Back to school

Somehow, this year I have a 2nd and a 4th grader starting school! They're getting so big, and now with Truman they seem even bigger cause he's so teeny.

We're really happy with their school here and are excited for them to have a full year at Templestowe Valley. Last year they came in after the first term, so they missed a few events at the beginning of the year. We recently go notice that the owners of our rental house are tearing it down and building a new one, so we have to move. But we are so happy and settled into the school that we will stay close.

Caleb wasn't thrilled about starting school this year, but he thrives when he's busy, so I'm sure he'll get into it soon enough. He has become a great big brother and love carrying Truman around and making him laugh. He's still playing tennis and is adding a 30 minute private lesson to his weekly group coaching. He's also still doing cub scouts and can't wait till it starts again next week.

Ellie's new teacher is named Mrs. Besford, but with the accent here Ellie says it "Besfid"- I think she has no idea there is an "R" in it. She is still in love with animals and jumps at the chance to play with dogs at the park or pets at her friends house. This year in addition to her swim class Ellie is starting a hip hop class, which is so cute!

Tru is getting more and more wiggly/mobile. He's pushing up on his arms, scooting backwards and getting ready to sit up. He celebrated his first Australia Day in January- so I had to get him a little shirt...

We like to say that he is an Australian Made Baby with materials sourced from the U.S :)

Kids portraits

Aren't they precious!?!?

Heron Island

From New Zealand we hopped a flight to Sydney, then to Brisbane, stayed overnight, then a flight to Gladstone and then a 2 hour boat ride..... to get to Heron Island for 5 days.

Heron Island is a small island right on the Great Barrier Reef. It's a national park and has nothing on it other than the resort and a small research facility. It is one of the special places where sea turtles come year after year to lay their eggs. We were so excited to see the mamas drag their big bodies up onto the beach, find just the right spot and then dig huge holes to lay their eggs.

Chris and the kids even got to see some of the hatchlings make their way out to the water. Sadly, they saw most of them get gobbled up by seagulls, but a few made it out there.

The snorkeling was easily the highlight of the trip to Heron. Go HERE to see a video of some of the things we saw. FYI, that cute girl in the beginning of the video is my sister-in-law, Marli. I think the coral and fish were more spectacular in Thailand but here we saw sharks (eek!), rays and swam with turtles, which was my personal fave. The kids did so awesome snorkeling! Caleb liked to stay right close to someone (as did I as soon as I saw one of the sharks), and Ellie was a little fish as usual. She said the only time she got scared is when she saw a huge ray and then she swam really quickly back to her uncle Pat.

 This is were Truman spent most of his time on this trip. Chris and I were taking turns watching him while the other snorkeled. The second day though were smartened up and got a babysitter to watch him. This particular picture was taken at a spot the call Shark Bay. We saw about 7 or 8 black tips right up near the shore at one point.

One night Chris stayed out really late looking for hatchlings and watching the turtles. He says he just kept seeing cool stuff, and by the time he was ready for bed the sun was starting to come up. So instead of going to bed he took some sunrise pictures and then went snorkeling one last time.

Such a cool island to spend a few days- definitely got the best Great Barrier Reef experience!

New Zealand wrap up- Milford sound

Rather than sit in the car for another 7 hours, we took a small plane flight to Milford Sound and I'm so glad we did. Although the drive is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the world, so was the flight.

This picture cracks me up. 

"Dear God please don't let this tiny plane crash"

I mean you can't see views like that from the car!

Once we arrived in Milford Sound we took a 2 hour boat cruise through the fjords and got up close and personal with some waterfalls.

It was just the kind of relaxing, scenic, low stress day we need after our nightmare of a drive back from Franz Joseph.

New Zealand part 2 (drive to Franz Joseph)

We had made a plan to drive the 5 hours up to Franz Joseph, stay the night and then take a helicopter ride out onto the glacier up there. The drive was amazing. I've never seen so much amazing scenery in a 5 hour trip. I'll just give you the highlights before continuing the memorable story.

 Marli and Rachel and our tall, skinny Diet Cokes! 

