Uncle Jeff & Aunt Heidi Swinton

The past 10 days, Uncle Jeff & Aunt Heidi have been in Sydney. Heidi recently wrote President Monsons biography and she was in Sydney doing a book tour/ firesides. They were hosted by a close friend (Wayne & Leslie Webster) who flew them out & had them stay at their house and showed them around Sydney. We got to hang out with them off and on during their visit. Once Jeff & Heidi were in town, Wayne treated all of us to a River-dance performance at the Capitol theater in Sydney . It was my first show in at the Capitol theater and I was very excited to meet up with them all and dress up! Sadly we didn't take any pictures, it is my biggest regret as the architecture was amazing....the building is like 100 years old...or older!

A few days later we met Jeff & Heidi in the city and took them around Darling Harbour for the day. We showed them the aquarium...

had lunch at Lindt cafe

and then saw the Chinese tea gardens. It was a perfect day and wonderful to catch up.

Stan even got some time off work!

At the end of the week, we planned another day out with Jeff & Heidi and the kids (as the girls missed the aquarium because they were in school). We picked them up from the Websters house and then drove them over to the Koala Sanctuary where you pet the kangaroos and koalas. They got a kick out of it!
From there we drove an hour up to the north shore to see the ? light house. I went home early with Olivia as she got sick in the car. From there Stan planned on taking them to the National parks to see the aboriginal cave paintings but it started to rain and got late so we called it a day and everyone came home early. It was nonetheless a fantastic day out!

The next day Heidi spoke at a multi-stake fireside. Stan was able to go but I stayed home with Olivia. He said it was incredible. It was great to see them, and they plan on coming out again in two more years so we are already starting to plan everything we missed doing. Seriously, we love visitors, and have grown to adore Jeff and Heidi!!

History: Although I had met Jeff and Heidi a few times while newly weds, I really got to know them while Stan was studying at Oxford. Jeff & Heidi were mission presidents in London and we were able to hang out on a number of occasions and spend Christmas with them. They came to Thomas's baby blessing and then we moved to Sydney and a year later they were released and moved back to Utah. When I came out for my moms wedding a year ago we crashed at their house to reconnect while driving from Montana to California. We were so excited to learn that they were coming out to Sydney a few months later, and can't wait to see them again in two years!

No more baby teeth!

Olivia lost her first top tooth (she lost her bottom teeth in year 1). I guess it is about time. She is in year 2 and getting baptized this year so she is a little late but now that she is loosing her front teeth I am sad. They are the first of the obvious baby teeth. After these are gone you get the gap smile followed by the awkward smile until braces. It is like the end of younger childhood and you can never get that baby-teeth smile back! :-(

She was VERY excited!

My tooth box

Sadly the tooth fairy missed her tooth the first night due to the large amount of pillows in her bed (or so she said) and compensated by giving her an extra gold coin (dollar) covered in pixie dust.

Red Balloon!

While Stan worked at PwC, employee incentives would be either a bonus ($$), dinner somewhere posh, alcohol (which is lame since we are non-drinkers) or redballoon gift certificates. Red Balloon is a company that puts all the "things to do" in Australia/ New Zealand under one umbrella; basically it is a marketing/ advertising company that has created a web site where you can book an experience. You book with them (redeem your gift card) and they pass the booking onto the designated company in Sydney. It is great for tourists and ex-pats like me because it is a quick answer to the question "what can you do in Australia?"

Some examples of thing you can book are sky diving, sleep-over on a yacht, cooking classes, massages, chocolate tasting....you name it. Anyway, we had three gift certificates all about to expire in the next two weeks so I booked some things we could do as a family. Which by the way was a HUGE sacrifice on my part for not checking myself into the spa while everyone was at school :-) First off, we went up to Penrith to put-put golf. We got the second game for free because we booked through red balloon (score). The kids did well but Thomas was terrified by most of the exhibits. i.e. haunted houses, ghost towns, alien invaders etc...

Technique!

Check out his grip!

Pirate section

Thomas scared to death!

