April in April

beach dancing
thongs for ears!
aussie flag performance
captain australia!
biker chick
aussie surfer!
doin her bit for the country
new 'Target' model
beautiful
surf chick
model extraordinaire!
loving some Coke

As it's nearly the end of April (the month!) and because I miss this chick so much, I thought I'd dedicate a blog all to beautiful April!April was the most photogenic person I met in Oz which is just as well as I did take a tonne of pics of her!She enjoyed making a toast and indulging in some scones with jam and cream - and a cup of tea of course!!

My favourite April quote was on Australia day on the way to the beach when she said:
"even the sound of surf makes me happy" - now that's a true surfer!

Apes,I'll never forget Australia day and our dancing, doing shots of diet coke,making lots of toasts,taking ridiculous photos and just having lots of fun!I miss you soooooo much and I hope I can see you again REALLY soon!it will always be 'all at heart my dear!'.love you xoxoxoxoxoxo

And then there was Cairns...

So,from Darwin I flew to Cairns and I loved it!I'd stayed up the whole night in Darwin as my flight to Cairns was at 6am and I'd checked out of hostel so didn't have anywhere to sleep.However,the Easyrider crew arrived in Darwin that night so I got to reunite with them and have a bit of a dance at one of the local pubs!I wasn't able to check into my new place in Cairns until after midday so I remember crashing in a park in Cairns for a while,must've looked a bit dodgy!Anyway,that avo I cruised around Cairns and happened to notice a very interesting deal for a skydive and bungy jump!I took the leaflet with me and pondered it for a while because they are 2 things i've always wanted to do.At this stage I was totally on my own as I'd left the crew I'd been with and my dad was coming to see me in a couple of days so I thought I would just take the plunge and do it!the next morning i was jumping out of a plane at 14,000 ft and an hour an a half after that i was bungy jumping off a 150ft tower in the middle of the rainforest!it was an adrenaline filled day!the skydive was just amazing,we free-falled for a minute and the rush was incredible,seriously I was so in awe i didn't scream or anything!then the parachute came out and we slowly glided back down to earth,that took about 5 minutes and I got to steer for a little while!on one side of me was the rainforest,on the other was the great barrier reef - amazing!i was far more scared doing the bungy and for a wee moment wasn't sure if i could do it.however,after a brief counselling session from the 'bungy guy' i looked towards the horizon and jumped!oh it was amazing!

while in Cairns I also got to travel through the rainforest on a train and travel above it on a skyrail.then more amazing times came when dad and i went snorkelling in the middle of the great barrier reef and i finally found Nemo!!!

Cairns holds heaps of great memories for me and was definitely one of my favourite places.

The pics are of my dad on the boat going out to the middle of the great barrier reef,me with my attractive stinger suit on ( i might as well embarrass myself a bit more!), me bobbing about in the water over the reef,me after jumping off the tower for my bungy and me rigged up to do my skydive!

Happy 19th Birthday Lizzie!!!

A sensible pic!wee lizzie all grown up along with ali.
Dr. Evvvviiiiiillllllll!
Banister dancer!
America's next top models.
No idea what's going on here!
Gonna vom!
A younger lizzie and heather,trying to strangle their big cuz!
Bottoms up!
Baby lizzie with a little jayne
Lizzie,me and ali - these girls used to show me some respect!ha ha!
ali and lizzie - girls with attitude!

This blog is dedicated to my beautiful cousin lizzie because it's her birthday tomorrow - Mon 24th April!So,here we see lizzie through the years from a little bub to the beautiful 19 year old that she is now.Lizzie's always been an awesome chick,and even though she'll always be my 'wee' cousin I see her as an amazing girl who I'm really proud of for taking the scary route of moving to edinburgh for uni, and it's developed her into even more of an awesome chick!

Lizzie,I LOVE the laughs we have and the ridiculous dances and photos shoots and girls nights out and how you make fun of me and get away with it and the deep conversations and just hanging out in general - I just love ya!!!I love being your big cuz!Happy Birthday dahl!!!

The race for 4th place...

