Today was another rainy day - we just couldn't believe it - we had the use of Julianne's car again and we couldn't get any lovely pictures of a blue sky. :-( Julianne said it was raining (tears) because they were sad that we were leaving Hervey Bay for eight weeks. :-) After dropping off Julianne at work, we went to a store to buy her a thank you card for allowing us to use her car (and her tv and dvd player) while we have been in Hervey Bay. While we were there, we found a cute card for Colin for his birthday (it has ladybugs on it and he likes them) and we also found a Aussie t-shirt for Alexander - it's so adorable - it has kangaroos all over it with funny captions under each one (Mike says I am not allowed to say anymore as I will be giving away the secret :-)
After that, we went to a real estate agent who worked close to there. He has a house listed that we wanted to check out - it's in a little town about 10 minutes from Hervey Bay called Booral and we would love to live there cuz it's country living, but close to the amenities of the city. We absolutely loved the house, but it's still a bit out of our price range. The house was built by the owner's husband (he passed away two years ago) and it is a truly lovely house with all the extras that you would expect from a builder building his own home. The ceilings are really high (9 to 10 feet), there are three bedrooms plus an office (which could be used for another bedroom), a huge lounge room with vaulted ceilings, a kitchen with TONS of cupboards, a dining room, a family room, and a laundry room. Each of the three bedrooms has a walk-in closet and the master bedroom has an ensuite. The verandah goes all the way around the outside of the house, there is a swimming pool, and a HUGE three bay shed which also has a full bathroom and an office included in it. The house sits on 1.25 acres of land and most of the houses out there are on similar parcels of land. The cool thing is that kangaroos are often seen on the property (and all around Booral, actually - we even saw some last time we were out there to visit friends). We told the real estate agent that we can't afford to buy it right now, but if it's still available when the exchange rate is better, we would love to put in an offer on it.
When we got back to town after seeing this beautiful house, we came home to hang up the laundry (I had put a load in the washing machine first thing in the morning) and to have some lunch. We spent the afternoon playing more card games and answering emails and trying to get ourselves listed for the flights to Brisbane and Sydney on Thursday. Mike spent about 13 minutes on hold with Staff Travel using our cell phone which is very expensive to call from. I suggested that we go out and try to use a payphone to make the call as I thought it would only cost 50 cents to make the call and then it wouldn't matter how long we were on hold. As it turned out, when we made the call on the pay phone, it was long distance and so the phone hung up on us after about one minute. After a lot more agonizing about what to do, we decided to go out to the airport (about ten minutes away) to try and talk with someone at Qantas about what to do. As it turned out, the only one in the whole airport was the guy at the Snack Bar - when there are not planes expected, he is the only one there. On the drive back to town, Mike remembered that we could use our long distance phone card that we use to call back to Canada. Instead of paying 88 cents a minute on the cell phone, we only had to pay 10 cents a minute on the phone card. It still took him 30 minutes to get through - they always take so long at Staff Travel. Anyway, he finally got us booked onto the flights and it looks like we will have no trouble flying stand-by. We should be able to get back to Ruth's (the lady we stay with in Sydney) by about 5pm. When we got back home, I called her to tell her that we were booked on the flight on Thursday, and she is looking forward to us coming back to stay with her for a week.
About 3pm we had to leave as we had to stop by the 'Cheesecake Shop' before we picked up Julianne. We have put gas in her car every time we used it (more than we used), but I still wanted to do something for her to say thank you to her for letting us use her car so much while we have been here. I (sneakily) brought up the subject of the shop as we passed by it on the way to her work saying how much we loved pavlovas from there and had she ever gone in there - and if so, what was her favourite. She told us that she loved their caramel mud cakes and so we bought her a half one on the way to pick her up. When she dropped us off at home, we gave her the cake and she was very surprised and very pleased. She actually said that she would serve it tomorrow night for dessert and then asked us to come to dinner at their place tomorrow. She has the day off work and will put a roast in the oven, she said - and then have the mud cake for dessert so that we can see why she loves it so much! We are looking forward to going over there for such a lovely meal - and hanging out with them will be fun, too.
As we had given Julianne back her tv and dvd player today, we didn't have the tv to watch tonight and so we spent the evening playing cribbage and answering emails. I am slowly getting caught up on answering the emails that are in my Inbox. I try to answer them within a week - I am doing pretty well at that so far. We will only have one more entry in this blog for eight weeks. We will write tomorrow night and that will be our last night in Hervey Bay until we come back here in February. We are a little sad that we are going to be leaving this beautiful place - we really love it here - but, it will be nice to see our family and friends in Canada (and knowing that we will be coming back here will give us something to look forward to). :-)