Alien invasion section

Miss Mary

Pirate section

Egyptian/ mummy section (when your ball goes in the hole a mummy comes up).

Jungle section

Stay tuned for a few more red Balloon activities in the next little while.

Ps. YES, I am going to work here some day....Can I say perfect fit with my educational background? AND...as an employee you "try" out experiences so my family would pretty much have Saturday/ party day set for the rest of their lives!! http://www.redballoon.com.au/

First Day of Work & Valentines Day

This Friday Stan got a phone call from Bain that said his visa had come through and he could start work on Monday! ....Valentines Day!!! :-( Because we didn't know what to expect nor did we want him to leave work early we went out on Saturday night. In hindsight this was kind of funny because Stan was being interviewed to be the new Stake President at our church and then we played hookie during the Saturday Session of Stake conference so we could go out! (Seriously, who does that, obviously not Stake Presidents b/c he ultimately wasn't picked!) Thanks Stan, I had a wonderful time! We just went out to a Thai restaurant but were having so much fun we totally lost track of time and were almost an hour late picking up our kids from the babysitters (oops!)

On Monday, Valentines was more about my kids than my sweetheart. I got some heart balloons for each kid and taped it to their chair for breakfast. I made them breakfast and then got treats for their class (heart cupcakes) to share. Olivia was pretty excited about Valentines and made one love card for her secret crush. Stan kept telling her if she hands it out he will know she likes him but she didn't care.

Valentines morning I forgot the card was in my purse and when Olivia asked me for it after school her crush was gone! She was pretty sad and is now too embarrassed to give it to him b/c Valentines is over. The best card I got this year was from Olivia she thanked me for being a great mum and it really caught me off guard to get one from her! Also, thank you Granny Joanne for the shirts and great grandma/pa Tengelsen for the cards; my kids were elated to get mail!

Valentines is much bigger in the USA than Australia. At school there are no cards, in the stores there are no heart shaped candies but there are lots of roses and chocolates and the marketing is more targeted towards the young/ dating crowed. When Olivia brought in treats (which she cleverly masked as her show-and-tell (I forgot) the teachers were curious what the occasion was....she was like, "today is Valentines Day!"

(Side note: I think, due to the high Asian population, that Valentines is largely ignored as Chinese new year went from Feb 9--23rd (year of the rabbit, and Sydney has a very high Asian population!)

Monday night when Stan came home from work he was tired, excited, and overwhelmed. Bain is fantastic and he loves it. He really did land his dream job.

Here is his desk and view....yes, that is the opera house!

The first two weeks are training and then he will have two weeks to work on a case until he is flown to the USA for more training. I am sure he will keep up just fine but Stan insists that with training there is a lot of stuff to remember and the power point slides just aren't that exciting! I on the other hand, saw his training schedule and the final night he gets to go on a champagne/harbor cruise party....So yes, he will be drinking apple juice but I would sit through two weeks of power point slides any day to end it with a cruise by the opera house and harbor bridge! Seriously, Happy Valentines Stan

Cyclones and heat waves!

Australia is having a very bad summer this year. First it wouldn't stop raining and Queensland and Victoria (two of the seven territories in Australia) flooded. This was bad but then a few weeks later Queensland was hit by a Cyclone. It was not as bad as they predicted, but they predicted the worst Cyclone in history and it wasn't. Still the devastation was quite bad.

While Queensland was getting hit by the Cyclone New South Wales (the territory where Sydney is) had the biggest heat wave in 150 years! For 5 days we ranged between 95-108 and it did not cool down at night! Each day we would get up and head somewhere with AC. When the kids couldn't sit long enough anymore (like how we had to leave the play area in the public library) we would go somewhere else. Every time I sat down somewhere with AC it would be a crazy battle to not instantly fall asleep....and I couldn't fall asleep, not with three kids who were tired but excited with all these new places we were visiting.