What an avo!seriously,it was a rollercoaster ride!anyone who knows me knows that I'm a mad Spurs supporter,have been since i was 9 years old.well they were playing arsenal today and it was a huge match as they're both fighting for 4th place in the league,which would mean they would also play in the Champions League next season.anyway,arsenal are a huge team and it's been like a million years since we beat them on their home ground,so it was a MASSIVE game!spurs played the best in the 1st half,with quite a few chances and then the moment of elation arrived when in the 2nd half we scored - YAY!!!!i actually physically lept out of my chair and my dad and bro were going crazy too!arsenal brought on 2 new players and we managed to hang on until about the 83rd minute when Thierry Henry,who you have to admit is bit of a genius player,did the dreadful deed of scoring.1-1 and then Edgar Davids got sent off for us and arsenal piled on the pressure some more,i swear i thought i was going to have a heart-attack!we thankfully managed to hang on until the final whistle and i was never so glad to hear it!2 games left in the season we HAVE to win them both!oh the emotions involved in being a football supporter.

And finally!

All the photos i've put up are from australia.The kids are my second cousins,a couple of my bro and the others are friends with a few random shots added too!They're not the best pics but I thought the black and white added a different view when looking at them.

And some more...

Bit of grey...

I was feeling a bit grey tonight so I ended up printing out some of my pics in greyscale,just thought I'd share them with you!

Onto Darwin...

I lost track of the aussie trip there for a couple of blogs,so now I'm back in Darwin!Well,Darwin wasn't my favourite of places,I mean it was grand,I did like it to a degree and am glad I visited it, but it's not a place I'd put at the top of my list to go back to.For starters you can't really go into the water without fear of getting eaten by a crocodile,you can't even lie on some of the beaches in case they're lurking there!I didn't get to do much in Darwin and it was one of those more lonely places.I have to say that the Mindil markets were great,the food was awesome and had some fantastic street performers.I also got to watch the sunset on Mindil beach with a few hundred other people!The 'jumping crocs' and getting to hold a couple of snakes were the highlight - oh and I did also eat the green bum of an ant!it tasted of lime!

Footprints...

I was looking through the category of my 'random' photos earlier and found this one i'd taken on one of the beaches in Oz,it reminded me the 'footprints' story so i thought i'd post it as it's just really awesome!it never fails to encourage me so hopefully it'll encourage anyone who reads it now,even if you've read it a million times before!

One night a man had a dream.
He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the LORD.
Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.
For each scene he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand: one belonging to him, and the other to the LORD.
When the last scene of his life flashed before him,he looked back at the footprints in the sand.
He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints.
He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life.
This really bothered him and he questioned the LORD about it:
"LORD, you said that once I decided to follow you, you'd walk with me all the way.But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life,there is only one set of footprints. I don't understand why when I needed you most you would leave me."
The LORD replied:
"My son, my precious child,I love you and I would never leave you.During your times of trial and suffering,when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you."

Reunion with Reuben...

Tonight I was reunited with my good friend Reuben!if anyone ever met Ruby the duck while on my travels in Oz,reuben was the one who gave me ruby and named it after himself!so,reubs told me he wanted to see my aussie pics - i think he got a tad scared when i showed him how many there were!the pic above shows my albums and bear in mind that i only put my best pics in them so there are many more photos about!it is always good to meet up with old friends and find that things haven't changed even though it has been a very long time since you've seen them.reubs and i tend to talk A LOT when we're together so we had to break up the conversation and promise a continuation at a later stage,otherwise we would have been here all night!

Awesome event on Good Friday...

It's good friday and again we're reminded of the absolutely amazing thing Jesus did for us. I mean it just blows my mind that He went through such a horrific ordeal just for us.I could write heaps about it but it comes down to being the most incredible act in history and I just think it's awesome and I'm so glad I have Him in my life.

So,where was I in Oz?!

