Thanks to everyone who has supported us through our journey!

Until next time,
-Ciera

Anaheim – Disneyland, Medieval Times

The first stop on this trip was in Anaheim California. During our time here, we stayed at the Carousel Inn. It was in a great location, right across the street from Disneyland and California Adventures. The hotel had a rooftop pool which was great at night when the fireworks in Disneyland were going off. You could also see all the key parts of both parks from there. Ciera’s friend Luci and her boyfriend Sterling were also in Anaheim at the same time as us. They were staying at a different hotel for a few days, but joined us and stayed at the same hotel as us a little later on the trip, on the days we visited the Disney parks.

Going to Disneyland and California Adventure (which is right next door) was one of the main things we did while in Anaheim. This was one of the best bits of the whole USA trip. We got a 3-day park hopper pass which allowed us to go to both parks for three consecutive days. There were lots of really fun rides at both parks. Normally I’m someone that doesn’t like most “scary” rides, but I really enjoyed the rides at Disneyland and California Adventure. Having said that, I wasn’t brave enough to ride on the Tower of Terror, which is one of the most popular rides at California Adventures. Ciera didn’t ride it either. Maybe one day we’ll be brave enough to ride it, but not now .

While in Anaheim, we also visited a beach, and went to Medieval Times. Medieval Times is a “dinner and show”; you eat food while watching medieval-style games like jousting and sword fighting. The knight whose section we sat in ended up winning!

This was my first time to Disneyland (obviously), so it was a really amazing experience for me. We’re both a child at heart, so thoroughly enjoyed our time there. Our feet hurt after walking for three days, but it was worth it. I’d definitely go again!

Lewiston / Clarkston

We spent around half of our time in Lewiston, Idaho and Clarkston, Washington. They are border towns located in a valley, and form one little community even though they are in different states. A lot of Ciera’s family and friends live in the area which was the reason we decided to stay here. For most of our time in the area, we stayed with two of Ciera’s friends (Craig and Sassy). They’re pretty lucky and own their own house. We’re both really grateful they let us stay with them!

On the 4th July, we had a small party with some of Ciera’s friends. This gave me a chance to meet some of her close friends, and spend time with some new people. It went pretty well, and I got to meet some pretty cool people. The day after, we finalised our Australian residency visa application and submitted it (speaking of which, it was granted two weeks ago).

One thing I noticed in Lewiston that I found a little odd – There were Pepsi logos everywhere. Supermarket? Pepsi logo. Gas station? Pepsi logo. School? Pepsi logo. Now, I’m not sure if this is due to a lot of places getting paid by Pepsi to do so, or if everyone just really loves Pepsi. Maybe they’re very boldly proclaiming that Pepsi is better than Coke (which is true, by the way). But it was something I didn’t see in any other place we went in the USA.

Portland

After staying in Lewiston for a while, we decided that we’d visit Ciera’s dad in Portland. We drove there (road trip!) from Lewiston. Ciera’s mum drove us half way, and her dad drove us the rest of the way. He has a very nice house and lives in a pretty nice area. Portland was the only area we stayed in that had reasonable public transport. This came in handy and helped us get around without a car.

Portland was a really interesting area, reminding me a little of Melbourne. There was a place called OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) which is somewhat like a Portland version of Melbourne’s Scienceworks (which we’ve been to before). The Game On 2.0 exhibition was on display while were there, which was cool as I had been to the previous Game On exhibition in Melbourne. OMSI also has a really massive IMAX cinema, the Omnimax, which has a dome screen. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the time to go there. Maybe next time we’re in the USA we can go!

Another awesome place we went to in Portland was Powell’s Book Store. This book store is massive, it’s the largest independent book store in the world. It’s so big that it occupies a full city block! I was impressed, as I’ve never seen a book store anywhere near this big before. It was pretty cool looking around and seeing the massive range of books they stock.

We also went to the Portland Saturday Market. Despite the name, the market is open on both Saturdays and Sundays. It was very similar to the Queen Victoria Market.

After our stay in Portland, we went back to Lewiston for a bit, before I had to leave. To get back, we took a Greyhound bus. We had heard a lot of stories about… “interesting” people on these busses, but it wasn’t that interesting for us! The ride was long and relatively boring.

General Thoughts / The End

It was a really interesting experience for me. I had never been out of Australia, so going to a totally new country was pretty cool. There was a lot of similarity between the USA and Australia, but a lot of things were different. Food was insanely cheap, I couldn’t believe it! And portion sizes were incredible, way too big for people that aren’t used to it. I could barely finish small meals a lot of the time, haha. Also, 7-Eleven sells a lot more things. I bought a hat there!

