The Golden Day

The 25th will go down in history as one of those days. You know what I mean. The kind of days that you look back on years into the future as pretty near-perfect.

I want to stop right there and tell you that not everything has been perfect over year. The adventures of the Hooks....blah blah blah "everything is always perfect for them" we've heard repeatedly. So, for fun, here is just a small list of not so wonderful things we've experienced in the last few weeks: frustration, lonliness, anger, sadness, sickness, cold sores (a big fat juicy one), dissapointment, fatigue, homesickness, grocery store rage:), stomach aches (I keep trying to eat bananas despite the fact that they make me sick).... Yeah, I could spend more time on this, but you get the point. We don't tend to blog about these things. Maybe I will, just for kicks, blog about one of these things sometime, although there probably wouldn't be as many exciting pictures to go along with them (except for maybe the cold sore).

Anyways, with that said, I will proceed to tell you about the golden day. Yes, it was "golden" because the sun was shining. It was also "golden" because I was with my friend, whose presence is worth more than gold:). But what really made it "golden" was quite literally that it was my golden birthday...turning the big two five on the 25th of March. Pretty exciting stuff.

We set off on our day of gold at 4:30am, trekking north towards the Mount of Coolum. Using but one headlamp between the two of us, we scaled the cliffs with anticipation (There is nothing like the "beat the sunrise" mentality when it comes to making a climb quickly). Thankfully, we made it in just enough time to find the perfect rock to absorb the brilliance of God's creation. After spending a bit of time enjoying this scene, we asked some friendly Aussie lads to take our picture. Then we headed north to Noosa for a breakfast on the beach. Beach front view + coffee = paradise!After enjoying our fabulous breakfast (above), we took a hike in Noosa National Park. The path took us along the ocean and through the rain forest. We even spotted a koala in the wild (actually some other people pointed him out - I doubt we could have made the discovery on our own).

We then enjoyed an afternoon on the beach. After at least a week of cloudy weather and rainy conditions, it was amazingly clear!

I wish we could have captured some of our body surfing feats on the camera. We spent hours in the water, trying our best to catch the waves and ride them to shore. We were actually quite successful a few times. We were even more successful, however, at being tossed and flipped by the waves, flailing about as we tried to distinguish up from down. Andrea, especially, was pin-pointed as a "tourist" and was kindly guided by an older Australian gentleman to "duck the waves since she didn't know what she was doing". When she staggered onto shore a few waves later complaining of a bleeding shoulder and a headache from hitting the sand with her head, we decided to call it a day (Don't worry McDivitts, I will not jeopardize the health of your daughter). We returned to Buderim soon after, went for a lovely birthday meal, and collapsed into bed before nine. What a day!