Leaving on a jet plane

Tomorrow is the day all of this excitment ends. We get on a plane at 2:45 and head back to the US. We land in San Francisco at 11:00 AM on the same day which is kind of funny. Then we land in Seattle at 3:00 pm. It's a long trip but it will feel really good to land in Seattle at the end of it.

This has just been quite the trip. We have learned so much about each other and traveling and the world in general. We both have mixed emotions about leaving. We are excited to go home and get back to a semi-normal routine, but at the same time it is sad to think about going back to normalicy when the last month has held so much excitement and adventure.

Thanks for all of your prayers over the last month. We would love some more as we get ready for the long trip home. We can't wait to get together with everyone and show you all of our pictures and tell you more stories. Talk to you all soon!!

The Reef

Hi! We are back in Cairns after 3 days aboard a beautiful ship on the reef!! The weather was a little disappointing. It was really windy and we weren't able to move around on the reef at all, which is one of the things we were most excited about. However, it was still beautiful and pretty amazing. We got to meet up with Nemo :) That was pretty cool! We also saw some turtles, unfortunately it was when we didn't have the camera with us. The staff on the boat was great and friendly. They offered us an opportunity to stay on the ship and help out with a few things to earn more dives for free. That would have been awesome, but we already paid for our place back in Cairns. Next time we come though we will definitely have to do that!

Our next few days are pretty relaxed. We are going to take a little trip to Kurranda - which is in the rainforest and just a beautiful place to see. We are also going to do the jungle swing at AJ Hackett this weekend probably. We can't believe our trip is almost over! A week from today we will be home! GEESH! Anyway, thanks for keeping tabs on us. :)

Cairns

One word for this picture....LOST

We have really been enjoying the beach. As you can see the beach is extremely crowded :) Tomorrow we leave for the reef and whenwe get back our trip will be almost over :( Thanks for all of your prayers and support during our trip!

Here is a zoo pic :) We are in Cairns enjoying the sunshine now. It is beautiful and the two days that we have been here have been spent at the beach. The water is nice and cool (well warm compared to the water in the northwest) and the sand is soft. We are so glad to be spending our last couple of weeks up here. It is lush and tropical and just fun! YAY! We head out to the Reef on Tuesday morning and are spending two nights out on the water! YAY! We will be back Thursday night and yes, Dad, we will call you as soon as we get back :) Or how about the next morning seeing as you will probably be asleep when we get home. LOVE YOU! We will post a couple more pictures tomorrow of the Cairns area!

STORM

The picture says it all folks.

Well our quest for sunshine has fallen short. Right now the winds are blowing and the rain is pouring and well, we are just wet. We went to the zoo yesterday despite the rainy morning we woke up to. It was a two hour bus ride but definitely worth it. We got to chill with Kangaroos, hold Koalas and see a ton of Crocs. It's a pretty sweet Zoo if you ever get the chance to come here. Although it was kind of sad because Steve Irwin wasn't there. The last time Tom came here he got to see Steve do the show in the Crocoseum. It didn't quite have the same feeling as it did a couple of years ago. However his legand lives on and the zoo is still an amazing place to visit. Now we are just kind of hiding out from the rain, looking around at some shops and just relaxing. The beach is still beautiful and even though we got soaked without touching the ocean, the sand was still extremely soft and was still fun to play on! We will post some pictures next time. TTFN

Here are Tom and Lauren by the Opera House. It is pretty darn huge and its not actually as white as it looks. It is the whitest at sunset with the reflection of the sun. It is also not one big building...it is in separate pieces...you can kind of see that here. Anyway we went and hung out here a few days ago. It is pretty sweet. We were going to go see an Opera but it was quite expensive. Dad(Mark) and Crosswordians we thought of you though...they are doing "A Streetcar Named Desire" the Opera. I bet it is amazing.

Today we went on an adventure to Olympic Park. It was quite a hike, but when we got there it was pretty spectacular. It is just huge. We took a water taxi which was really fun. It is just like a bus on water. It stops and picks up people along the way. Even though the weather was cold and rainy, it was still fun being on the water. We also went to the Aquarium. It was the perfect rainy day activity. :)

Tomorrow morning bright and early we leave for Surfers Paradise. We are staying there as we explore Brisbane and the surrounding areas. The weather should be warmer and the beaches more inviting. Hopefully our next pictures will be with only one layer of clothing and minus our fleece jackets. :)

Mom (Jean) We took this picture with the lighthouse in the background for you! Click on it so you can see it bigger. It was so pretty!
Today we went to Watson's Bay. It was BEAUTIFUL! Second on our top list of things we've done in Sydney. It was quiet and peaceful. And as you can see the views were amazing. These cliffs were huge and the waves crashing on them were just crazy. Even when you couldn't see the waves breaking you could hear them and it sounded like thunder. Also it was the first time since we've been here that we actually felt warm. So it was definitely a treat. We are finding that it is pretty time consuming to post a lot of pictures. We will keep trying to post more but one or two at a time might be the best we can get. :) Hope you are all having a lovely day.

