Three peaks challenge & Bright, Victoria

 Stan recently participated in a 3 Peaks Challenge, which involved climbing 3 mountains in 3 states in 33 hours. The mountains were some of the highest in Australia and they hiked day and night (one night it was poring rain!!) Once they were done they would get on a bus and drive to the next mountain. He was fundraising money for Whitelion, which is an organization that helps troubled youth from 12-18 yrs. At work Stan overseas a program called "Bain Cares." Stan facilitates opportunities for Bain employees to give back to the community through pro-bono consulting to non-profit organizations in trouble, clean up opportunities in the community, and even high adventure fundraising opportunities for interested employees. It is fun and Stan really enjoys doing this for other people. 

The final day of the three peaks challenge ended in Bright. Stan wanted to know if I would come and pick him up (it was a 4 hour drive each way); he was tired (hadn't slept more than a couple hours over the three days and two of the three days it was very bad weather.)  He said it was gorgeous, but I wasn't too keen on loading up the kids for an 8 hour drive so he came home on the bus! 

The next weekend Stan suggested we take the kids up to see the leaves. Most of Australia does not have deciduous trees, so bright is a bit of a spectacle. Bright gets snow and lots of rainfall. I think the reason it is called bright is because of the rainfall- everything is bright beautiful colors. It reminded me a lot of the east coast in the USA. Soooo-since it is officially autumn, we decided to come see Bright as our last weekend away trip!

We stayed in a holiday park and just relaxed. We took a long walk along the river and got pizza at a nearby playground- it was so nice to just let the kids run around!

Thomas throwing a footy with Stan.

I love the fall and all these leaves!

We were also lucky enough to show up during an autumn festival,

 Roasting chestnuts!

 Thomas smashing nuts.

The next day we went for a hike. Here is Olivia having breakfast before our hike!

Lucky in love

We wanted to go up to one of the highest points in bright- you can see into NSW...but once we got to the top there was a bunch of rain and fog, so we couldn't really see more than 10 meters :(