Hope you are doing well? It has been a few weeks since I last wrote. Lots of different occasions and events happening in our world as the year heads into full gear towards the end of the year. I must say I am looking forward to the Christmas holidays. Although, I would love it if the holiday season (the 30th November onwards) slows right down so that we can really enjoy the summer holidays. I want to enjoy every single day of Summer. I realize the kids will still need feeding and dropping off places to hang out with friends and play, but it is my intention to be super Duper organised this year regarding Christmas, and January birthdays. My goal is to even have J’s back to school book pack paid for by the end of the year so that I don’t even have to think about it when the ‘Back to School’ Sales start. I am hoping (fingers crossed) that come the new year J won’t have grown out of his current uniform, however, I will be booking a new year uniform shop appointment for the new year before the end of the year so it is simply in the calendar. The goal is to either turn up for the appointment or cancel it depending on whether or not we need it. Over the last few months we have been putting fun ideas into our calendar for us to do as a family. With the girls now all working or having assessments for Uni and Tafe, it’s not easy to find time in our week for family time. In fact, some weeks it’s impossible to find time to do anything altogether, so its good to be able to get everyone together and put ideas into the calendar and then they can tell their work apps when they can and can’t work. So, A few months ago, when Stephen Miles (The Acting Premier) decided to put the 50 cent public transport idea in place as of August, we decided to take advantage of the invitation to take some adventures for the small amount of 50 cents! We put into the calendar that we would love to take a day trip to the Gold Coast, and so on Sunday the 6th of October (Long weekend in QLD for the Kings Birthday weekend), we jumped on the train in Landsborough at 6:39am and headed off on our adventure. Everyone excited for the day. Our family loves the Gold Coast so we knew it was going to be a fun day! We jumped off the train at Central Station, and waited 20 minutes for our connecting train to the Gold Coast. The trains run fast through quite a number of the stops so it didn’t feel as though we were traveling for that long. At 9:44am we arrived in Helensvale, We, along with a lot of other people, jumped onto the connecting light rail tram system, and headed to Surfers Paradise. It took about half an hour on the tram. The tram runs from Helensvale Station all the way to Broadbeach where Pacific Fair Shopping Centre is. When we were planning our day on the Gold Coast we had decided to stay in Surfers Paradise, so we jumped off the tram and clicked our go cards on the machine to make sure our trip registered. The cost of our transport for the day per person was $2 each….so much cheaper than a tank full of petrol to get down to the Gold Coast and back. The day in Surfers Paradise went very quickly, the girls did a little shopping and found a few bargains at the Billabong outlet store across the road from the Chevron Renaissance. Hubby, our two older girls and J went to Hijinx hotel for some fun. Hijinx hotel is a lot of fun. Nell and I decided to head up the mall and get an Açai bowl. We met up with everyone at Subway for lunch, and then hubby took J to a VR experience which they both loved and enjoyed. Ames and Beps love Escape rooms so they took the opportunity to do a couple of rooms, while Chanel and I took advantage of a moment where I got my feet massaged and Nell had her nails done. Too be honest, I have no idea what Nell did to her nails but they look very pretty. Nell and hubby decided to end the day with a very quick dip in Surfers Paradise beach before we had to race to get our tram. We were lucky to get seats on the tram. We had to get this tram or we would miss our train from Helensvale back home. The goal was to not have too late a night…. Not having a late night is a good intention when it comes to trying to get home at a reasonable time when using public transport. We had worked out that we needed to jump off our train at Roma Street to catch our connecting train to Landsborough Station. Unfortunately, our Helensvale train didn’t reach Roma Street in time, so we had to make a decision as to what to do next. We could wait at Roma Street for about an hour for our train home, or we could catch the next train to Fortitude Valley and get something to eat for dinner. Everyone voted for food. The adventure continued. We arrived at Fortitude Valley to find the station had been completely renovated. For many years when I was much younger we would travel through a very old and uncared for Fortitude Valley station. These days it seems to be the place to be with an array of restaurants and fast food choices, a gym, Starbucks coffee shop, a large Woolworths, chemist and a variety store. We chose to eat at a cute Japanese sushi restaurant. I don’t like sushi so I had the Teriyaki chicken and rice bowl. It was amazing. The others enjoyed their sushi. It was time to grab our next train. It wasn’t a long wait at Fortitude Station, but we were all ready to crash, at this point of our trip we knew we had to keep going. Our train was moving fast, each station came and went by very quickly until we stopped at Burpengary Station. We were told we would need to wait 10 minutes, but those 10 minutes quickly turned into the longest 20 minutes. It felt a lot longer than 20 minutes. I remember sighing with relief as our train started moving again. We were thankful it was an express train to Landsborough Station. We arrived back home to the coast at 10:38pm exhausted. It was a great adventure day, but I think next time we would like to split the traveling up so that we wouldn’t do it all in one day. Thank God for the public holiday on the Monday, we really earned a day off! Till Next Time,XO