This is a picture of us almost to the top of the bridge. The Opera House looking stunning behind us and look at the rainbow!!
For all of you hanging on the edge of your seats...waiting to find out if we are still alive....WE ARE! YAY! We made it to the top of the bridge. It was amazing!! The weather turned nice just for us :) Thanks for all of you who were praying for us!! It was a beautiful night. We went up in the daylight, got to the top at sunset and headed back down with all the lights of the city greeting us! It was definitely worth every penny it cost us. We love you guys! Here

Bridge Climb

It is cold windy and rainy in Sydney Australia and we are going to climb the slippery metal Harbor Bridge to the top and hopefully not fall off. Although Lauren is still missing a flip flop and has not found a replacement, our mood is high as it is WAY too cold to wear flip flops anyway. Tennis shoes are perfect as well as our jackets and jeans. We only have 25 seconds left to post this so we are signing out. We will write again as long as we dont fall off the bridge

We're Here

Hi Everybody!
Well we made it down under. And it has been quite an eventful day! I don't have a lot of time on this computer, so I will sum up the first half of our first day in Australia with this - Lauren lost one of her flip flops in the crack between the train and the platform - never to be seen again.

We will put pictures up soon and let you know more details!!!

Today is the Day!

In just a few short hours Tom and I head to the airport and our journey begins. We fly to LA first and have a 4 hour layover there. I'm actually kind of glad we have a nice long layover so that we have plenty of time to get through the international flight section. You just never know how long those lines might be.

At 10:40pm our flight takes off to Sydney. 14 hours later we will land in Sydney at 6:10am on August 12th (which just happens to be our anniversary) :) YAY! We are going to figure out how to get to the hostel and put our stuff away. Then we are going to start exploring Sydney and try to stay awake until bed time :) We will post more when we arrive!!

Thanks for your prayers!

Here are Tom and I with my scuba instructor Kirby!! This was RIGHT after I finished my last dive and got certified!! YAY

THIS WEEK!!

After 6 months of planning we cannot believe that August 10th is almost here! We are so excited and almost ready to go! Lauren finally finished her scuba certification today after some problems with her ear. We went diving at Edmonds Underwater park and saw tons of wildlife down there and then today on our last dive we went to Mukilteo. It was pretty sweet. There was a toilet and a kitchen sink with sea stars in them. They were HUGE! Also we saw a couple jelly fish. One was as tall as Lauren. It was a little freaky. It is a huge answer to prayer though that Lauren got her certification because we weren't sure she would get it in time for our trip.

This week we have a few things left to do. We'll probably be running around a lot but on Friday everything will be ready and we will take off on our adventure! We are trying to decide if we should take our wedding cake and eat it on the plane as we fly into Australia on our one year anniversary. It might be kind of fun...we'll see.

Thanks for all of your prayers! We can't wait to get there and share all the details. OH one more thing-Lauren's scuba instructor, Kirby, is going to let us use his digital underwater camera while we are there so hopefully we can get some sweet shots on the Reef!!

We will keep you posted!!

Calendar!

Here is a calendar of our travel schedule for Australia! It has the dates we are traveling and where we are staying while we are in each city. So here it is! We are so excited! Yippie!

The Countdown Begins

Well actually, the countdown began months ago when Tom and I bought our tickets for Australia. We are getting so excited for our trip and we wanted to set up this blog for while we are gone. Even though we are only going to be there for a month, we thought it would be fun to have a way to communicate with everyone without trying to write emails the whole time we are there.

We are almost ready for our trip at this point. We have most of the supplies and are figuring out our hostels right now. We booked our hostel for Sydney and are working on our hostels for Brisbane and Cairns. Man even as I am writing this I get SO excited!!! When we get to Cairns it is a little more complicated because we are staying on a boat on the Great Barrier Reef for a night, so our hostel stay is split in half. But the hostel system is SO awesome for things like that so we're super excited.

Our plans are to fly into Sydney on our one year anniversary! YAY! We will stay there for a week or so. Then we will head up to Brisbane on a train. It is about a 12 hour train ride but we will get to see a lot of the country this way so that should be a lot of fun. After Brisbane we head up to Cairns!! That is going to be amazing. First of all we get to sleep on the Great Barrier Reef! And second: I am getting my scuba certification this month so we get to do five day dives and one night dive on the Reef! After Cairns we are flying back to Sydney and then flying home.

We are so excited for this time to see the country and get to know the people! It is going to be an amazing time for us as a couple too! As it gets closer to our trip and throughout our trip we will add more posts and keep you all updated! We would love your prayers for our journey! Thanks!