A few little day trips

This past week Brandon had a break from school, so we got to do a little adventuring! Life has been kind of crazy for us, so it was nice to have some time to just hang out as a family.  The original plan was to make a roadtrip and visit some hospitals that Brandon has applied to for internship, but after making some phone calls we realized that there was no real benefit to doing that, so we stuck around home and made a few day trips.  The first of which was to the Brisbane Planetarium and Mt Cootha Botanical gardens.  I went to the planetarium for the first time when my parents were here visiting, and both Brandon and I are a little bit nerdy when it comes to astronomy, so it was fun to visit.  One day we'll go back and watch the imax movies, because they're pretty sweet too.  And a wander around the Botanical gardens is always fun.  Apparently this is the only picture we came home with that day:

Up next was a day trip down the coast to O'Reilly's in Lamington National Park.  We had heard about the suspension bridge tree-top walk so we decided to check it out.  And I'm sure it would have had a great view without the clouds!  haha.  We came across this random little bend in the road (which, by the way was the windiest, narrowest thing I have ever driven on) on the way up:

Australia does weird things with their roads sometimes.  It was a super foggy day, which, to be honest, I didn't mind at all.  I'm missing the fall weather back home, so this was a close second.

 

Hazel was loving the walk!  She kept getting mad when we'd pull the cover over the bassinet and just wanted to look around at everything!  She didn't even mind getting a few raindrops in the face so she could see.

She didn't really love the family selfies though...we'll have to work on that. 

We'll also have to work on finding someone to take an in focus family picture of us.After our walk we headed down to the little lodge at O'Reilly's where they have bird feeding.  These birds were crazy!  There were so many and they would swoop down and eat right out of your hand.  Or in my case, land on your head and poop on your shoulder...

Our next day trip was up to the Glass House Mountains to hike Mt Ngungun.  I had hiked it with the youth during young women's camp last year, but Brandon had never climbed it so we decided to go as a family.  It's pretty comparable to Bear's Hump I think - just maybe not quite as steep.  Again, Hazel was loving looking around (when her oversized hat wasn't falling in her face that is).  Top it off with lunch at Costco on the way home and who can complain?!

Cracker Lake

Before I get started here, I just need to get something off my chest. There's a few things I'm really good at, and a few that I'm not so stellar at. For example, I'm really good at falling asleep during the opening credits of a movie. I'm good at waking up to the birds outside my window at 5:30 every morning. I'm good at putting a lot of time and energy into my photography business. And I would even say that I'm fairly decent at remembering to bring my camera along on some of our adventures. 

The list of things I'm not so great at is a lengthy list, and it most definitely includes documenting our lives. I can't even count how many pictures are on my computer of all our wonderful memories, only to be lost in the abyss that is my macbook's hardrive. Like these pictures for example. We hiked to Cracker Lake almost 2 months ago, and this is the first time that I've even glanced at these pictures. So here's my question to all you memory preserving masterminds - what's your system? Because I need one. Something that I can put into my routine to stay ontop of documenting this wonderful, crazy life that we have. Let me know what works for you! 

Anyways, enough of my ramblings and onto the goods. When we were home this summer we decided that we wanted to go on a backpacking trip once Brandon finished his exams. We basically had 2 days at the end of our trip, so it was then or never. And what do you know, it snowed those days! Seriously we have the WORST luck with hiking weather, but we always try and make the best of it anyways. And to be honest, we just love being outdoors with each other no matter what its like outside. We were thinking something relatively ambitious, but due to the snow we decided to stick to something at a little lower elevation and a little bit shorter. I had always seen pictures of this gorgeous turquoise lake, so we decided Cracker Lake was our destination and started our journey early that afternoon. 

 We knew when we started that we were going to be in for a little bit of snow, but we definitely underestimated just how much snow there was going to be. By the time we got to the lake we were hiking through snow half way to our knees and we realized we were in for a straight up winter camp. Thankfully we brought my parents warm down sleeping bags and dry clothes!

  Brandon and I often have discussions about hiking gear and what we like/don't like. Most of the time we agree, but one thing that we tend to disagree on is hiking boots. You see, ever since I bought my first pair of gore-tex Salomons I have never had so much as a hot spot, let alone a blister. My feet NEVER got wet - even after backpacking the West Coast Trail for a week. I swear those boots are the best pair out there, and I would never wear anything else. Brandon, on the other hand, is more of a rugged, real leather, might-as-well-be-wearing-bricks-your-boots-are-so-heavy kinda guy. He is constantly telling me how great his boots are, and that leather is far better than any synthetic boot. Well, lets just say that he won on this hike. My amazing never-fail boots ripped a seam, which meant cold, wet feet for me. Add in weather of about 4 degrees, and my feet were pretty much ice blocks by the time we got to camp. So as it turns out, when I get cold, I pretty much become useless. Good thing I have such a good husband that set up camp for us and cooked dinner while I huddled in the sleeping bags in the tent to thaw out my feet!

 The lake was absolutely gorgeous in the snow, and after a chilly night's sleep we hiked out the next morning. It was the perfect little winter backpacking trip, and we can't wait to be able to do more one day when we actually live close by!