Babymooning at Crystal Creek Rainforest Retreat

Hi friends! Hope everyone had a great weekend. Ours was filled with lots of relaxing and family time, which was just what we wanted.

I am finally getting around to writing about our babymoon that we took a couple weeks ago. We didn’t really take an official “baby moon” before we had Leighton, but I feel like the previous year was one big one since we did plenty of traveling and spending time just the two of us. I feel like the second time around taking time to go somewhere just us two was much more important.

Since Leighton was born I have only been away from her one night and that was after a wedding when she was 4 months old, and my parents brought her back to me first thing in the morning. That wasn’t really intentional and I would have totally thought I would have taken some sort of trip at this point, but when you live on the other side of the world from all of your family the opportunities are pretty slim.

Luckily, I have amazing friends and one of them insisted on taking Leighton one weekend before the baby came so we could have some alone time. Once I mentioned that to Travis, he took off with it and organized the whole weekend without me knowing. For my birthday in March, he gave me a card with a picture of the Crystal Creek Rainforest Retreat and let me know he had coordinated the whole thing already.

Leading up to the weekend I was feeling pretty emotional about leaving Leighton, not that I didn’t think she was in great hands, I just worried I would be the one a mess because I missed her. That Friday, we packed up and I think she could sense something was happening, and she definitely knew once we unloaded her portacot and suitcase at their house. I went over a few hours before we had to leave so I could set up her little room and make sure she was comfortable. The three of us hung out and then I put her down for her nap and snuck out.

A little skeptical as I loaded up the car, but ready to go in her favorite outfit and dog carrier in hand.

Once I knew she was all settled, I picked up Travis and we headed out of town. Crystal Creek is a couple hours away, just across the border in New South Wales. Once you are in the Gold Coast you drive another hour through national parks and winding mountain roads. It is quite tucked away and very secluded feeling.

We checked in and got all settled. They have different meal options you can order to be delivered during the day and then you cook the meat portions yourself since you have a full kitchen and grill, but nothing jumped out of us so we chose to self cater for the weekend. We toured our little cabin and fell in love. My favorite was of course the bath tub with a view.

It was already evening by then, so we got into our comfies and Trav put a fire in the fire place. I took my first of many baths and Trav grilled us up a feast to enjoy by candle light. Absolutely perfect.

The next morning we had plans to sleep in but the sounds of mother nature didn’t get the memo. We did hear some pretty crazy bird sounds though. We started the morning on the patio with coffee and spent most of the morning relaxing and reading on the couch. It’s not often we get to enjoy multiple warm cups of tea or coffee, so we took full advantage.

It felt so luxurious to have the whole day in front of us with no nap schedule to work around. I forgot what that felt like. We facetimed with Leighton that morning and of course she was having a blast and hadn’t gotten upset, other than when Ameilia would pick up the diaper bag aka “mommy backpack!”.

Later that morning we decided to take advantage of the hiking trails and swimming holes and go for a walk. Per the retreat’s request we sprayed our shoes to keep the leeches away and collected a walking stick. Of course Travis wanted to do the most difficult hike, because he assumed they were just exaggerating on the difficulty. I also realized I hadn’t snapped my bump pic for the week, so had to check that off the list too.

Half way up to the lookout, he finally relented and agreed that it was not the best choice especially for an eight month pregnant woman carrying a solid extra twenty pounds. So, we cut over to the swimming holes. The water was pretty cold, so we decided to not go for a swim but it would be prefect for a warm, summer day.

When we got back to the house for lunch Travis found a leech on the ground and a bloody ankle. Luckily it didn’t hurt him at all, but it was a bit gross. The retreat had a clubhouse filled with DVDs and games that you could borrow, and after our walk we had brought back Downton Abbey Season 6 (what we had been watching at home) and Scrabble. So we sat outside and enjoyed an afternoon cuppa and a riveting game of Scrabble. Travis is one of the few people who is still playing the Words with Friends app, so he had a pretty big advantage over me.

Late afternoon, we packed up a little meat and cheese picnic to take down to the orchard that was by our cabin. We relaxed out there for a while and Trav snapped this candid shot of my big ole bump (don’t mind my face, I promise I was enjoying myself).

We headed back to the cabin and waited for the sun to go down, before taking a walk to see the glowworms. We have been wanting to see glow worms ever since we moved here and had seen them advertised. I tried to snap pictures but you really couldn’t see anything. They mostly just looked like tiny little specks of light all along the trees. It was pretty neat to finally see though.

When we got back I told Trav I was going to take a bath before dinner and he said “hold on” and ran upstairs. When I got up there, he had this set up waiting for me. While I relaxed in the tub, he made a delicious steak dinner.

The next morning started with a FaceTime to Leighton, of course. Followed by breakfast on the patio and more reading and relaxing.

We asked for a later checkout and they let us stay until 11 (normal is 10), by the time we were all packed up and had the car loaded it was 11 on the dot. We were ready to head back to Brisbane to see our baby girl, who clearly was completely miserable without us.

We couldn’t wait to get back in town to eat lunch, so we ended the baby moon on the classiest note- eating McDonalds at a truck stop.

We got back into town just an hour into Leighton’s nap, so our friends told us not to rush over (pretty sure they needed their own nap haha). We got to enjoy the last hour of toddler free time grocery shopping and strolling along the river, coffee in hand. The perfect, relaxing end to our time away.

I’m not sure when the next time we will get that much alone time will be, so we definitely appreciated it!

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