So,let's get back to the Oz trip!I think we're hitting Exmouth next!More snorkelling was done here although at this stage I'd started to develop a chest infection so I was finding it a tad difficult to breath through the snorkel so I sat out most of the underwater frolics!Some people rated Exmouth over Coral Bay but I really don't see how that's possible (in my mind anyway!) I thought Coral Bay was far superior!After spending the night in Exmouth we basically drove for most of the next day to get us to Tom Price. There's a pic of us all 'in da hood' above and you can see the corrugated iron huts behind us that we had to sleep in!There was a cross-over of easyrider buses here though as our original driver was coming down to Perth with the new crew she had picked up in Broome,so we had a good night with more random backpackers!We got to spend the next morning in Karijini National Park and saw some more stunning gorges and did quite a lot of hiking and swimming in rock pools.At this stage I was well and truly coughing up a lung and on top of my severe lack of fitness I was struggling to get up the huge rocky hills to get out of the gorges!We now had a newly qualified doctor,a nurse and a physiotherapist on the bus so later that night as I was dying in bed I was well looked after and Dr.Rob even got his stethoscope out to listen to my chest and ordered me to get an anti-biotic when we stopped in Broome!So,after spending the night in a hostel in Port Hedland surrounded by barbed wire accompanied with the warning not to go out alone after 6pm (yikes!),we embarked on our final day's drive.We got to stop off at 80 mile beach which was amazing to see,there really were miles and miles of white sandy beach!Next stop was the final destination for some of us...Broome!A group of us spent about a week here and had fun on cable beach,going to the outdoor cinema,taking sunset camel rides - see pic - and hanging out in our beautiful hostel,seriously it was like a resort,had a pool and everything,it was awesome!This was the end of the road for my easyrider tour and after my inital fear when I got on the bus I had the best time and am so so glad I did it.I still keep in touch with some of the crew from that tour and hopefully I'll get to meet up with some of them at some stage.It was just a time of great experiences,great sights,little sleep,early starts,LOTS of driving,but oh so much fun and so many laughs and memories that will last forever.

25 years married!!!

It was my auntie and uncle's 25th wedding anniversary at the weekend so my gandparents threw a party for them last night.I think it's awesome that they're still happily married!You can see them with their 4 kids (my adorable cousins!) looking very respectable for a photo session...however, afterwards in the next room photo-posing mayhem broke loose!!!

France interruption...

I've been missing for the weekend as I ended up in Nice,France!I'm only home from Oz and I'm away again!My dad obviously felt that it had been far too long since we'd all gone away together as a family and along with the ridiculously cheap flights to Europe,he decided to take us all to France for the weekend.(He did have it all arranged yonks ago,wasn't just a spontanteous decision!)It was really nice,we just chilled,hung out in the town,did a few wee touristy things and just had a good time together.
Mum was understandably unimpressed though when chris,dad and I spent 2 hours in an Irish pub watching Spurs beat Man City!She worries about me watching matches in public as I get a bit excited and quite animated!think she thinks i'm going to get beaten up some day by a supporter of the opposing team - ha ha!
I actually really loved the fact that the morning that we flew there we flew over the Alps and saw them so clearly,it was stunning.Then on the night we returned we could actually see the Eiffel tower from the sky,how cool is that?!The pics above are just of Nice itself along with my mum,dad and bro.I'm such a lucky child!

Coral Bay rules!!!

Coral Bay was one of my favourite places in australia,it was just so beautiful plus all of us who hopped off the bus there just had so much fun - it was amazing!we snorkelled the ningaloo reef,hired quad bikes and bombed around the beaches and sand-dunes on them - only me and 2 of the guys got told off for speeding (the shame!).we also just hung out,played soccer on the beach and had heaps and heaps of laughs!it was the best!oh,i can't forget the 6hr whale watching boat trip we went on and didn't actually see ANY whales!plus heaps of people started to get sea-sick,most enjoyable!we also had a mad israeli guy in our dorm who had carried a mannequins head around australia until someone stole it off him!imagine trying to get that onto the plane?!i have no idea why he did it!we all got slightly unnerved when he produced photographs of it and it actually looked like a real woman's head - yikes!so,we were slightly relieved when he only stayed in our dorm for one night!Coral Bay will always have great memories for me.

Day 3...

The highlights of day 3 were the dolphins at Monkey Mia and hanging out with the pelicans.We got to visit the beautiful Shell Beach,which really is made out of shells!Didn't walk along it in my bare feet!We stayed the night in Coral Bay and here a group of us stayed for a few days and had some adventures of our own!

'Oz experience' continues...

