Cricket - February 15 - Who can give me some Rules?

Seth found a deal that we could go see a cricket match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) for free just by showing our train ticket. The match we were to see was part of a 3 day test match. Don't ask me to explain it - I'm just telling you what I was told! So we got there and looked high and low for empty seats. Ok, take a close look at the pictures. There were less than 100 people visible to us. So unless there were a plethora of people on the level right above, people weren't all that interested even with the idea of free! We got there in time to watch for about a half hour and then they took a lunch break. Who breaks for lunch? We'll have to go with someone who knows what is going on and can explain it, then we won't make fun of it as much!

The last pic here is a picture of the city. Not a great one but I was hoping to show the amount of smoke in the air from the bush fires. Of course, I'll have to go back to the MCG so I can get another picture of a clear day. It was a day where we could definitely smell the fires and the streets were very smoky.

Finishing Touches - February 11

I figured since we showed off Lilly's Pirate toy box we would show her Fairy dresser. Lilly loves the stickers. Unfortunately we ended up taking off her pirate stickers for now because she kept taking them off, playing with them, moving them around, and doing who knows what with some of them! Hopefully her fairies will stick around longer and we'll be able to put the pirates back on, too!

Eating Australia?

February 7 - We took Seth to ScienceWorks. These pictures are of Lilly in the play diner, she's learning to use the hightech coffee machine.

This was also the day known as Black Saturday. The temperatures reached 46 degrees (~114) and the winds were terrible. The bush fires burned out of control and over 200 people were killed. 7500 people were left homeless and even one of the animal sanctuaries was evacuated.

We tried to take the train home from the science center and the ride ended up taking several hours as our rail line was completely shut down.

The last picture is the largest frozen chicken patty I've ever seen. It was oddly shaped like Australia. Seth and I were able to cut it in half and share it (with enough for Lilly on the side)!

Jumping into February

On the first we went into the city to see the Chinese New Year Celebration. We were able to spend about an hour and just walked around and checked out these dragons. There were lots of fireworks which Lilly didn't seem to mind. She just thought they were noisy.

Another Zoo Visit

Here are a couple of pics from our visit to the zoo On January 27. Lilly is sitting on a wombat statue. These things are usually sleeping and look like logs. Wouldn't want to hit one with the car. Then there is Lilly on a stone elephant and one of the real elephants that lives at the zoo. Notice she still has her tatoo from the Australia Day celebration. She refused to let me scrub.

Australia Day

The 26th of January is Australia Day, celebrating the founding of Australia (forget about the Aborigonies who were already living here for a little bit). Seth had the day off so we headed to Werribee Open Range Zoo. This zoo has the typical enclosures for kangaroos and lions (those are not together, by the way). It also has a 'safari' in which you load up on a bus and drive around the open ranges. We were able to see giraffes, rhinoceros, and different kind of antelope type animals. It was pretty cool. Lilly really liked the zoo although she was petrified of a man walking around in a zebra costume.

In the evening we took a train to the city. They had a very strange performance, I can't really describe it. We have a little video I'll get Seth to put it on the site. We went to see the fireworks. We weren't disappointed with the fireworks. They were being set off from three different places and we were able to see them all.

Trying to get back on track!

Internet is back up and running! Turns out our power cord went bad.

Now we have a lot of catching up to do. I'm going to try to work backwards so I keep these in order. You'll have to just check it out every once in a while to see what has happened. I'll post some pics with each entry and I'll have Seth come back and post the video we have plus the large sets of pictures in an album.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Have a good one!