The saddest part came at the end of the trip when I had to go home. Unfortunately I didn’t really have a choice, I needed to go back to Australia as I had university classes starting again. I left USA on 30 July, and got back to Australia on the 2nd August (in time to get ready for classes starting the 8th August). I really enjoyed my time there, and wish I could have stayed longer.

After being with Ciera for 13 consecutive months, it was time for us to part. This was extremely hard for both of us. However, knowing that we had applied for a partner visa helped, since I knew I’d be able to see her again. Now that Ciera has a residency visa, she can come back to Australia and stay for as long as she likes ! More info on that front will be coming soon.

Until next time,
— Daniel (and Ciera!)

After being extremely overwhelmed with happiness and calming down a little bit, we booked her flight back to Australia. It ended up being pretty expensive since it’s coming up to summer here, but we did manage to get a flight with Air New Zealand again (since they’re awesome). She’s staying with her family for Christmas, and getting here on New Years Day. Having my girlfriend with me to start the new year is the best New Year’s present EVER! I hope these next 57 days pass quickly, I really can’t wait until I see her again!

No more waiting and wondering when things will happen. Now we have solid plans, and our life plans feel a whole lot more real. I’m quite possibly happier than I have ever been before! In 57 days, our long-distance relationship will no longer be long-distance. I’m counting down the days.

Things are amazing right now. I just finished my last university class ever, and all I’ve got left are exams. Then I start working again, and Ciera gets here shortly afterwards.

I love life.

Until next time,
— Daniel

While we were in the USA, we applied for the Offshore Partner Temporary Visa (Subclass 309). The visa is valid for two years, and if the relationship is still standing after these two years, a Partner Permanent Visa (Subclass 100) is granted. The one application covers both visas. While the visa application process isn’t very difficult, it does involve a lot of work and time. In our case, we applied in a de-facto relationship, although it’s a very similar application process if you’re applying as a married couple.

Note that the application process refers to a “sponsor”. This visa is not like other Australian visas where you need to get someone else (like a potential employer) to sponsor you. With this visa, your sponsor is your partner who is an Australian citizen. If you are the person applying from overseas, read “sponsor” as “my partner”, and “applicant” as “me”.

Relationship Evidence

One of the major components of this visa is evidence that your relationship is genuine. You won’t need to provide everything that we’ve listed in these categories but it’s safe to include as much as you can. The more proof you provide, the less likely it is they’ll find a reason to deny your visa application. There are four broad categories for the evidence needed:

Financial Aspects

The financial aspects category involves evidence that you and your partner share financial commitments and responsibilities. This includes ownership of major assets (like a car or house) and/or liabilities (loan or insurance), helping pay for each other’s travel, sharing of finances, a joint bank account statement, and sharing of bills and expenses.

Note that this evidence needs to show financial support both ways – It can’t just be one person supporting their partner.

Social Context

Social context involves how your friends and family see your relationship with your partner. This includes evidence that you’re accepted as a couple socially, such as party invitations, group photos, and having friends in common. This also includes joint participation in social activities like sports, and joint travel.

As you’ve most likely travelled around the world a few times to see each other, you should include printouts of travel itineraries, clearly labelling them and ensuring a date is visible on the page.

Nature of Household

Nature of the household is evidence that you and your partner share responsibilities within your household. This includes things like living arrangements, housework, joint ownership of your house, joint responsibility for bills, and correspondence addressed to both you and your partner at the same address.

As with all the other sections of the visa application, the circumstances are different for everyone. If you did not own your house (for example, like in our situation we were living with our parents), that is okay. Just include everything that you feel is relevant. This can be simple things like letters from friends, as long as the letters have both your names on them.

Nature of Commitment

Nature of commitment involves proving that you and your partner have mutual commitment to each other. The most common form of evidence for this category is proof of correspondence during any periods of separation. This can be in the form of phone or chat logs.

It’s important to note that you shouldn’t print out ALL your chat logs and submit these, as for a lot of people, that would be massive! In our case, we chat every day and so we have some very big chat logs. Instead, only include a representative segment. That is, include the most important things. This can include things like:

• Logs from when you first met, and when the relationship began
• Logs from planning trips to see each other
• Phone call logs from when you were apart
• Logs showing how much you miss each other when you’re apart

If you have other things that prove your commitment (such as mentioning each other in the terms of your wills, or intention to buy a house together), these should also be included in this category.

