Beachin' It Up

The beach life is so chill. The whole day at Bateman's Bay was spent making sand castles, soakin’ in some rays, jellyfish hunting that would make Spongebob proud, playing in the waves, eating, digging massive holes, burying our feet, and people watching.  I thought I saw a sugar daddy with two younger chicks, turns out it was just the dude’s daughter and her friend. I was kinda bummed just cause I really wanted to see a sugar daddy in real life.

The blue little jellyfish aren’t really jellyfish (sorry Spongebob). They are bluebottles or also known as Portuguese men-of-war. I was corrected by an Australian when I called them a jellyfish, so I am just trying to be technical. They have the same characteristics as jellyfish though, so I don’t really know what sets them apart. They sting and have jelly tops, to me that is a jellyfish. We spent a good hour collecting those lil’ guys, it was entertaining. Jeremy murdered a few by popping their blue squishy top, I cried (not really). After we held them captive we grabbed the top and threw them back into the ocean, Titanic style.

Roos, heaps of 'em!

Kangaroos are scary mother freakers. That’s all I have to say. I didn’t get chased by one or anything. But there was a serious stare down that left me with goosies.  Kangaroos are like deer in Australia. They are everywhere, especially on the side of the road. Dead.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday Tea Man!

It worked out so perfectly that I am able to spend all of December and a few days of January in Oz. I get to celebrate Christmas, ringin’ in the New Year AND celebrating this lil’ nug’s birthday, all in one visit. Teagan has this new current obsession with Angry Birds so my sister threw him an Angry Birds party. Side note: My sister knows how to throw a party right. The party consisted of good food, pizza making, tons of balloons, a water fight, running around and a darn good time.

Havin' a Splashing Time

To celebrate Teagan’s birthday, Tara and Jeremy planned for us to spend the day at Jamberoo. Naturally my little mind compares EVERYTHING here to EVERYTHING back home in Utah. I don’t know why I do the comparisons because if this was a competition, Utah would be losing. Miserably. Jamberoo is the Seven Peaks of the New South Wales area, but better. WAY BETTER. This water park was so cool and basically in the middle of nowhere. On our drive we were starting to get worried that we took the wrong road because we just couldn’t imagine a waterpark on this green hilly area. We turned a corner and BAM, Jamberoo. It was like a mirage. The water park just appeared out of nowhere. Not only does this water park have awesome slides but it has a bob sledding track, that was like a mile long or longer. 

Look, wildlife!

It’s an overcast/rainy day so we packed sack lunches and headed to Tidbinbilla (try saying that one ten times, really fast) Nature Reserve to go on a wild life look out. We were all just walking around and BOOM a bunch of wallabies were headed our way. We grabbed some bananas from our lunch and quietly met up with the wallabies, forcing ourselves on them. I HAND FED A WILD WALLABY. How cool is that? I mean it’s no kangaroo, which I’m fine with cause kangaroos are intimidating, wallabies, not so much. They are adorable; I just wanted to take one home with me.  They were doing something with the trees where the koalas were living and so instead of seeing a bunch of koalas at eye level; I saw one koala that was way high up in tree. We only spotted that koala because a group of Canadians pointed it out to us. If they would not have pointed it out, we totally would have missed it. Thank goodness for the Canadians.

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Look at that lil' guy

Mean sucker

After Tidbinbilla we went to the NASA Satellite Space Station to see the largest satellite in the Southern Hemisphere. That giant A satellite was the first one to receive images from the last rover that went into space.  That’s pretty neat, eh? The satellite station was pretty cool. I wish I was into space stuff more so I could have been blown away .But I’m not, oh well.

NASA

Canberra National Zoo and Aquarium

This zoo is so cool because it has a section in it that is solely dedicated to Australian wildlife. In this exhibit they had it all gated up but you could enter in the facility and the animals weren’t caged. The animals in the facility were kangaroos, wallabies, and emus which were all running free. Okay, there really wasn’t any running cause the kangaroos were snoozing, the wallabies were just sitting, doing nothing, and the emus were just roaming. It was chill, until Tara told Teagan and I to go stand by the emu so she could get a candid photo. We inched near the emu and I heard some sort of growling so we stood like a foot and a half to two feet away from the emu. Tara couldn’t hear the growling so she kept saying, “Get closer!” Teagan and I just looked at each other and kept backing up slowly. Finally, we got to where it was an acceptable distance for the camera woman, and got our pic snapped. After that I guess the emu felt a bond between us because it kept following us around like a lost puppy dog. My other nephew, Tate was in the stroller cause he was “too tired to walk” and Steffan was being held by his momma. The emu that kept following us became curious of the stroller and the weird boy in it. It walked up to Tate, looked at him and pecked him on the head. Tate freaked and pulled down the sun shade to block the emu from having further contact with his head. That didn’t stop the emu cause he just stuck his head up the hole where Tate’s feet were. Tate flipped, and is now afraid of emu’s. I mean he does have a legitimate reason though. Seriously, as I am typing this I am bustin’ up. I wish we had the whole ordeal on film, it would have been a YouTube sensation!

