Easter Holiday- Kangaroo Island

During the 4 day Easter Weekend we decided to take a road trip to Kangaroo Island, off the coast of Adelaide in South Australia. It was an 8 hour drive from Melbourne + a 1 hour ferry ride over to the island. 

It was unique compared to other parts of Australia due to the large seal population (which could be found on the rocks and beaches).   Below are some pictures of what we saw.

 Here are some kangaroo's. Smaller and browner than the ones seen on mainland Australia (no these are not wallabies) the Wallabies were much smaller and more grey. Anyway, the Island was right to go by this name because the Kangaroo's were everywhere.

Here is Milse's lighthouse, which was part of (Flinders Chase National Park) 

Here we were on a scenic hike and I looked over the edge and saw about 40 seals playing in the tide. They were doing jumps and spinning around. It was beautiful! Sadly, I only had my iphone with me and these are the best pictures I could get. If you zoom in, you should be able to see the seals in that little cove near the bottom.

 After this hike we meandered down the road and walked down a boardwalk. This lead us to some rocks and a covered cave by the ocean. Inside were hundreds of seals! lucky for us there were also babies nursing (probably 3-4 months old) and lots of mothers sleeping. It was amazing to watch.

Admiral Arch, and behind me are of the New Zealand fur seals which live in southern NZ and southern AU.

Next we visited "the remarkable rocks"...which were actually quite remarkable :-)

 Here I asked Thomas to come away from the edge of that rock, he said "in Just a minute mom, I am checking out the world..."then he turned around and I took this picture. I didn't even tell him to put his hands up, how cute is that?!

 

Thomas wanted to know if we could live here. Each kid picked out a little hole they planned to make their room/ bed. I think we would have had no problems being cavemen! 

 After visiting the remarkable rocks, we headed over to the ocean, where we got to climb on some more rocks and get splashed by the tide!

  I love this picture below of Stan and Olivia-

 Here is one picture from Kelly Hill Caves which we explored as a family. Again the iPhone didn't work that well with so much darkness 

Lucky for us the Easter Bunny came to our little cabin- It was pretty easy to find Easter baskets this year!l

 Here we are riding the ferry back to Adelaide so we can begin our drive home for work on Tuesday.

After our holiday at Kangaroo Island we decided to spend a day in Adelaide seeing the signs. Here we are at the Adelaide Zoo. Here is Mary with a kookaburra

 After the Zoo we got lunch at Hahndorph (a small village settled by Germans over 100 years ago. The buildings were very German and the town was like walking back in time. Very lovely and friendly and great food and shops.

Yes, it is fall here :-)  

 Stan picked up some gingerbread men on his way out of the town that we could eat in the car on our way back home to Melbourne. 

Busking!

So it seems I am not the only one making a little cash on the side. Olivia has taken up street preforming (or busking- as they call it in Australia).  Busking on the streets is not as easy as it sounds. First, you need a permit from the city to busk. To get this you need to audition, and attend all the compulsory safety meetings. Once you get your permit you can only busk on certain streets. After six months of busking you can audition to preform on the higher end streets near the nicer shopping areas.

Olivia got her busking permit over Christmas and busked over the school holidays then. Her very first day busking she sang for 1 hour and earned $75.00. She donated her money to Millie (a close friend to Olivia and Mary who has had cancer 3 times now...she is 7 years old). We met her family in England, while Stan and Millie's dad (Brady Flamm) were studying at Oxford.

Due to time constraints, Olivia can only busk during the school holidays. She loves it. So- what does she do? She mostly sings karaoke to Taylor Swift :-)  She just started playing the guitar, but is not good enough to preform on the streets with it yet, so Karaoke it is!

Grandpa John bought Olivia her first guitar case to collect coins (Thanks Grandpa). When Olivia busks she zones out all the cars and people walking by and just sings her heart out and "pretends she is on stage" it is very charming.  If you are ever on the streets in the Melbourne CBD she would love to take a request!

My new JOB!!

I am excited to announce that I started working again!  After 10 years as a stay-at-home-mum, I have re-entered the work force. It was a great chapter in my life, but last year I spent the whole year home (mostly alone) which was fine, because I had a few things on my "to-do" list with no one to mess up the house while I was home, (which was great).

For starters, last year I (1) unpacked the house (we moved in 4 days before school started), (2) applied and was approved for our families Permanent Residency Visa here in Australia (that job alone took hours and hours of paperwork (finger printing, certifying documents for a family of five, getting police checks from other countries etc... ) It sounds small, but I kind of hold it in the same level of regard as graduating from Uni with a masters degree :-) (3) traveled... to the USA for a wedding, then hurt my knee and did physio for 2 months, then traveled up to Darwin-broom with the family, celebrated my 10 year wedding anniversary with Stan at the Whit-Sundays. Then I realized this would be it for the rest of life so I need to do something and move on with life!

Part of moving on was (1) getting my body back.  I started training for a Marathon, did the 10 day juice cleans (yummy), started lifting weights again (P90X anyone?), revamped my diet to eliminate most refined foods and significantly cut out my refined sugar intake. Started drinking water...and only water. I stopped getting RLS (restless leg syndrome, stopped having to take iron pills for RLS (which is think is from all the iron I get from all the spinach I started eating??). I no longer experience migraines, and I am just overall happier!