I do not think I will ever forget Stan pulling the car over at about 1:00pm in the afternoon during the day it was 108 F heat and rolling down the windows and asking everyone to breath in the heat and make a mental memory. Thank you Stan....it only took 30 minutes to get the car tempurature back to what it was before the memory :-)

On a sour note I think at the end of the 5 days we as a family were behaving the worst we have ever behaved before. We have never fought, or yelled, or cried, or teased etc.... the way we did after a week of no sleep at night and minimal refuge from the heat during the day.

To top it off Stan has been very disappointed to not start at Bain when he had hoped too (he missed the initial training with all the new hires). As the Australian government has not transferred his work visa sponsorship from PwC to Bain. To work you must be sponsored by a company if you are not a resident. So legally he cannot work until this comes through and since we are on a work visa we cannot leave the country until this comes through (in case we were thinking of going on a holiday with his extra free time--which we were)....So we will stay in Australia with the heat...and no AC and wait!!

First Day of School!

The first Monday following Australia Day is the first week of school. In Australia the school year goes like so:

Term 1: Jan--March (then two weeks off for Easter Break)

Term 2:April--June (then two weeks off early July--winter holiday)

Term 3: July-Sept (again two weeks off (sadly, always during Olivia's b-day)

Term 4 Oct-Dec (then the last two weeks off for Christmas break)

This year both Olivia & Mary are attending Russell Lea Infants School. This school is for children from kindy to year 2; which is why I like it! Although a public school, I find it gives a lot of attention to the little kids as it is a very small school. I drive through two other towns to get to it every day. There are no school buses in Sydney (everyone takes public transport or their parents drive them; with the exception of the private schools). So I drop them off and pick them up each day.

Olivia (year 2) was very excited for her first day of school as she was put in the class with all her friends and her classroom is a place called "The Cottage". The school is set up like any school in a tropical climate with classrooms as separate buildings, with a court yard in the middle and awnings to cover you from the sun when you switch classes. Basically, The Cottage is away from the rest of the school buildings and they have their own little garden in the back of their classroom.

Olivia on her first day of year 2

As an older kid, Olivia now gets to do special school assignments like getting to lock the school gate each day, or putting away recess equipment or being a trash monitor! She told me she needed to have a meeting with her friends so they could think of ways they could be leaders at school and help everyone. She said they would need to use the Wii for the meeting! :-)

A big win on her first day of school was that Olivia was the only kid in her class to have learned some of her multiplication tables over the summer. She was buzzing to tell us how math time was spent with the teacher asking a question as she was giving every answer.

Mary (kindy) is the tallest girl in her class! She also got Mrs. Stephenson this year who was Olivia's kindy teacher. We liked her very much so we were very happy to get her again. Mary was very brave the first day but was tired at the end of the day (106 F) as the power kept going out and the schools could not run their air conditioning. The second day she cried because she said "school is long and we don't get to play that much!" I later learned that recess/ lunch play time were cancelled as it was too hot to play outside and the children had to stay inside to watch a movie. In addition, due to the heat I was also able to pick Mary up early from school. Either way she is right...nothing like preschool!

Mary's first day of Kindergarten!

At Russell Lea, each year two child picks a kindy child to be their buddy. They walk the kindy kids up to their class, carry their bags for them, teach them how to jump rope and help them at recess time. This year Olivia is Mary's buddy; and for the first time in about a year (or longer) the girls (1) did not fight in the car when I picked them up from school and (2) played together without fighting until bed time--crazy hu! It could be a good year!

Olivia being Mary's buddy and walking her into class!

First day of school! New backpacks....imported from America!

ps. I am so excited for this next year as I am no longer running the uniform shop for the school and I will have some serious free time! I guess I should think about potty training Thomas!

"Aussie-aussie-aussie-Ohi-Ohi-Ohi"

Happy Australia Day! January 26th is Australia day (much like the 4th of July...except Australia never fought for their independence). The date commemorates the first fleet of ships to arrive in Sydney cove. Anyway there are certain thing you must do to celebrate Aussie day properly they are: (1) Go to the beach (2)Decorate Aussie (face paint, tattoo's, bikini's towels, car flags etc.... (3) play cricket--preferably on the beach (4) BBQ (5) Eat pavlova (6) watch Fireworks!