 While walking around we spotted a clump of worms on a tree. We all stopped and stared at the clump and were stumped by what it actually was. Naturally, Teagan wanted to touch the clump to discover on his own what it was. Tara told him no because it didn’t seem like a good idea since they had spikes on them.  We started to walk away and right then a zoo worker walked by. We asked her about the clump of worms and she just looked at us like we were crazy and then she was like, “Uh those aren’t worms. Those are spitfire and if you touch them they will spit acid at you." WTF? Is everything here like on steroids and super insane? When we got home we did some research on those little buggers and it turns out that they are basically just larva because eventually they turn into wasps. HOLY CRAP.

Telstra Tower

The Telstra Tower is like the Space Needle of Canberra. To get there you drive on a windy road in a wooded area. The drive reminded me of Provo Canyon. On the way back home Tara drove on the American side of the road. We came a turn and there was a car headed right towards us; luckily, he was driving slowly. Tara noticed, freaked out, and got back to her lane. When we passed him he just looked at us like we were drunk. Tara turned to me and was like, “Why didn’t you tell me I was driving on the wrong side?” I told her it was because it felt right to me. Driving in Australia confuses me. It’s Tara and Jeremy’s goal to get me to drive at least once while I am here. Start making funeral arrangements now. I have always wanted to die in a foreign country, why not Australia?

Questacon

Questacon blew my mind. It was the coolest science center I have even been to. It was interactive, you could tinker with stuff, touch things, and all while being educated.  They had an earthquake stimulator. So I experienced my first earthquake; it was a 6.1 on the Richter scale, I am lucky I made it out alive. They had a lightening show, which was just a wall with lightening flashing on it, neat! They had a room dedicated to playing house; it had dress ups galore and EVERYTHING you could imagine. It had a police station, a restaurant, a vet’s office, a hospital, etc. But the coolest thing they had was this GIANT screen that projected images of a flower blooming, a glass shattering, a frog jumping in the water, a diver, etc. there was a spin ball thing that controlled how fast or slow you saw those things in motion. I sat there and played on that thing for a good hour. I was amazed. Seriously, writing this I feel lame and like I am five. But just go there and you will see what I am talking about! I dare you! 

Oh! And out in front of the building they had a giant xylophone that you could play on and show off your musical abilities. In case you're interested in Questacon click here.

Maaaate!

Tara’s Australian mum, Joanne, made me a delicious banana cake to welcome me to Oz. It was divine and didn’t last more than 2 days. Of course I didn’t eat it all by myself. I could have. But I didn’t.

The cake says: fair dinkum (for sure), maaaate, struth (ah crap), barbie, crikey, and oi oi oi. 

First Official Day in Oz

I arrived in Canberra around 1 pm, I was all alone in a foreign country without a working cell phone, and had to get a hold of Tara to let her know that I had arrived earlier than expected. I walked up to the lady at the front desk and said, “This might be a stupid question… But how do you dial phone numbers here? I am from the US so when I dial this I use all the numbers. Which ones do I leave out?” She laughed and told me what to dial and then told me that she was shocked that I had actually asked a good question and not a dumb blonde one. Uh, ouch! Ha I guess I give off the dumb blonde vibe? Note: Work on that.

When Tara walked in through the doors I was expecting some dramatic hug/cry fest but that didn’t happen. Good, because I am NOT a crier. We just hugged, grabbed my bags, got in the car and drove off. It all happened so fast, probably because she was parked in a no parking zone. It was a chill day spent making ginger bread houses and unpacking.

Tate was so excited to see me that he fell asleep in my lap

We didn’t have anything too exciting planned (I say we but I mean Tara) because it was expected that I would be jet lagged and would just want to sleep. But I did that the whole flight and bus ride, so at that point I was like what is jet lag? But since I was energetic and good to go, Tara and I went to her ward’s Relief Society Christmas party. At that party I learned that they call Sprite, lemonade. I don’t drink carbonation so it gave me a shock when their lemonade was fizzing in my mouth.

AUSTRALIA!

I am in Canberra, Australia visiting this cute little family of mine! I could not be more excited!

Getting on my flight from SLC to LAX was no biggie. I found my way around LAX and didn't miss my long 14 hour flight to Oz. Success! The worst part of the whole journey to Canberra was the three hour bus ride from Sydney to Canberra. My phone was on the brink of death so I couldn't play on it while on the bus because I needed phone numbers to contact my sister. Seriously, Heavenly Father blessed me IMMENSELY from preparing to actually leaving Utah to arriving and actually being in Australia. I had some family drama occur four days before I was to leave for Australia that had me feeling like this trip wasn't going to happen. Thanks to an amazing priesthood blessing given to me by Blu and my father, it was clear that I needed to go on this trip.

The flight did not feel like 14 hours, thanks to a Xanax that I took after eating dinner. My flight was interesting though BECAUSE there was a medical emergency about 7 or 8 hours into our flight. In the middle of watching Elf I heard the flight attendants come over the intercom asking if we had any medical personnel on the flight because someone had a heart attack. How flippin’ scary would that be? Luckily, we had a lot of nurses on our flight that were able to help stabilize the lady and keep her living. The lady who had the heart attack walked past me at some point to go to the bathroom. She looked like hell, poor thing. But uh if she did die, what would they have done with her body? Just have the dead body chill in the seat? Turn the flight around? Throw it in the ocean? Just kidding, they couldn't do that.Thank goodness I didn’t have to find out...