Category: Mt Beauty

Where to start

/ Renae / 2 Comments

This is the problem with not blogging “live” for a while – too much to catch up on!! For those of you who were in on the secret, the surprise weekend birthday party for Hubs was just brilliant. Maybe I’ll start with that, and work my way backwards. A few months ago, Hubs’ sister and I started planning for her and 6 of Hubs’ friends to fly down to Melbourne, drive to Mt Beauty, and turn up on our doorstep as a surprise to Hubs, and spend the weekend here. I cannot tell you how many times I accidentally nearly blew the surprise. Sleep deprivation does not help with keeping surprises a secret, but I managed to keep my mouth shut and even convinced Hubs to go snowboarding on Friday (didn’t take much) so I could prepare for the arrivals.

The first carload of people rocked up at 5pm and Hubs came home a bit after 6 and got a great surprise! The beers and rum began to flow freely, and by 11:30pm I was beat, so left Hubs and 3 of his mates (2 others had retired earlier) to catch up. I knew Hubs’ sister and other friend were due to arrive after 3am and I could hear Hubs and Uncle Ben – the last men standing – chatting and drinking into the wee hours. I thought they would come to bed, and have Lsl wake Hubs up to surprise him, but Ben had other plans. They were still up when Lsl and Hubs’ mate arrived at 3:30am and he got another great surprise!! I popped out to say hi and set up extra beds, and retired again around 4:30am. Hubs didn’t crawl into bed until 6, and guess who woke up, ready to play with Mama at 6:15am!!! WOO HOO!!!! Thankfully after a little brekky and play, Chanbe and I rejoined Hubs for another hour of sleep around 8.

So Saturday was spent with a walk into town, a visit to the local Tavern, and a push home in the stroller. (I had driven Chance home earlier.) Oh, and Hubs’ last birthday cake for this year.

I had had the Tetris cake idea in my head (and in my iPhone reminders) for months, and I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

We spent Sunday at a few wineries and the Bright Brewery, and had dinner at home. At this point, I might share some photos instead of more words.

Hubs at the first winery

The whole gang at the third winery
Too cute at the brewery
It really was such a great weekend, and quite sad to bid everyone farewell on Monday morning. I would like to take this opportunity to say THANKS FOR COMING – you really made Hubs’ 30th birthday something special x x x

And…. we’re back!

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We have internet connected!! I’m really rather impressed that it happened so quickly in the end! And, I had only scheduled posts up until Sunday so I just scraped in!

The move went really well, due in no small part to the help from my parents. They looked after Chance while we got stuck into the packing, moving, and cleaning the old place. Then once we were in our new place, they cooked, cleaned and babysat while we settled in. They left this morning and I’ve already noticed all the extra things they had been doing (washing, doing the dishes, cooking) that I now have to get used to doing again! It was so great having them around and I’m already looking forward to Mum coming back down in 10 days to stay with Chance and I while Hubs is in Shep for 2 weeks of orientation. But that’s a story for another day.

We also had help from our friends Kyra and Stephan and little Frederick. Thanks guys!! Can’t wait to have you back here for a holiday sometime. 

We love the new place. The extra space is fantastic, and Mt Beauty is such a cute little town. We had our friends Mick (Hubs’ med friend) and Lea (Chance’s Godmother) and their 2 kids stay with us over for a few days. We went up to the snow on Sunday – photos to come – and generally just hung around and had a great catch up. It was so wonderful having them around, and having a really full house. This is what we have missed so much – having friends and family stay with us. We can’t wait for the next lot of visitors to come!

Hubs went snowboarding yesterday and is going again tomorrow so he’s already putting his season pass to good use. I’ll leave the update there for now, and share more with you in the next few days.