We only did #'s 2,4,5 & 6 this year but it was too hot to do anything more! Also I managed to not take any pix, but I have to say the fireworks over Olympic park were fantastic and I will be sure to stay up for the fireworks again!

A few tid-bits of information about Australia. First, The crest (pix above) is symbolic because the Emu and the Kangaroo cannot walk backwards, only forwards. The crest is on the $1 coin (the queen of England is on one side of all the money) and also used on government buildings and patriotic paraphernalia. I have really grown to love both the animals as they are pretty tame at most petting zoos and are hardly ever locked up. Seeing that they can't walk backwards and children are usually chasing them into corners, it is pretty amazing that these animals can always get away just by changing their direction (I guess we don't really need to be able to walk backwards)! Happy Australia Day!

Close calls!

So these past two days I have been reminded about all the "dangerous" things that live in Australia. I was hyper-sensitive two and a half years ago when we first moved here but now I am pretty passive about most things. This is because I have learned to identify what is dangerous and while most things look creepy they are harmless. Secondly, I have learned to put levels of danger in perspective. For instance, in the USA I was scared of great white sharks. Now, I am afraid of salt water crocks (they eat the great whites) and when I scuba dive and see sharks they are always sleeping. Also, people survive shark attacks ALL THE TIME...but they never survive crock attacks! So there you have it "perspective!"

Anyway, back to my dangerous things list. Australian Redback spiders and Australian Funnel-web spiders are the most venomous spiders in Australia (which puts them on a top 10 list for most poisonous in the world--#4 for the funnel-web). They will kill you in a matter of hours without anti-venom....which is funny b/c hardly anyone ever dies from a bite as anti-venom is widely available in Australia. Be prepared right?

So I noticed a little baby spider building a web next to our door buzzer (the one Thomas always wants to push even though we are the ones not home). Anyway, I noticed the web was funnel shaped but a lot of spiders build those webs right? Anyway, I didn't bother with the little guy and two months later it was a monster spider--I was only able to correctly identify it once it was the size of a baby mouse...Funnel-web! I showed it to an Aussie friend who came over just to check my suspicions and he said, wow--that is a Funnel-web and then he smashed it with a phone book! GO WAYNE. Good thing he didn't miss because Funnel-webs jump AND they stay alive under water with an air sack (so you can step on them in the swimming pools etc...) they just don't die (unless you smash it with a phone book apparently). Here is the wiki site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_funnel-web_spider

So that was yesterday, then TODAY Thomas and I are swimming at Clovelly beach (over by Coogee Beach)

and we are wading knee deep in the ocean and I see a cute little bluebottle jelly fish (also known as the Portuguese man-o-war jelly). I grabbed Thomas's sand shovel and scooped it up and then started scouting for more while we got out of the water. Usually the rule of thumb is the longer the tentacles the more painful the sting. So a little jelly fish with really long tentacles will hurt more than those huge fat stubby jelly fish.
Tentacle length aside, bluebottle jellies, have a reputation of being one of the more painful stings with 2-3 days of continuous pain! here is the link and a nice picture to go with it, yes those are legs of someone who was stung by a blue bottle (clearly bigger though than the one we caught! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Man_o'_War Nothing like close calls!!

Day Trips- Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park 1

The other day we made a day trip up to Ku-ring-gai Chase national park. Again it was about 45minutes north of us and something we have been meaning to see for a while. This park is famous for Aborigine cave paintings and engravings. We did a few hikes and then we explored most of the park via boat, which we rented for 2 hours. Here are some pictures of what we saw!

The marina

Our little rental boat

Olivia and her barbie sharing a life jacket

Mary helping daddy steer the boat

Man-o-war jelly fish...everywhere

Olivia hiding from the wind

Our cute boat...we called her the love boat!

Miss Mary

Thomas looking for crocs and talking non-stop about all the ones he saw (BTW there are no crocs in New South Wales, so don't worry - we were safe!)

participating in the "swim once around the boat club" with no cossie (swim siut)

Stan and thomas starting the once around the boat club....