History of Relationship

In addition to these four categories of evidence, you and your partner need to provide a statement about the history of your relationship. You both need to write your own. The content will obviously be similar, but you should each write it in your own words. Essentially, this is like a love story (as cheesy as it sounds), detailing how/when/where you met, how your relationship developed, when you decided to get married or begin a de-facto relationship, and so on. Most importantly for long-distance relationships, it needs to mention when you’ve been apart, and how you maintained your relationship during these periods of separation.

This is quite a lot of writing, and can easily end up being 4 or 5 pages. Some broad categories to include in this document include:

• How you met (online?)
• When and how you met in person
• Any time you’ve spent together
• How long for
• Any time apart
• How long you were apart for
• What you did to keep in contact (chat, Skype, phone, whatever)
• What you did for each other (sent cards, gifts, whatever)
• Details of meeting your partner’s family
• Activities you have done with your partner’s family
• Details of how household duties/chores are shared
• Details of travel you’ve done together (like holidays)
• Details of your social lives together
• How you support each other emotionally, physically and financially
• Where you see your future taking you (getting married? having kids? owning your own house together? etc.)

Some of this will overlap with the relationship proof, but that is okay.

That’s it for the stuff you need to write. Doesn’t that seem easy?

Statutory Declarations

To prove the social aspects of your relationship, statutory declarations are required from people that know both you and your partner. These people need to be over 18 and ideally Australian citizens, although statements from non-Australians are often accepted if you and your partner don’t have any mutual friends in Australia. They need to write about how they know you and your partner, and whether they think your relationship is genuine. Form 888 has all the required information. The people filling these out will need to get them witnessed and signed by an authorized person (such as a police office, Justice of the Peace, or doctor). You need at least two of these, but the more, the better.

Medicals and Police Checks

You will need to get medical checks done by a panel doctor. The panel doctors are doctors approved by Australian Immigration – you can’t get them done at a non-approved doctor. This part can get a little confusing. The Australia Immigration site says to wait until you’re told by your case officer to get the checks done, whereas the USA Australian Embassy site says you can send it in with the rest of your evidence. Our advice is to go with the immigration site. The medical check are only valid for a year. There’s no telling how long it’ll take for a case officer to get to your application so it’s best to wait until you get that first email!

In addition to the medical checks, you also need to get police checks for every country you’ve lived in for 12 or more months. Notably, if you were in Australia on the Working Holiday Visa (as we were), you need to have an Australian Police Check done. The Australian check does not need fingerprints. In our case, Ciera needed to get Australian and USA police checks done. For the USA checks, you need both federal (FBI) and state police checks. The Character Requirements Penal Clearance Certificates document contains information on which police checks to get done, and how to do them.

Where To From Here?

If you live near the embassy in your country, you can hand in the application in person. Otherwise, you need to mail it in. We submitted ours to the embassy in Washington via USPS Express Mail. We’d recommend Express Mail because it’s tracked and the recipient needs to sign for the package, so you know it’s been received. Once received, the initial processing may not begin for a month or two. Eventually, you get assigned a “case officer”, which is the person that is looking into your application.

Things do take a while, so you do need patience. If you’ve included all the required information, your visa should be granted with little hassle, though

Advice

If you’re going to be applying for this visa, some general advice we can give is:

• Read through the whole of the Partner Migration Booklet 1, it has valuable information on the application process.
• Start preparing everything early. Time passes quickly and there is a lot of information you need to gather for the application. We started ours about 6 months before we were going to apply, and still had to do some things at the last minute.
• Get the US FBI police check done about two to four months before you plan on applying, as this can take up to 10 weeks to complete. You can get this done whilst in Australia. Get your fingerprints done at a police station (some Victoria Police do them for free) and send them to the FBI along with the FBI police check form.
• Don’t get the FBI police check done too early! It’s only valid for a year, so if you get it done 6 or 7 months before, it’ll expire before your visa is granted and you’ll need to get a new one
• If you’re not sure about anything, ask! By far the best site we encountered during our research was Australia Forum, which is a forum dedicated to immigration to Australia. It’s definitely better to be safe than sorry. We’re also here to help as much as we can. Feel free to comment with any questions!

There are a number of good references online, including the official Australian Immigration website and Australia Forum. There’s a topic on Australia Forum called “Very Unofficial Defacto Visa Tips” that has a large number of tips about defacto visa applications.

