also on the dry side but there were still a few little pockets where we could go swimming in and they were so beautiful!! We checked out Booloumba falls, went on a few walks and did some light painting at night (I'm going to do a seperate post for those photos though!).

The giant inflatable pretzel my cousin got me for Christmas definitely came to good use 

Unfortunately the hikes meant leeches - gross! It was just last year that I had my first leech experience so definitely a leech newbie but after having to pick off 5 during this trip, I'm now slightly less grossed out by them (only slightly!)

My little bro, J took that photo above, I think he has a really good eye for photography. By the way that's the strangler cairn which we last visited here.

People are good scales to show off impressive nature :)

I'm such a nerd but I honestly get a little excited learning new nature facts, this time we learned that hoop pines are named such because their barks falls off in hoops

And piccabeen trees are called such because their leaves make nice bowls to transport berries in and yup we demonstrated this above *nerd alert*

That fungi above was so cool with it's cup shape!

And then Ben pointed in the direction of all these pink flowers scattered on the forest floor, it was sooooo beautiful *gasp*

So pretty!

I'll be back tomorrow to share the light painting photos we did in that very creek bed above :)

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