Happy birthday to Ben!!

Another year older, but at least we were able to celebrate together! The three of us headed to the beach. The weather’s been pretty hot lately, so the water felt great… at least to 2 of us. While Ben and I were body surfing and playing in the waves, Ani headed back to our pile of stuff and played life-guard.

We just can’t convince her that water is fun, and all of our attempts just seem to make her like it less.
For lunch, we headed over to the shops (bare-foot, in true Aussie style) and got a great meal of oysters, prawns and calamari.

Of course, this had to be chased down with some ice cream, which we got for ~1/2 price thanks to the blackout that hit town just before lunch. Nothing like a good discount to make your birthday happy! And then a storm rolled in just as we got back to our stuff, so we watched the beach clear out and the awesome lightning come in before we skedaddled.
We decided to keep the seafood theme going for dinner, and tried our hand at making our own sushi.

In various combinations, these were the ingredients we used: salmon, prawns, avocado, asparagus, red bell pepper, snow peas, cucumber, cream cheese, and spicy mayo. And I must admit, we were rather impressed with ourselves!

So we ended the day with some nice white wine, homemade sushi, and Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix.

And Ben opened all his cards during the commercials, so in some very abstract way, our family even got to be part of the celebration. (The skype calls the next day were a better way to connect with family.)