We may have forgotten some things, but hopefully this post has given you an idea of the process required for applying for an Australian partner visa. It really is easier than it may seem. We were pleasantly surprised

Good luck!
— Daniel and Ciera

It was Daniel’s first time out of Victoria and on a plane so he was really excited (and super cute to watch!!). The flight there was alright. It got a lot better when we were getting close to landing. If you looked out the window you could see the ocean and the shore line. We were lucky that no one sat close to us so Daniel and I scooted over one seat to look out. It was beautiful!

We didn’t stay long at the hotel when we got there. Instead, we headed straight out to explore Surfers Paradise and find places we might want to visit. Getting dinner was our first priority. We found a pizza & pasta place that had all you can eat for $10. After dinner we walked to Cavill Avenue. There was so much to do there and so much going on! There’s also this great gelato place called Gelatissimo, we went there twice while we were in Surfers Paradise! We also spent some time at the beach. We were so busy with other things during the day that we could only have beach time at night! The water was still warm and refreshing, though.

Our first full day in Surfer’s Paradise was spent at Sea World. We got to see some great shows including the dolphins! I’d have to say that one was my favorite. I might edit this post later to add a video of that show just for you guys! Daniel really liked a ride they had there. You get in a boat with some crank cannons that goes around this pond area,  and you squirt other boats or people outside of the ride squirting you. We both ended up getting soaked doing that! Daniel did it twice!!

The next full day was spent at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. Anyone who knows me can tell I was the one who chose to go there! I’m so glad we did! We got to see a lot of Australian wildlife! One of the first things we did when we got there was a segway tour. A guide took Daniel and I through the whole park and showed us some exclusive things. It was really fun. At the end of the tour we stopped in this open area to get pictures and videos of us riding on the segways!

After that, we held a koala names Kozzie. That was a great experience for me! She just grabbed onto my shoulders while I held up all her weight with my hands. I didn’t know koalas could be that heavy! Another exciting thing we got to do there was walk around in a kangaroo enclosure. Most of them were laying in the shade when we walked through but we still pet a few and got to seem some babies!

The day we had to leave was spent exploring Surfers Paradise one last time. We actually spent time at the beach in the sun but didn’t get wet! The Q Deck was one of the last tourist places we visited. It’s a really tall residential  Right near the shore. The views from the top are magnificent!

All in all, it was a pretty amazing holiday. It was great spending some quality time together, and we both can’t wait for our next one!

Until next time,
- Ciera and Daniel

Check back soon!
-Ciera

This week has been awesome. Mainly because I’ve been so excited about the holiday Ciera and I will be going on!! I’ve never been outside of Victoria, so this will be quite an experience for me. We’ve been preparing stuff and booking things that we’ll be doing.

Monday wasn’t too amazing for us. I worked, and Ciera did… something. She can’t remember what she did on Monday. It was probably something so incredible that even she can’t remember it. Wow, that’s very awesome!! Erm… yeah… Anyways. Tuesday, Ciera needed to purchase a few things, so she went to our local shopping centre, the Northcote Plaza. Unfortunately, she wasn’t feeling too happy during the day . I tried my best to comfort her and make her feel loved, and I think I did a good job. I’m sure she appreciates what I do for her, as she does the same for me! We’re both pretty amazing .On Thursday, Ciera came to see me for lunch. That was great — I was looking forward to seeing her all week. For lunch, we had some really delicious pizza. I enjoyed it heaps. When she got home, Ciera was going to try and look for a new job, but ended up being too busy chatting to friends and helping them, and didn’t end up looking for any. She did look for some on Friday, though. I really do hope she finds a job soon! It’ll give her something else to do during the day

On Saturday, we wanted to go somewhere new, so we went to Chadstone Shopping Centre. It’s a really large shopping centre in an area that’s relatively far from where we live. When we were waiting for a bus to go to Chadstone, there was a stray dog that came up to us. We weren’t too sure whether it was someone’s dog or just a stray dog that lives in the area, someone was asking us whether it was our dog. Ciera gave it some food, and it stayed around us up until the bus came. When the bus came, we got on, and the dog walked off and found someone else to ask for food . Hopefully it found its owner! When we got to Chadstone, we took a look around. There’s heaps of stores there! We went to an awesome burger place called Burger Edge for lunch. It was delicious! I’m quite a fussy eater, but do like trying new things once in a while . After that, we went to some stores and bought things we’ll need on our holiday (like beach towels and small shampoo bottles).

