Last weekend, we drove about 4 1/2 hours south to Mackay to visit the Atkinsons. We first met Seth, Steph and Eliana (she was only about 7 months old at the time and now she's 4!), when they moved to Townsville a few years ago. We were so sad when they moved to Brisbane just over a year ago. But since then, baby Noah has joined their family and they recently moved to Mackay which is driving distance from Townsville. We knew that we couldn't pass up one last visit with our friends before we left Australia. So, here's our Mackay recap:
Friday
We left Friday around 11:30am with the hopes that Alexis would take a nice nap in the car. She did sleep for about an hour, but not nearly as long as we were hoping. But because she has so much experience being in the car (from our Western Australia adventure), she was a good sport most of the time. We ran into some bad construction traffic, so the trip took a little longer than we were expecting, but other than that, it was a good drive.
Alexis loves to sing songs and one of her favourites to sing is the ABC's. Alexis usually sings most of it with us, but we didn't know she could sing it all by herself until she started singing it in the car. Luckily, our video camera was within easy reach.
We can't believe that Alexis can sing the ABC's and she's only 22 months old!! We definitely have a smarty pants on our hands.
While we were driving, I tried to teach Alexis how to say everyone's name. She would say "Seth" for both Seth and Steph (they are pretty similar), but she could say "Noah" and "Ellie." It was so funny when we got to the Atkinson's house because Eliana came running out and Alexis yelled "Noah!". Being at the age where she doesn't know the difference between boys and girls names, we thought it was pretty funny. We got to Mackay in the late afternoon and decided to head out to the beach before dinner.
Here's the gang walking to the beach:
It only took us five minutes to walk to this beach from Seth and Steph's house:
Noah had a ton of fun playing in the wet sand:
And Alexis and Eliana had lots of fun in the water:
Saturday
We went on a little driving tour of Mackay on Saturday morning. Alexis thought she was such a big girl, because she got to sit next to Eliana in the car.
Smile!
This was a beautiful lookout by the Marina:
Alexis had fun eating her first whole apple. I was surprised that she could even bite into it!
We stopped by a playground to let the kids run around. Alexis and Noah had fun on the swings:
And Steph had fun on this:
I don't know what it's called, but it was a little seat that you could sit on and use your body weight and momentum to spin around really fast. You can tell that Steph was going fast by looking at her hair flying around.
After some nice nap time, we headed out to the beach at Shoal Point for some beach cricket. Amazingly, in the almost five years that we have lived in Townsville, John and I have never played cricket. It was so much fun!! We never understood the appeal when we saw cricket matches on T.V., but beach cricket was a blast. We wish we would have known about it earlier. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of us playing (Steph and I were the best!), but here's the beach:
Sleeping Noah:
Alexis had fun digging in the sand and even took a turn with the cricket bat!
We had an indoor BBQ back at home with another couple from the Mackay Branch. After the kids were in bed we played an exciting game of Spoons. It came down to just me and Seth, but I won in the end.
Sunday
Sunday was Father's Day and we celebrated with a nice breakfast before church. The afternoon was spent relaxing and taking naps. After a nice dinner, we packed up and headed back to Townsville.
The weekend went by way too fast. We all had fun, but especially Alexis. She was in absolute heaven to have friends to play with all the time. She followed Ellie around everywhere, and thankfully, Ellie didn't mind. Every time we took Alexis away (to change her or something), she would start crying "play with friends, play with friends." It made me excited for her to be able to play with all of her cousins in a few weeks.
This is a picture of Alexis playing with Eliana. So goofy.
Thank you Atkinsons for a great weekend! We miss you already.
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