So,our first stop on the Easyrider tour was the Pinnacles Desert.It was pretty cool actually although those dark skies you see in the pic meant we didn't stay very long!We then did a lot of driving,got to know each other a bit better and stayed our first night in Kalbarri,where I ended up being one of only 2 girls in a dorm,the other 6 were guys!Well,I had to get used to sleeping in a room full of strangers,just didn't expect there to be so many males about!Everyone was so tired though that we just all got on with it as our leaving time each morning was just before 7am.

The next day we visited Kalbarri's gorges where did we did a lot of climbing about,took a lot of pics and then had a go at abseiling!The pic with heaps of us in it is the original crew that we started off with,they were great,we all got on really well.We're sitting in front of what is called 'Nature's Window', there were amazing views from the tops of the gorges. The abseiling was hilarious, the last time I'd tried it I was 12 years old so I was a tad rusty!First of all everyone did the 'normal' way of going backwards down the side of the cliff and that went grand. Next we were given the option of doing it forwards,I of course couldn't resist trying it!For those who have never done it forwards, you basically slide down the top part of the cliff on your bum then you sort of flip forwards then run down the side of the cliff!it was great fun until something happened to my rope and I got stuck half way down!then i started spinning!i didn't know what to do, i just started laughing until it got sorted out then i was off again,only to get stuck again a couple of feet from the bottom!i was so close but i just couldn't get my feet onto the ground!funny thing was that people started taking pictures like crazy as they all thought it was so funny!i did eventually get down though - phew!

After driving some more and checking out a few more things,like the Shark Bay World Heritage Centre and the Hamelin Pool Stromatolites we spent our second night in Denham.

interruption to 'oz experience'...

I just got another batch of pics developed and found this one!i remember taking it in Hahndorf,South Australia...what does the world think of the Irish?!ha ha!

this is the oz experience!

Over the next wee while I'm going to try and put on some pics and some ramblings about my travel experience in Oz!the first travel adventure started on this bus with a bunch of randoms and oh we had a lot of fun!i left perth at the start of september on this bus,i was on my own,i was very nervous,i didn't have a clue what i was in for, but i ended up having an awesome time and met some people i hope i'll still be in touch with for many years to come!each night we slept in a different town and there was always the option to stay in that town until the next bus came through a few days later,or if we stayed on the bus there was always the possibility that new people would 'jump on' in that town.so,i met a heap of new people and can honestly say that i got on with all of them,although one particular guy did test everyone's patience more than once!we were all secretly thankful when he only stayed on for one day!it wasn't a great first impression when the first thing he did was mock the northern irish accent!now,i've been very much used to that and take it all in good humour,but this guy just pushed,and broke the boundaries!However,as annoying as he was he did become part of the travelling experience and taught us all how to bite our tongues that little more often!

let the memories begin...

let me introduce you to....my bro!

this is my darling little bro,chris!he's gorgeous hey?!love him to bits!the chick is his beautiful girlfriend amy,i call them the catwalk couple!

aussie dedication...

I know i'm an Irish girl but I just LOVE australia, so here's my loyalty to my 'second home' in my room!All my beautiful aussie friends have signed it so everytime i look at it i am reminded of them.

soon to be a white irish girl!

that is how white i'll be soon!irish weather sucks!

mad cousins on the loose!

So,here's what i've been doing over the weekend...hanging out with my mad cousins!ali (with her mouth wide
open!)managed to keep me up until after 2.30am on fri and then didn't
let me get dressed until after 2pm on saturday!wouldn't let me have a shower or anything!honest - hey ali?! ;-) (I'm only messin - don't whitey!) then after
we eventually got dressed she locked me out in a hail stones storm - she loves me really!lizzie (with big grin!)and i went to church tonight and then we acted like eegits when we came home!i love my 'wee' cousins they make me laugh so much!thanks gals - this blog is dedicated to you!

My first blog...

Hey all,

This blog thing is for all you guys who want to follow the 'adventures of jayne!'.well...it probably won't be that exciting but since i have just spent the last year in beautiful australia i do have quite a lot of stories to tell and photos to show!Hoping this is a good way to avoid constantly bombarding people with emails and photos,this way you can all decide whether you want to read my stuff and look at my photos!Hope you enjoy anyway.

until next time.....