5 Years!

John and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary by spending the weekend (with Alexis) at our favourite holiday destination in North Queensland: Mission Beach. It was a great weekend. We were afraid that we wouldn't be able to go because of the damage caused by Cyclone Yasi (it crossed right at Mission Beach), but the holiday house we wanted to stay in was intact, so we lucked out big time. Even better, the house has new owners and we were the first guests to stay there since they renovated it. I stayed in the same house last year while my mom was visiting, but now it had a brand new indoor and outdoor kitchen and the bedrooms all had new linens. It was fabulous. And on top of that, we had perfect weather! Which is quite amazing because it had been raining so much that leading up to our trip the highway up north was actually closed because of flooding, so we really got lucky.  It was both interesting and sad to travel up north and see the devastation that Cyclone Yasi left behind.  Here is a picture looking at the beach from Sea-s-ta (our holiday house).  The top picture is before the cyclone, the bottom one is after:

The pictures don't really do it justice.  There was almost no beach left compared to what there was.  Just to get to the beach, you had to slide down about a four foot drop off of where the beach had been blown/washed away.

This is a picture of what used to be the lush rainforest:

The rainforest used to be so thick that most of the roads around Mission Beach were completely shaded.  They are all sunny now.

Even with all of the damage to the area, it is still beautiful.  We are so glad that we got to visit one more time before we move.  It was nice to spend some relaxing time as a family.  Alexis absolutely loved that she could pretty much go outside whenever she wanted and that we would let her wander all over the yard (supervised of course).

We had lots of fun playing at the beach:

And even more fun swimming in the pool (we couldn't go swimming in the ocean because it's jellyfish season and there were no stinger nets up because of the cyclone):

Alexis loved to look down the filter and watch the water:

Another memorable moment was Alexis pooping in the bathtub for the first time:

John and I reminisced about anniversaries past where we could celebrate kid-free.  But we really couldn't have asked for a nicer weekend.  It was just what we needed.  Here's to another five years!