ah c'mon, you've both had well over a week to get over jetlag

Brad dines out in style with his new CEO

Brad's new boss invited him to dine at Peter Doyle @ the Quay (pronounced 'key' for all those Americans), in their private room on the second floor of this seafood restaurant - which easily has the best view of the two most popular Sydney landmarks, the Harbour Bridge and Opera House...right before he went in he snapped some pix


A view of the restaurant on the pier


(Had to throw this one in...at our bank, we saw this, and the rubbish bin placed nicely underneath..."hmmm, do I really want to deposit my cheques into this bin?" Classic)

Day in the Nadi Fijian Airport

Our layover in Nadi, Fiji, which should have been a relatively ok 3 hours, quickly (or rather, slowly) became 12 hours as they informed us that during baggage loading, one of the cargo hold latches broke and they would need to fly in the replacement part from New Zealand. Luckily for us, we got about F$160 to spend on food and never went hungry.

Amelia was all the rage with the Fijians (maybe she's the first pale white baby they've ever seen!)



Entirely exhausted from being handled all day

Just can't get enough o' them BLUNCKS!

One last visit with Grandpa Blunck...he also finally divulged all his Nazi holocaust pictures he took.


The ladies

Kacey & Amy join in from Ohio courtesy of Skype

Amelia's first 'solid' meal (if you can call rice cereal solid)

One last Wilson fam reunion before the departure to Oz

Brandon and Felicia joined in via Skype (notice the monitor) from Boston for the pic

3/4 of the Wilson grandkids ham it up for the camera (sans Porter)

Blunck family hike up Rock Canyon

Family Portraits

Its official, we're finally headed Down Unda! (only 2/3 of a month late...)

Yes, after all the waiting we finally secured our visas for our move to Australia the other day and now the tickets are booked. We leave the US on Tuesday 20 November and arrive in Sydney on Thursday 22 November.

Tell you what, we'll be throwing our own "Thanksgiving" when we finally touch down after the long flight - with a nice layover in Fiji! Hopefully it won't be too dramatic flying that long with a 6mo old lil' rambunctious gal.

Would you have her over for dinner?

"What plate?"

Grass Fight!

A few milestones for Amelia this week, we are very excited about:

She is now saying "ya-ya-ya-ya", "da-da-da-da", and something that sounds very similar to "hi"

She is now sitting without support, and just this evening learned to roll back onto her stomach from her back. So we are very excited to see her start rolling all over the house (or maybe its worried to see...)

Also just today she had her very first grass fight with Daddy.

Yeah, I thought it was mean too that he took advantage of the fact that she couldn't defend herself.


"You just wait daddy, I'll get you! (If I can just get a good hold on this grass....)"


"Ah, yes, finally!"


The ever famous Amelia sneeze whenever she looks at the sun...just like her mom.


"Uh, guys, a little help would be nice. I've fallen and I can't get up!"


"Guys?! This isn't funny"


And if a picture is worth a thousand words...here's two that we love!

Amelia Jane goes to Kennecott Copper Mine

Another day with nothing to do...that is until we looked towards the mountains and saw the Kennecott Bingham Canyon Copper Mine looming in the distance. Neither of us had been there since elementary school, so Brad went online to check and see if the visitors center was still open for the season, and boy did we luck out. Normally they close on 31 October, but because the weather has been exceptionally good this year they extended it to Sunday.

So we put our jackets on, and off we drove up the side of the mine for 4mi/6.4kms!


Brad trying to get Amelia to be a little more excited about open pit mining.


Lil' Amelia sitting next to a tire from one of the Caterpillar 797 trucks that works in the mine. And yes, if that's the size of the tire, you can only imagine how big the truck is that goes with it.


Brad stands 6.25'/1.9m tall to give you an idea of size...


Amelia takes a ride in one of the old mine cars.


And a view down into the mine. This is the world's largest open pit mine. I think they said it is 3/4 of a mile deep. It's just massive!


And we also lucked out as we got there in time to see an explosion! It was so cool. The ground just started bubbling and then dirt went flying. The weird thing is it looked so close and yet it took a good 3-5 seconds for the sound of the explosion to get to us. Amelia found it very exciting!