We kept seeing these pretty wildflowers, so we stopped to take some pictures. Yes, they were cool, but as we looked through our pictures after the trip and found TONS of these flowers we had to laugh and wonder why we were so obsessed with them! I guess we had no idea the amazing views yet to come on that drive.

Just one of the awesome mountain/lake views

Truman is always less than thrilled about riding in the car, but he did pretty well for a full day of driving.  

New Zealand is known for it's sheep/lamb farms, so I wanted to get a good picture of one. Every time we'd pass one, someone would ask me if I wanted to stop of a picture. I kept saying no, because I knew that around one of these turns we would see some amazing green field just FULL of sheep, and behold- here it is. We let Ellie get out and try to catch one, no luck though. She said that if the grass hadn't been so long she could have gotten one.

Ashort hike through the forest to check out the blue pools 

One of the MANY waterfalls along the drive. One hillside we saw had at least 7 or 8 waterfalls. 

This was an awesome pub in the middle of nowhere that we stopped at for lunch. 

I don't think it needs much more of caption than that.

And now for the rest of the Franz Joseph trip story. We made it up there just fine, had a good evening, ordered dinner and watched movies. Let me preface this by saying that both Marli and Ellie had gotten some kind of stomach bug in the last few days. Well about 3 am that night it hit me. I was up vomiting every 30 min to 1 hour all night long. Come morning, I knew there was no way I was going to make it on a 2 hour hike around the glacier. Then Pat came in and he was sick too, but was still planning on going. They all packed up to go and I went back to sleep. 15 minutes later they show up and told me that it was canceled because of the fog. Major bummer! Pat and I were so sick that we didn't even want to hang around the town, but just want to get back to Queenstown where we were meant to stay that night. So Chris drove us straight through, only stopping for someone to puke on the side of the road. As if two of us being sick wasn't enough, halfway through the drive Caleb pipes up from the very back of the van that he thinks he might throw up. Well, sure enough, now there are 3. Yeah it's funny now, but I distinctly remember saying to Chris that he needed to just leave me there on the side of the road because there was no way I was getting back into that car! So no glacier, but I guess we did get to enjoy the beautiful drive on the way there, even if the following day was a nightmare of a drive back. 

New Zealand part 1

Wow- just got back from an amazing vacation with the family, plus bro and sister in law, Pat and Marli. We had a great time, minus a few hiccups, and then needed about a week to recover from all the fun!
We spent a few days here in Melbourne seeing the sights and showing Pat and Marli some actual wild kangaroos (look- she has a little joey in her pouch!)

and some not so wild koalas on Phillip Island. Which they soon learned are cute, but pretty lazy/boring :)

Also spent an afternoon at one of our favorite beaches, where we boogie boarded till the waves got too crazy and I got completely trashed by a big wave.

Had a little trouble getting Truman out of Australia since his visa hasn't been added to ours yet. They got us cleared though, just as the gate was closing, so we made it. Then we were off to New Zealand, the "land of the the long white cloud". I don't really know what that means, but it is sticking in my head. I must have read it in a travel brochure. Okay, I just looked it up- it's the Maori name for NZ. Overall thoughts, amazingly beautiful. More mountains, lakes and waterfalls than I have seen in my life.
We stayed in Queenstown for the majority of the trip, which is a gorgeous tourist/backpackers town up in the mountains with tons of extreme activities to keep visitors busy. Queenstown is hailed as the birthplace of bungy jumping, so if we were ever going to do it, this was the place.

We rode the gondola 400m up the mountain and jumped over the city. Terrifying doesn't even begin to describe it. You spend your whole life avoiding a free fall off the side of a cliff, then all of a sudden you are supposed to willingly jump? It just felt wrong.

 I probably won't ever do it again, but I'm glad I went once. They also had a bungy swing, which didn't seem quite as terrifying, I'd probably do that, but skip the bungy next time- It was just too much!
If you want to see my embarrassingly terrified jump, where the guy pretty much pushed me off the ledge, go here.

The kids did the luge ride- like mario kart, but in real life (at least that's how we described it). Sorry, no pics from that one, but they loved it! Chris and Ellie were the only ones brave enough to take a dip in the icy Lake Wakatipu water. Good for them, not my idea of fun although it was a gorgeous, clear lake and a nice warm day.