New house!

Apologies for the delay in updating the blog! Life has been a bit hectic lately. ;)

In April, we moved from our downtown apartment to a two-storey home in the suburbs. It became apparent to us (due to having a little one on the way) that we had outgrown our lovely 2-bedroom + office apartment. Although we hated the thought of moving away from the city center, we did think it would be nice to be situated in a quiet neighbourhood again.

We began house hunting in January and stumbled upon this little gem the day before Stacy headed to New Zealand for work. The pictures on the realtor's site seemed too good to be true, so Blair scheduled a viewing when Stacy was away. It turned out that it was the perfect home for us, so Blair submitted a rental application the day before joining Stacy in NZ for a mini-vacation. This meant that we had a bit of paperwork to do before our vacation began, but it was well worth it in the end as the realtor selected us as tenants!

Our new home has 4 bedrooms, a loft with built-in office space, and a living/dining area plus separate family room. The biggest selling features for this home, however, were outdoors - a kitchen, fireplace, and swimming pool!

Here are a few pictures of our new place.

Cairns

Following Mel and Pete's visit to Canberra, they headed up to Cairns to visit more of Australia. Blair decided to join them for a quick getaway.

While in Cairns, the gang decided to take a day trip on the Kuranda Rainforest and Skyrail Tour. This included a ride on the Kuranda Scenic Railway which offered some pretty incredible photo opportunities.

One of the many bridges the train needed to cross

Barren Gorge

After the rail trip, the tour eventually led us to Hartleys Crocodile Adventures. Here they offered close up displays of crocodiles, snakes, spiders, koalas, and several species of birds including cassowaries!

Lots of Crocs!

Cassowary feeding. Possibly more dangerous than feeding Crocs!

The tour was extremely fun and allowed us to see a lot of the wildlife that can be found in Australia. Thanks to Mel and Pete for letting Blair tag along!

The Anderson's Visit!

Towards the end of March, we were fortunate enough to have some of our close friends from back home come and visit us!  Mel and Pete joined us in Canberra for about a week, and we had a great time enjoying each others company!

While they were here, we spent most of our time relaxing, but we did happen to get in a few tours around town. We visited Mount Ainslie to get a pretty outlook over the city of Canberra; we went to Tidbinbilla to see some roos (which where, unfortunately, hiding for the day); we did a tour of the National War Museum; and we went to our very first NRL Raiders game.  Oh, and let's not forget about the green milk! ;-)

The group of us at the lake

Canberra Raider's sponsored green milk!

Pete likes the green milk!

At the Raiders game - a bit chilly that night!

Luckily, Mel and Pete were also able to spend some time in Sydney, Adelaide, and Cairns during their visit to Australia.

It was a great visit, and we hope to be able to see them again soon!