Great Barrier Reef- Day 1

This year for Stan's birthday we got on a plane and flew up to Port Douglas to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef and explore the Daintree Rain Forrest. It was stunning!!

We flew into Cairnes, Queensland (about 2.5 hours north) and then drove 1 hour north to a Port Douglas. This is what we saw along the road when we got near Port Douglas. We pulled over and jumped right in! It is spring here in Oz so after a long, kind of cold winter we were ready for some sun!

The water was probably the warmest ocean water I have ever been in. It was almost too warm, like bath water--AMAZING!

After a spontaneous beach stop we drove past a crocodile tour and pulled in. We watched a bunch of outback hicks try to feed crocodiles by hand, while trying not to be eaten. It was really entertaining!

Port Douglas is right next to the Daintree rain forest which just happens to be the highest capita of crocodiles per square meter in Australia. They have salt water crocodiles and freshwater crocodiles and just about every river, ocean or puddle had a DO NOT SWIM, crocodiles sign next to it...so much for spontaneous swimming in the ocean right?

Watching crocodiles eat while getting our river boat tour...

This top one is not a close up shot. I was next to the window and her face was about 5 feet away from me. In the picture below there are 5 crocodiles-can you see them?

A crocodile can hold its breath for up to 5 hours and can hide in about 3 feet of water without you knowing it is there. They can only open and close their jaw but not go from side to side so they eat by ripping limbs off, throwing them up in the air and catching them. They drown their prey first so if you get your hand caught in a crocodiles mouth, your best chance of survival is to poke its eye and hope that it opens its mouth as a knee-jerk reaction. When we walked around the town of the Daintree Rain forest there were all sorts of signs for missing dogs or people with "suspected crocodile attack" written below...creepy!

Welcome to the outback right?

Olivia's Baptism

n November 5th, 2011 Olivia was baptized. Honestly, it turned out better than I pictured. I learned so much and was buzzing for several days afterwards.

What you should know about Sydney, Australia is that there are hardly any Mormons. Olivia has been the only Mormon in her entire school and she has been in two different schools so far. In her Sunday school class there are no girls,(just stinky boys) so when we asked her who she wanted to invite to her baptism she said her friends from school. We ended up having 20 non-members come to Olivia's baptism and 10 members (30 all together).

I am embarrassed to say most of my friends did not know we were Mormons. In fact quite a few had spoken to me during different play groups, about documentaries they had seen the night before about a crazy religious group in America... more specifically in Utah...and then kept going from there. When I invited them all to the baptism I explained that we were "mainstream Mormons" which was not what they had seen on TV. I think most of them came because they felt bad that they had been bashing my religion in front of me, without knowing it. To their credit, they all brought gifts and were perfectly on time. The Mormons all showed up 15 minutes late.

Olivia's baptism was a tad nontraditional. For starters we had it at a secluded beach instead of a font at our church building. The beach was a 45 minute drive to collins flat beach. Once you got there it was a 200 meter hike through some bush. The hike was beautiful, you got to cross over a steam, climb through some big rocks and then when you got to the bottom, there was a small waterfall running over the sand. The beach was small, maybe 200 meters long and 400 meters wide. There was no tide because it was protected from the ocean by a gorge. Because of the gorge it did go deep pretty fast and there were lots of big rocks nearby.

Olivia with and her classmates waiting for more people to arrive

Mom giving a talk about Baptism and the Holy Ghost

Olivia & I singing "Child's Prayer"

Walking out to the water

Elliot Sung (from primary) played his violin while Olivia & Stan changed. The violin was so beautiful against the sound of the waves!

Stan giving his talk, I love his shoes!

Stan spoke on 'enduring to the end'

Daddy giving Olivia a hug!

Tayla her best friend from school, giving the closing prayer. She typed it out and gave us a copy. It was so precious because she prayed that God would look after Olivia because she was her friend.

Olivia & Tayla Brown

The Australian spread. The pavlova has all the fruit on top (it is mostly a meringue), lemingtons- those brown coconut bars on the left, fairy bread (basically white bread, butter and sprinkles, tim-tams, lollies and a fruit spread (mangoes, rock-melon (what Aussies call cantelope), strawberries, and watermelon) -it was perfect!

