While We're (Still) Waiting.......

Here we are:  Day 8 overdue with Baby.  Sigh.  If something happened today, we could still tie the record with Julianne, who was also 8 days late.  But nothing seems to be happening.  After yesterday, I thought maybe things would be kick-started, but nope, not even lots of hiking has motivated this little one to come.

Yesterday was one of the first days I've actually seen blue sky in quite a while!  We've had record-setting rain here in Cairns (Tuesday set a record for the rainiest day in October, ever, with 8 1/2 inches!)  And there's been rain every day since then.  But yesterday we decided to take advantage of the break in the rain and headed out to the Cairns Botanical Gardens in the afternoon.


It's a beautiful place with lots of paths winding all around.  Of course, with my kids, you don't really slowly stroll along and look at everything.  With them, everything is a race to see how quickly they can cover all the various paths.  Usually taken at almost a full sprint.  =) 





We walked thru the gardens, and then along the boardwalk that runs thru a marshy area by some small lakes.  Right at the end of the boardwalk it started raining again, but thankfully it was short-lived.



My intentions were to walk until I got this baby moving.  Right in the same place there is this awesome hiking trail that locals use for a running track.  It goes up I-don't-know-how-many flights of stairs.  Up at the top there are several lookouts where you can see all of Cairns, and overlook the airport.  So we stopped at the closest lookout and sat and watched a jet land.  The kids love that.  Then we came down the many stairs on the rest of the loop.  Kaitlyn, Nathan and Justin always amaze me with their endless energy.  The first half of the trail is entirely up (with numerous flights of stairs) and they ran the whole way (this after running all around the Botanical Gardens and the Boardwalk).  They would wait for us a ways ahead, and then as soon as they saw us, take off again.  We rarely saw them.  Julianne was also amazing as she did most of it on her own as well.  Matt carried her on a few of the stairs, but she did most of it.  I've just got 4 natural-born hikers!

It felt great to get out and moving, and I was definitely feeling tired by the end after lugging my stomach up and down all those stairs.  I thought for sure I would have something in the way of contractions in the night because of it (2 years ago, that's when Julianne finally came... after 2 nights and a day of contractions that started after this same hike).  But nope.  Not a single twinge.  So we're still waiting.  At least we had something fun to do while we waited yesterday.