Last week I weighed in at 114 lbs. I no longer fit into my size 4 (USA) or size 8 (AUS) clothes...which is actually a problem because I hate shopping.  I wish someone could just give me a bag of clothes and then let me pay them for it. I am down to size 2 (USA) or a size 6 (AUS) clothes and I feel great! For those worried (let me remind you that I am only 5'3" and petite so this is totally with in my BMI) and I eat more now than I ever ate in Uni, its just different food. Mostly fruits and vegetables, and mostly raw ones at that. 

After I got my body back I wanted to organize other parts of my life. I organized the house and then started exploring all my options for what I could do with the rest of my life (I applied for a second masters degree in Psychology- got rejected), applied for a couple jobs both paid and volunteer (got rejected from some of those too...even the volunteer ones (gasp!)  I made a list of everything I didn't like about myself and wrote down solutions (with actionable items to implement). For example I now have braces back on my teeth (on the inside- you can't see them). I get them off in a year, but I wanted to fix my smile (should have worn my retainer after I got my braces off 15 years ago right?).  That is just one example, but I am DOING things! Not just thinking about doing them!

Tangent: One big perk to having kids young is that I never expected to be entering the workforce with many of my peers. A LOT of people used up their 20's to travel, get through uni, party, get married & then divorced, change careers a couple of times and then buckled down in their late 20's early 30's to get their first "real job"... not everyone... but enough people!

On the up-side, I have already earned my masters degree, born three kids (who are all out of the house now), published (which I did from home, while nursing babies), and my friends who are married now are having to step out of their careers to have kids; for them to come back in their 40's seems much more daunting than stepping into the work force at 30 (if they choose to go back to the work force sooner then they have to look at day-care options, which I never wanted to do with my kids) so I am grateful (I feel like someone gave me an extra life line of 10 years all because I was productive in my 20's).

Ok so moving onto "my job."  I started working 3 weeks ago at a consulting firm called "First Executive" in the Melbourne CBD. Their area of expertise is in Human Resources (HR). I head up the research division which we do for (1) clients who have a question about their businesses or (2) broader research questions which compare Australian markets to American or European markets.  I love it. I use both qualitative and quantitative research methods and am ever so grateful that I finished my Masters Degree when I did (finished it while birthing two children) because it enabled me to qualify for this job.  

A week into my job with the HR consulting firm, Stan had a client over for dinner. He asked what I did and I told him. The next day at work he asked Stan if I wanted to help out for a couple of months doing contract work at Telstra (Australia's largest telecommunications company). They needed help coding qualitative data and then help implementing my suggestions for change (to make the coding more accurate) with computer programming. I never thought I would be a computer programmer, but now I am learning how to export XML codes and implement the changes. Cool hu? I spend several hours a week getting trained by software companies in America. It is all very exciting and I feel very empowered. 

The biggest hurdle for me to face with going back to work was what to do with my kids and will the house stay in balance? I am lucky, I drop off the kids at school (8:30 am) work and then pick them up at 3:00/3:30 pm when they get out. I can work from home for either company whenever I want. I am home with the kids while they are out of school for school holidays (both employers are super flexible). I never thought the workforce would be so flexible! I still take the kids to all their lessons and do homework with them and get them into bed at night. Then I clock back on and do work from home. Stan usually gets home after 10:00 pm so this helps me stay awake to see him and talk to him. With regard to the contract work, some of the work-stream I oversee were suggestions Stan made, so he is able to better explain his vision and I am better able to implement it. 

From a domestic angle, Stan has stepped in and cooks all the food for the week (and pre-packages all the kids lunches) on Sunday afternoons. I hired house cleaners (trust me they are so much better at cleaning than I ever was), and my main job is laundry for the family (which I love to do- because we have a clothes line!) The house has seemed to stay in balance so far.

It sounds funny but, the best part about working is that I am too busy to worry about girl things. I don't have time to over-analyse, gossip, feel jealous or sit around at mothers groups talking about what my kid put down the toilet. I don't have time to nurse a wound and if someone does something that I don't agree with (thanks to time constraints) I am a lot more emotionally honest. On the flip side, when people are emotionally honest with me- I can take it, because I don't have time to sit at home and mull it over. It is awesome! Seriously, men should have let women in the work force a long time ago with perks like these :-)

The second best part about working is the pay check. Every time I get paid I kind of smile because "I EARNED THAT" it was hard work, and someone paid me for it and I am proud of it. I can't wait to see what else life brings because so far every couple of years I look back on my life and think "I never thought THAT would happen"...and it did...and it has been good; it has actually been great!

Tenilles visit part 3

Thursday and Friday Tenille and I hit up Brighton 

Beach, which has a string of beach huts built on the beach in one of Australia's most elite suburbs. They are very famous and seen on postcards and calendars of Australia. The beach houses/ huts sell for around 250K. They stay in certain families and owning one is more or less a sign of status. 

After the beach we attended the Grand Prix, Formula 1 Car races...which just happened to be in town that weekend!

The cars would go so fast I had a difficult time getting good pictures with my phone!

Above, we thought our hand stamps were a tad...odd?

After the Grand Prix, we headed over to a pre-season AFL match. Since Tenille played a little rugby at Uni she wanted to see if it was similar. Yes...but NO!

Here Tenille had her first meat pie (it would be like eating a hot dog at your first American Baseball game). She liked it ok :-)

End of the game!