A Stroll Through Town

Alan was under the weather (must have been all the rain) so Seth, Pennie and I took the kids to the city for a lot of walking.

We took the ferry to the other side of the city from where we were staying and just started walking.

This is the old Customs House. They were setting up for a wedding so we didn’t do too much looking around.

I love random art throughout the city. Melbourne has some, I really should take pictures of it all. I’m sure there are stories behind the pieces, but I like to think it’s all random.

We found the Botanical Gardens and went for a stroll. We saw quite a few lizards sun bathing. Lilly was able to get quite close. In fact, she almost stepped on a few because they blended in so well. And she wasn’t paying attention.

Giggle!

And this was the real reason I wanted to go to the city. My cousin, Emily, and I found this last year when she visited. The weather was decent so I was happy to let Lilly have a good play.

Who doesn't love a picture with a dugong? Notice Lilly's hands are clenched, she was getting rather cold by this time.

Adlai had a good time trying to get the water. But he didn’t want to be splashed so much.

Rain! No, Really . . .

It rained seemingly all day. Although I wasn’t in the city to see all the rain, it sounded like the family did lots of walking in the rain. Oh, and they saw art. That’s all I know.

Meanwhile, I took Adlai and went to see my friend, Lisa, north of the city. They were going to hold on to our luggage that we would be able to fit everyone and a little luggage in the car. We would have had to make multiple trips otherwise, it just wouldn’t have worked.

It didn’t rain once I got out of the city but I had more fun to deal with instead. When I took Adlai out of the car he had an exploding diaper. I walked up to my friend’s house with him just in front of me asking if for a bit of help. In the end, he got a bath. And my wonderful friend ended up soaking the clothes for several days. But besides that, I had a great time with Lisa and her children.

(Lisa used to work with my back in Detroit. She was the reason that I went to Fiji. I'm just happy that we still keep in touch and can see each other now and then. Our kids are similar ages so it's fun to compare how things differ here and in the states.)

When I got back into Brisbane, Seth and company were just getting dinner from a Thai restaurant before walking home. When they got back Seth got the key stuck in the door of the building. It wasn’t really his fault, no one could get it out. The management brought us a new key a couple hours later and it turns out they had to break the key. That seems to be how our holiday is going.

Chillin' in the hotel:

Made It With Moments to Spare

We got to Brisbane on time. Barely. We went to the hotel first to drop the kids and myself off. Then Seth went to the airport because we know Alan and Pennie would already be there. But in the meantime, our phones stopped working. So we couldn’t receive calls to find out where Alan and Pennie were waiting. Oh, it worked out in the end. But I did get a lot of calls from the airport personnel.

By the time they got back to the hotel it was time to think dinner. I can’t even remember what we ate. I just know we walked. And walked. And walked. I’m sure it wasn’t that far, but since I didn’t know where I was going it was so much longer.

Day 2 Heading East

Happy Birthday to my brother (yeah, it’s late, but it’s the thought, right?)!

We quickly ate breakfast and packed up our tent and car and got on the road.

Who am I kidding? We are slow! To start, I had a very rough night. It was freezing and I ended up sleeping with Adlai in my sleeping bag because he was cold and just not comfortable. There was not too much sleeping going on for me and let’s just say by the time Seth and Lilly got up Adlai was on fourth breakfast.

We took the time to stop at a giant radio telescope outside of Parkes. I didn’t go to see it because Adlai finally fell asleep and we wanted him to take a nap. Ok, I could see it, it was huge, I just had to turn around in my seat. I didn’t go into the information center. In case you are interested, the dish was opened October 31, 1961. [Fact from Seth]

Lilly, the budding photographer:

We saw lots of this on the drive:

Heading East

Our plan was to pack up the car Sunday and leave nice and early Monday so we could go camping. Giggle. Ok, really I tried to at least have the kids packed but there is always something that is needed at the last minute.

So, we frantically threw a bunch of clothes in bags and dumped the fridge into various plastic containers and filled our car to the brim and finally left before noon. Dang, we did get a late start. Not exactly what we had in mind. But really, we don’t need to be in Brisbane until Wednesday to pick up Seth’s parents. So time was on our side.

And so we began our trip in style. Seth drove and we told Lilly we wouldn’t eat for a few hours. We made it about two hours before we had to stop. We went for a classic McDonald’s stop. And it was oddly packed. Wouldn’t you know it, Adlai blew out his diaper. Bummer. We’ll have to wash his car seat when we get to Brisbane.

It took quite some time to get food and clean up the boy so we spent way more time at our stop for the day. At the end of the day, we really didn’t make it nearly as far as we had planned. So we still camped, just not where we had wanted. Is anyone surprised?

Hello, House!

Today we got to spend some actual time in our house with just us. But we didn’t enjoy it too much. We did get our family room sorted a little bit. Most of the time was spent doing lots of laundry and figuring out what to pack for our trip.

Ok, so we didn't spend all our time doing what we were supposed to do. We may have played with our new camera lens a bit. And so I'll share. I didn't do any editing so a lot of them are blown out. We took these on top of our kitchen table (you know, because it's still laying on the floor).

And what is with my hair? That's why I only put one with me in it. My hair is out of control (nothing new, I'm just annoyed with it).

A Good Old Run Around

Seth’s parents met some of Seth’s co-workers last year when they had to run tests in the states. So we had lunch with one of them at a Dim Sims restaurant. Instead of ordering from a set menu, the servers just walk around with various types of meats and veggies. I don’t know half of what I ate but I did try chicken feet. HA! Close to a chicken wing but not enough meat for me to have another. It is a good way to try a lot of different foods.

We did run to Costco but I'll skip boring you with our tortilla chip find.

We had to run to Coburg to drop off some library books and we thought we would find somewhere to watch the AFL Grand Finale. We finally went to a ‘hotel’ that was right down the street from our old place. We lived there for three years and never went into this pub. The game was quite exciting. I didn’t pay attention to where we were sitting and didn’t realize that it was mostly segregated with fans from one team by the front door and fans of another team by the back door. Luckily we sat by the appropriate team and they won! Geelong won by quite a large margin but for a while it was close.