Grandpa Andre & Olivia. Thank goodness he came, we barely had enough priesthood at the baptism (30 people and 3 priesthood holders).

Granny Joanney & Olivia (she and Andre flew all the way from Montana for the baptism)--THANK YOU for coming all that way!

New Zealand-Day 5

The last day we spent touring Auckland. We went to their art museum which I thought was amazing seeing all the Maori art both modern and historic. We walked through the University of Auckland, saw the sky tower, had a picnic in their central park and then caught an afternoon flight back to Sydney.

The Auckland pictures were ok, but again taken by Stan's phone so the resolution was not that good. In addition, it started to rain! Either way we had a blast and by now the whole family was missing Thomas terribly! He was being babysat by a good friend; we opted to leave him once we realized NZ is mostly hiking and driving...two things he is not so good at!

Good by NZ! Go All BLACKS!!

ps. just a little sports history. The All Blacks logo is a silver fern leaf (below). The ferns are EVERYWHERE in NZ and they are symbolic of new life in Maori Culture. In addition, the name All Blacks is in reference to the teams ethnicity during the early sport period. In the beginning the team was known as New Zealand and then once they started playing internationally newspapers started referring to them all the All Blacks Team (describing their skin colour). NZ embraced it and now it is a sense of national pride.

New Zealand-Day 4

On our fourth day in NZ we woke up and went to the Rapaura Water gardens. Rapaura means running water and the area is a span of 65 acres of manicured nature...reminded me of a spa a little bit. The area is on volcanic soil so the plants growing are stunning. It was AMAZING as it was a huge private garden and best of all, very secluded, you had to go on a windy dirt road for about an hour in the mountains to see it. Below are some pictures of my favourite flowers etc...

Inside the gardens there were hikes, we did one and came across a beautiful waterfall. The water was freezing but we couldn't resist the temptation to put our toes in!

Here the girls are being mermaids!

After the gardens we got into the car and drove over to the west side of NZ to enjoy some of their beaches. Here we were going crazy about the green water and blue mountains (the water looked slime green so these pictures don't really do it justice)

Ice cream on Waiomu beach!

Here the girls are collecting sand from both beaches. They were pretty excited about it. Below is a black sand beach called Muriwai.

Our camera ran out of batteries around here so the rest are taken with the phone!

On this rock a bunch of crabs were walking around. My girls were not very happy! After the black sand beach we got dinner and headed down to Auckland for the night and the last day.

New Zealand-Day 3

On Day 3 in NZ, we planned on doing our 1 day hike but this time we ran into another problem. You know how Stan messed up his ACL and fractured his bone and has been doing all this physio? Well, the morning of the hike he went out for a run and after about a mile his knee had gone stiff. So we canned the hike, got back in the car and drove up north to the bay of islands.

We had bribed the kids with jade Maori necklaces if they could hang in there for an 18 mile hike. They didn't know how long 18 miles was, so when we took them on a half mile hike up Mount Maunganui (an inactive volcano) they were pretty proud of themselves.

There are sheep EVERYWHERE in New Zealand!

Here we are driving up to the bay of plenty

After the hike we went further north up to Coromondel and made it just in time to participate in a crazy phenomenon called the hot water beaches.

You can only show up when the tide is out (sunset), you dig a hole in the sand and sit in your own little hot tub...and I mean HOT....

This is the only spot on the beach you can do it. I guess a long time ago there was an active volcano nearby, and the steam from the lava has been trapped under the sand for thousands of years. When you move the sand (or dig really deep) you release the steam. If you dig too fast you literally burn yourself. With the tide nearby you can grab cold water and cool off your hot tub pit.

Here is our pit.

Sitting in the hot water.

Mary cooling off

After the hot water beach, we went over to Cathedral Cove which is also time sensitive to the tide being out. When the tide is in the beach is covered up and you can't get to the rock formations. We were cutting it close but made it down the trail in record time (usually a 45 min hike). We ran and saw this....
Here we are in a pirate cave. By the time we finished taking pictures in here the water was up to our shins. We headed out and made it back up the trail by night fall. Fantastic day!