Sunday was a pretty lazy day. I’ve been meaning to work on a report that’s due 1st February but just haven’t gotten around to it. I’ve been working on it a little bit at a time but it’s been quite hard for me to concentrate . Today we watched a movie (Despicable Me) together. Previously we had gone to the cinema and saw this movie in 3D, however, my sister had not yet seen it, so we all watched it together. Quite an awesome movie!

So, what’s ahead for us? This week I’ll be working, as usual. Ciera will probably continue looking for a job, and hopefully find one! The week after next, I’m taking leave from work for the whole week, while Ciera and I are on our holiday. I am not sure whether we’ll get time to write a blog post next week, but we’ll see when it comes around!

Until next time,
— Daniel

Daniel didn’t have work on Monday, because it was a public holiday, so we spent the day together. It’s been so good having extra time together. We went to Northland AGAIN. This time we went because I wanted a body pillow. NEEDED a body pillow. We found one for $9 at K-Mart and then got some nice, soft purple fabric from Lincraft so I could make a pillowcase for it. It turned out really nice. We had Lord of the Fries for lunch. Daniel loves that place and we always seem to get coupons for it.

Tuseday through Friday is all in a jumble to me. Daniel had work the rest of the week, of course. He’s a working man. I remember being really depressed for a few days. I think the main cause was me being homesick and not having a job added to it. I feel so useless when I have nothing to do during the day.  One night we ordered a Flip Mino (video camera) and scales (so we can tell how fat we are) from catchoftheday.com.au. They arrived on Thursday and we’ve been having fun with them since. We were considering on doing a vlog (video blog) today instead of typing something out but Daniel thought it’d take too much time to get ready. Next week, you might be lucky and get to see a vlog! Friday wasn’t very exciting either. Daniel had work. He got out earlier than usual but missed the early bus so he got home at the usual time.

We made a trip to Costco on Saturday with Silvia, Daniel’s mum. It was crazy trying to catch all the busses. We had to run for at least two because we were slowpokes or just didn’t know what we were doing. After Costco, we stopped at K-Mart to get some more shorts and look for things we need to bring on our holiday. We only found the shorts but that was good enough for us. I’ve finally gotten Daniel to wear something other than jeans! Haha! I just started wearing things other than jeans too… *shifty eyes*. At night, I got to talk to one of my best friends, Luci. We talked about soooo much and were on the phone for two hours. It was so good to hear from her. I need to make sure we talk on the phone more.

Today we slept in until 11:30 this morning. We both have been needing it although it doesn’t feel like it helped me much now. I’ve only been awake for 6 hours and I’m tired. We were trying to decide if we wanted to go out when Andrea (one of my friends in America) reminded me that I was going to webcam with her and Josh (another friend from America). Daniel and I played Mario while I was waiting for Andrea and Josh to get ready. I ended up talking to them on webcam for at least and hour and a half. There was a lot of laughing, which I definitely needed. I miss hanging out with them and laughing that much. Those were some really good days.

That’s it for now, guys. I’m sorry I’m slacking. I just can’t be bothered with a picture or typing much this week. I might update this post later so keep your eyes peeled.

Until next time
-Ciera

P.S.  There may not be a blog on the Sunday after this next one coming up. Daniel and I will be leaving for a trip to the Gold Coast the next day so we might be too busy with packing. I’m going to try to get some clips of our trip on camera so I hope that makes up for it

This week was pretty good. I had Monday and Tuesday off work (public holidays for Christmas and Boxing Day), and also took a day of annual leave on Wednesday. So I actually only worked for two days in the week, and ended up finishing work early on Friday. This meant I had heaps of time to spend with Ciera! It was awesomely amazing, definitely a great change from the day-to-day work I have to do. I love Ciera, and spending time with her! <3

On Monday, Ciera, my mum, two of my uncles and I all went to Costco. Costco’s been around for quite a while in the USA, but only recently opened in Australia (about  a year ago). There was some pretty good stuff there. We ended up buying a game for our Nintendo Wii (Epic Mickey) as it was only $50 at Costco (compared to $70-80 at other stores!). Ciera’s been playing the game quite a lot, and seems to be enjoying it. A few weeks earlier, she bought me New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which we’ve also been playing quite a lot. It’s a great fun game!

On Tuesday, Ciera suggested that we buy a board game. We took a look around a few stores at Northland (like K-Mart, Target and Toys R Us) and ended up buying a version of Monopoly – The “Here and Now – The World Edition”  version. It was a limited edition and was cheaper than most of the other versions of Monopoly.

