Hotel life

In between the Australian Open, we were able to show Papa John some of the things that make Melbourne so AMAZING.

Road Trip 1: Phillips Island. This is where you can watch the penguins come out of the water and run to their natural habitat. They make the run during the evening so we got some fish and chips for dinner and waited for the sun to set!

Road Trip 2: Grants Picnic Area--Dandenong Mountain Range. Here we drove about 45 minutes north of the CBD and found ourselves in a national park. It is a rain forest and has lots of exotic birds that like to eat out of your hand. If you pay $3.00 you get a bucket of bird seed.

Grandpa John is straight out of Mary Poppins..."feed the birds!"

Olivia has pretty proud of herself for getting the green parrot to come over.

Since the birds were wild there were quite a few bites.

after feeding the birds we went on a short hike with the kids through the rain forest. There were lots of beautiful trees, ferns and again, birds!

Grandpa John and the grand-kids.

Just to put it in perspective...see little Olivia below?

Road Trip 3: The 12 Apostles!

This was a day trip on windy roads, so this time I just took my dad and left the kids at home.  We walked quite a few beaches and had a few great talks.

Pictures to come...on my dad's computer....

In addition, to the Australian Open & our three road trips; Papa John was also able to experience Australia Day, and a blue grass festival.  He also managed to babysit for Stan & I on two occasions so we could get out. The first date was at a nickle arcade (I think we got back at like 1:00am) and the last date was for a friends wedding (Scott Broadaway & Annelisa). It was really good to see 6 people from high school in Australia for this wedding!

 it's a bad picture, but we tried 6 times!

 Scott and Annelisa Broadaway!

At the end of the month, we got our keys to our house--moved in (separate post on that) and then my dad left a few days later to go back to the USA. Although it was a weird visit (being in a hotel and in a new town) it was good to see my dad and re-connect!  Thanks for coming out to Oz dad!