From three to four

G'day to you all and happy 2014. This is Cinda hailing from a picnic mat in her humble little backyard in Sydney, being a bit whacky as usual. My family went fishing at 5am without me so I'd like to say that my quails make better family material. Yes. No. Not really. I love my human family to bits.

Between the last post and now I've been having a good time doing things that I forgot to bring Momo to. You didn't read it wrong, my friends christened my Canaon 600D "Momo" because it's "movable" and "mobile" as they sarcastically said, being the victims of carrying it whenever I needed to take off my jacket or grab my wallet from my bag.

Happiness without Momo looked like a Christmas of carols, worshipping God at church, presents and endless feasts of turkeys, puddings, seafood and Ferrero Rocher with family and friends. Happiness looked like regularly waking up early to watch the sunrise, do daily devotions then hitting the 50m pool with the neighbourhood girls. Happiness looked like boxing day sales, sorting through your possessions  and taking old clothes to Vinnies. Happiness looked like counting your blessings - not just by the number of the fish caught at Kiama or the size of the extra generous portion the cute guy at the kebab shop put into your snack pack - but by the number of  things that God has done for and through me this year: from being able to wake up this morning to the privilege of stepping into university to being put through difficult things to gain maturity, to increase my love and trust in Jesus and grow teenage Cinda into her adult shoes a little more.

Now for the Momo adventures. For the first time in foreverrrr (man, I love the songs from the Frozen) I finally decided to watch the new years fireworks live with my high school crew. In the morning, Linda and I went for a Manly beach/bush walk to breathe in the salty air, soak up the summer sun and reflect on our year. The 1.5hr walk turned into a 3hr walk because we got lost. Thankfully some lovely locals were headed down the same way and we ended up walking with them until we got back on track.

Everything looked a bit funky and vintage through my sunnies like that senior jogging along one of the smaller beaches.

We barely started our walk before we found Ben and Jerry's and treated ourselves to a sugar hit. Linda had 'Cookies and Cream' which she loved and I tried the less conventional 'Couch Potato' which had chocolate coated potato crisp chunks. It tasted nothing like Maccas chips with soft serve but wasn't too bad. Nice at first but not-as-nice by the end.

It was a pretty easy walk and the scenery was lovely. We crossed residential areas, walked on roads, weaved in and out of bush trails and along the coast. There were many small, secluded beaches with no lifeguards and rocky areas for fishing. A tip about going on these walks would be to go to the tourist information centre to grab a map first. Also bring a compass just in case.

After we got back from Manly we met up with Helena, Jedda and her uni friends and hit George Street for karaoke and dinner at Mizuya. We split off again and met up with the rest of the high school crew to camp out for the 9pm fireworks at Pyrmont. The harbour bridge fireworks were great and we could also see the Darling Harbour ones behind us. I don't know how to photograph fireworks properly so these photos are not doing them justice.

Most of us didn't stay for the 12am fireworks because we wanted to go home and enjoy it on tv with our families. Due to the traffic road block we got a good kick out of walking on main roads, navigating around horse faeces and tipsy people. We were going have a small celebratory drink before heading home but ended running late for the train and dumped the vod and coke with one of our friends who stayed back.

Cheers to fulfilling my new years resolution of being a "responsible adult" so far! I have a few more resolutions that are a bit iffy but anything is better than 2013. I actually didn't set a single new year's resolution last year (my standards are very high as you can see haha). Look where it got me now?

I signed up for writing classes so my grammar and syntax will make more sense by the end of the year.. hopefully.. maybe..

What's your new year's resolutions?