Just like old times

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I’ve been sitting here reading my google reader, eating an Easter egg, with Chanbe asleep in his cot, thinking “I really should blog” for about half an hour, so here I am! There’s just so much to tell! Uncle Benny left this morning after a lovely week-long visit. Hubs, Uncle Benny and I used to hang out a bit together back when Hubs and I were courting (yes, I just said courting) (meaning v.tr. 2) and we really miss those days. I’m happy to share that we recaptured some of that magic on our road trip down to Stratford! Just like old times… plus a baby 🙂

We had a fantastic visit with my family down south and the road from Bright to Stratford, via Mt Hotham was rather spectacular! Not that I could enjoy it on the way, as I was so car sick 🙁 But the trip back was really something! We were at the top of the mountain just before sunset so the boys took some gorgeous photos. It certainly was chilly up there! It was amazing to see ski fields minus the snow. There was a real deserted feel about the place, even though there were quite a few people around, hiking and whatnot. It will be marvellous to see it in the middle of ski season!

Hubs and Uncle Benny had a very manly weekend, drinking beer, going fishing on Sunday and catching some bream for dinner, and yesterday they went rabbit catching with friends of ours on their property. I cooked the rabbit for dinner last night! I’m not sure how I feel about eating rabbit… But anyway it was nice. 

The weather here at the moment is pretty magical and I’m trying to make the most of it while it lasts. The house we looked at at Mt Beauty was pretty nice, but we have a couple more to check out before we make any decisions.

That’s pretty much all there is to share at the moment, other than the fact that Chanbe turned 5 months old today. He’s doing wonderfully and we’re really enjoying his smiles and laughs, and the fact that he is having 2 naps every day! Yay! We’re heading to Melbourne this weekend for my Marriage Celebrant ongoing professional development day, and we’ll hopefully be catching up with a few friends as well. I promise to post more photos soon. In the mean time, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter!!

 Oh he’s a country boy now all right!!

Beauty mate!

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Today has been one of those ho-hum days. I’m tired and I’m sick of washing and trying to tidy our unit and am just generally nice and grumpy. Hubs cheered me up a bit before so now I’m (just barely) in the mood to write about our little trip to Mt Beauty yesterday.

We headed there to check out the town where we will be living in a few months time. Hard to believe we’ll be moving in the not-too-distant future. I keep trying to get our current abode in a manageable state, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s too small and we have too much stuff so it’s always going to feel cluttered. (This added to my doldrums today 🙂

So anyway, we had a drive around and chatted to the 2 real estate agents there. They seemed pretty confident that we’d be able to find something at that time of year so that was reassuring. I just can’t wait to move to a house where we can actually have people over for dinner as well as stay with us! Having people over for meals or to stay is such a big part of who we are and it’s really hard living in a place where it’s almost impossible to do that. And I miss having an outdoor area where I can just sit and have a cuppa or a glass of wine and watch the world go by. As much as we love living in Wang, it will be so lovely having a bigger place!

We are trying to be good with our pennies at the moment so we made our own breadrolls for lunch. I felt like such a Mum. It was awesome! Here’s Hubs and Chance enjoying themselves on our little lunch seat:

We have already confirmed house guests for August (yay!) and hopefully there will be plenty more to come. Please. Join us!

Keeping occupied

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So while we play the waiting game, Mum and Dad and I have been getting out and about (while poor poor Hubs is stuck doing work – make sure you give him lots of sympathy for his very very hard life! I love you honey!! 🙂 We headed out to Mt Beauty and Bright on Saturday and had a lovely time visiting wineries and breweries. Oh yes, those lemon, lime and bitters sure were something else! Obviously I let Dad do the beer tasting (okay okay, I had a couple of little sips) and Mum partook in a glass of wine. It was nice being out and about, and they even took me on a few bumpy roads to try and “start things off”. Alas, to no avail.

Dad with the first lot of tastings at Sweetwater – this was actually quite disappointing as the beers were mostly flat and not very cold. But if it makes a good story…

Next up, Dad tried a spot of fly fishing
But only managed to catch a couple of foxy ladies 😉
We then stumbled upon the Bright Brewery – this was much more impressive, with better beers (on tap) and a sampler tray with tasting notes. Mum took over driving after this place… 
We had a lovely day out and about, listening to old road trip tapes (The Bushwackers, Bullamakanka, Supertramp, Pink Floyd) and with Dad falling asleep in the back of the car on the way home. The weather was glorious and the company, wonderful as always. Hopefully Hubs will have time to join us on the next trip!