Our last night in Australia we stayed in Brisbane and took a walk in the Botanical Gardens where we saw this tree. It's a Banyan Fig tree, planted in the gardens 150 years ago. Enormous!!
And finally, here's our ride home. Another 13 hours of good food, free booze, and unlimited movies. I wish US airlines were this nice!

Here's some pictures from our trip to the Great Barrier Reef where Chris scuba dived and I snorkeled. Look at how blue the water is!! Unfortunately, you can also see the beginnings of how choppy it was getting! The ride back was pretty miserable for a lot of people onboard.
Chris did a very good self-portrait at Mossman Gorge where we hiked 2.4 km around gorgeous rainforest. There were some huge boulders in this stream which were unbelieveable.
There's also a picture along "our" stretch of beach out in front of the apartment we rented the second week. At high tide, the water was right up to the tree line; plus, it was a full moon while we were there, so it was the highest for the month. Pretty neat sight.
Visited a crocodile farm and this next guy is a replica of the largest croc ever recorded. Good thing he's only plastic, but we got a few good shots of some real live ones.

We've done a lot the last few days. Took a field trip with Chris' conference up to Lamington National Park, where we saw these waterfalls and some gorgeous birds...and Chris fed a couple.
I took surfing lessons earlier in the week and actually stayed up a few times; it is sooo much harder than it looks and I'm still sore. The upper body strength you need for that is tremendous. I also took a day trip with another wife from the conference and we got to pet/feed kangaroos, hold koalas, see how chocolate and honey were made, and taste some native Australian fruit as well as some great wine!!

We're headed up to Cairns tomorrow morning (Saturday) and will be there until Friday. We're staying in a smaller town north of there called Clifton Beach; a little less touristy. It'll be a bit warmer there than it is here now. Hope to find a place to keep you all updated while we're there. Feel free to share this website with others!

This is the very nice view from our hotel room in Surfer's Paradise; we're on the 29th floor and the sunrises are pretty awesome, as the last picture shows. Wasn't quick enough with getting the camera to get all the gorgeous colors before the sun actually came up over the horizon.

Here's Chris pointing to what else...McDonald's! And yes, we did eat there Sunday for lunch; you know him and his compulsion with McD's on Sundays!! And our hotel is just to the left of him; how much closer could we get?

I went up to the Observation Deck of Q1, the tallest residential tower in the world with a couple of the other wives who are here, but also not going to the talks. It was on the 77 and 78th floors. Awesome views!

We'll keep you all posted over the next couple weeks.

Cheers mates!

These are from our tour of the Budweiser factory in St. Louis. The Clydesdale's are enormous! There's a man standing on the other side of this one; you can see his legs and just how big these horses are. Chris can now add "Honorary Beermaster" to his list of titles (he even received a diploma for it!) after test-tasting fresh-brewed and "skunky" beer. Cheers!

This is Chris and me at the old Busch stadium after the last game ever played there and the next picture is at the new stadium this year on our anniversary...and yes, we are on the field, thanks to a childhood friend of Chris'...thanks, Aaron!!

We are getting ready for our trip to Australia and I was just wanting to see how easy it is to do this so bear with me. It might be that we don't end up doing this at all while on the trip, so this is just a trial.