Happy Valentine's

For our Valentine's date this year Rick and I celebrated by going to our favorite restaurant

"The Five Alls"

It is located off of Foothill Drive and has been our favorite since we started dating. It is an Old English atmosphere complete with pewter dinnerware. The food there is wonderful and we like to go there for special occasions. Because the economy is down they are only open on the weekends now. Give it a try.....you will NOT be dissappointed.

Rick sent me flowers earlier in the day. What a sweetie!

Sunday evening I prepared a special Valentine's dinner for the family. We had tossed salad, stuffed cornish game hens, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, raspberry jello, foccocia herb bread and for dessert the kids helped me dip chocolate strawberries,marshmallows and pretzels.

YUM!
Rick bought the kids' gifts. Flowers and stuffed animals for the girls and "treats" for Gary!

What a fun night!

Gold Coast, Australia (part2)

We made it home safe and sound from "the land down under" last Wednesday night. What a trip to remember! I wanted to post a few more pics of our trip....

This is another view over our balcony.....the inner river.

I loved this flower arrngement in the lobby of our hotel. Those honeycomb flowers are so cool.....I have never seen those before. We also saw them at the farmer' market on Saturday.

I would have loved to bring them home with me!

Sunday afternoon we took a drive up to Lamington Nat'l forest. The road was harrowing (picture the road to Hana only raining and on a cliff)! No, it wasn't quite that bad but I did get a little testy with Rick. He was loving it and I was NOT!

Once we got there though, it was incredibly beautiful.

Here is the cool picture of Rick feeding the wild birds. He LOVES this kind of stuff!

On Monday we went wave running! It was SO MUCH FUN! Rick drove for the first hour and followed our guide through the mangroves. So fun 'cause the water was so glassy. Out in the open water though was VERY rough. I had to keep telling him to slow down......I'm not as young as I used to be:) We stopped at an island resort for a drink and a rest. Here's a little critter we found eating some veggie scraps thrown out by the restaurant. Notice the "joey" in her pouch.

Here are a few pics of the wildlife we encountered at the Currumbin Sanctuary.

Baby Croc

Koala.......she's a cutie!

feeding Kangaroos

Tasmanian Devil

We also saw a flying squirrel, , a 25 ft croc (that guy was a monster), huge bats (with a 2- 3 foot wing span.....Kinda creepy, frogs, and many other creatures of the night! After the walk through the park we got to see some aboriginal dances from these guys. The guy on the right played the didgereedoo......Awesome!

Our last day there we rented some beach bikes and headed out to the 'spit' ( a piece of land that juts out into the ocean). Getting there wasn't so bad.....just a leisurely ride. Getting back however was a different story. We rode into the wind the whole way. Miserable!

Our last night there we ate at Benihana's right there at our hotel. A fun way to end our trip! Notice my hair.....upon arrival I found that my curling iron had broken completely in half. Ok, I thought, I'll manage. Then on Sunday my hairspray nozzle stopped working. Dang! I was to cheap to buy any more because everything there was so expensive. So for the whole trip I either pulled it back or looked like a dork.

Goodbye Australia.......thanks for the memories!