On Friday, I was pretty lucky and got to go home from work early (I think nearly everyone did). This meant I could get home early and surprise Ciera! She was pretty happy about that . We wanted to get pizza for dinner, but unfortunately the local pizza store was closed, as were some other good pizza stores. The only pizza store that was open was Domino’s, which isn’t nearly as good as a “proper” pizza place. We ended up just buying from Domino’s, and to be honest, it wasn’t too bad. OM NOM NOM.

Saturday was New Year’s Day!! Wooooo, 2011 already! 2010 went so quickly!! Ciera and I decided that we should go see a movie. We went to Northland and it wasn’t open. We were worried we wasted our time, but we took a look around and noticed that a few places were still open, including the cinema! But before we went to the cinema, we went to get food (as we were both really hungry). The Pancake Parlour was another one of the stores that was open, so we went there to have lunch. Very expensive, but the food was quite good!

Recently I’ve been organising things for our holiday that we’re having (we’re going to the Gold Coast, Queensland on 23rd January). That will be amazing, I can’t wait! It’ll be the first time I’ve been outside of Victoria, so yeah, quite an experience for me

Until next time,
— Daniel

As you can tell by the title, this week was the actual half-way point. We were counting months by four weeks but, since a year has 52 weeks, we messed it up a little. 26 weeks = half a year… blahblahblah. You get the point!

On Tuesday of this week, the business Daniel works at (PageUp People) had a Christmas party. His manager insisted that he go and even offered to pay for me to join. We accepted the offer and ended up having a great time! It was held at Richmond Union Bowling Club, a place to play lawn bowls. The party started with drinks and food (mostly BBQ). It later moved out to the lawn where we bowled… simple enough xD. It was great to meet all the people Daniel works with. I know some people were excited to meet me, too.

Nothing else happened during thing week until Friday. I got some bad news that day and Daniel got to get off work early!  I got a text during the day from work. They were informing me and my coworkers that there wouldn’t be any available shifts until AFTER 31 January. The break was originally supposed to be two weeks. I’m sure that’s fine with a few people but it sucks for those of us who were depending on the job. It really sucks for me because I have to quit in Feb. I guess I just have to speed up the job search now. That was bad news to get on Christmas Eve, though. Daniel got to leave work after a company lunch. When he got home, we went to a store called Clear it with one of his uncles that’s visiting for the holidays. It’s basically a clearance store with some really high-end fashion and then some really cheap, ugly, other things. In my opinion, most the high-end fashion things were also ugly. Clear it is a ‘hit-and-miss’ store. That trip wasn’t very lucky for me. I found nothing!

This weekend we got to celebrate our first Christmas together! We had a very good time. It was my first time experiencing the weird phenomenon known as Christmas in summer. Christmas day started early in the morning. We woke up around 7:30am to a phone call from Daniel’s dad telling us he’ll be getting us shortly. We spent the morning at his house opening presents and having breakfast. I got some really beautiful earrings that I haven’t stopped wearing! Daniel got some clothes, like always. After the morning there, we went to Santina’s house (Daniel’s Grandpa’s partner) for lunch. It was sooo delicious! We had some Italian soup as a starter. Then came some amazing lasagne! The rest of the time was spent snacking on whatever was on the table. After everyone had enough to eat, presents were handed out. Daniel got the Book of Secrets and a deck of Italian cards from his uncles (I don’t know who gave which). I got a wonderful, natural candle and some fantastic body creme. Guess where we went after lunch. Back to his dad’s house!! This time it was for a BBQ with that side of the family. Once again, more presents and a great time with relatives. The presents received there were socks (for Daniel) and mugs (for me). Hahahaha! The whole day was really great. So much going on! We were both exhausted by the time we got home.

As for today, we spent some more time with Daniel’s uncles (Rob and Mario). Uncle Rob wanted to check out Costco. It’s a new store for Australia so everyone was a little excited to check it out. We ended up getting a lot of stuff, as expected. Most of the money was stuff I bought, though. The rest was some nice food that we needed and wanted. Haha! That’s basically all we did during the day. Now Daniel and I are just sitting at home. We’re going to play New Super Mario Bros. Wii soon and I may play my new game, Epic Mickey (got it at Costco for $50!!).

I hope you all have had very happy holidays! Enjoy a picture of Santa Claws!

Arrivederci!
-Ciera