One year in Australia!!

Tomorrow officially marks our one year anniversary in Australia. I honestly cannot beleive that we have been here for a year already, although in many ways it feels like we have been here a lot longer then that. It has been an incredible year. We have seen and done amazing things, met some wonderful new friends and learned quite a bit about the vast cultural differences between English speaking counties; Australia, Canada, England and the USA. I actually think I know more now about what it means to be "Canadian" then I did before I got here, if that makes any sense at all.
In honour of our anniversary here is my top 10 of the past year...these are really in no particular order.

1 - Sandboarding
2- Watching beautiful sunsets over the Indian Ocean
3- Going to see Michael Buble at one of the local wineries
4 - Finding many of the "kid friendly" wineries in Margaret River (seriously they actually have a list of all the kid friendly places with playgrounds or toys to keep the kids amused)
5 - Floating on a giant "thong" (flip flop) in the ocean at Cottesloe beach with 3,000 other people in an attempt to beat out the gang at Bondi in Sydney (they won...but it was still pretty cool)
6 -Exploring Sydney with my parents (even though it rained the ENTIRE time, we still had a great time)
7 - Watching Bryan remember how to surf - this is going to have to be on my to do list next year
8 - Listening to Brayden begin to speak with an Australian accent with his mates at school
9 - Participating in the 8km Trek the Trail bike ride with the kids through the John Forrest National Park and then eating lunch with the Kangaroos
10 - Concerts in the park, picnics at the beach, Worlds Greatest Foodcourt Fridays with the Charrois family, bouncy castles every weekend = lots of fun family activities

All in all we have had a great first year. I am looking forward to see what the coming year will hold now that we are settled into this new life. However, rest assured we have not forgotten our Canadian roots, and as a wonderful poetic reminder of that fact we are actually going to be spending tomorrow evening (our one year anniversary in Australia) at the hockey arena as both Brayden and Bryan have games! Once again proving you can take the Maybee's out of Canada but you will never take Canada out of the Maybees!!