Mia's 72 itchy pustules now five days on...

...yeah, of course we counted 'em!!! Still don't know if they were sand lice, sand fleas, sand flies, pelican lice, a mad hermit crab...we've been told them all by everyone at every shopping centre (her legs are quite the attraction when we're pushing her around in the pram).

Anyone else dare venture to take a guess at what bit her 72 times at (we're guessing, since we also hit Avoca) Umina Beach last Friday?

(click to enlarge)

(this update for all those who keep asking :)

Brad's White-tailed Spider Bite!

Last night was crazy.  Around 12:30a, lil' Amelia scares us at our bedroom door, wanting to come sleep with us.  Then, around 3:30a, she wakes up kicking her legs frantically trying to relieve herself from the itchiness from those sand flea/pelican lice/or whatever bites that caused those sore boil like spots on her legs (see previous post).  I (Brad), got up, went down stairs to get the Paraderm (a soothing bite cream that has an anaesthetic) to coat her legs, got back to Milz and started applying it when one of these white-tailed bad boys comes out of our bed covers and bites me!

So, of course, it left the tell-tale sign of the large red blistery patch (as seen below)

nice, eh?!

Beautiful!

I just love this photo so I had to give it it's very own post.  Here Amelia is playing on the playground at Avoca Beach.  It was a lovely day!

Old Friends

So thanks to our saintly home teacher and his generosity in letting us borrow his car, we were able to go down to Mortdale, (a place in southern Sydney where Brad spent 8 months of mission) and catch up with old friends.  The one that stood out in Brad's memories the most was this dear old fella, Brother Dermott-Powell.  His health isn't good so he wasn't at church, so we dropped into his home afterwards and it was great.  We were able to chat like a day hadn't passed (And this was Kim's first time meeting him.)  It was brilliant!

Exploring at the Beach

So, our home teacher is the AWESOME young man in our ward (he's still single Steph!!) and he decided that he wanted to go to Thailand over the Christmas holiday and offered us his car.  We of course accepted and can I just say FREEDOM!!!!  Man there is no stopping me now.  I can go anywhere I want whenever I want and I don't have to tell anyone about it.  It's bliss!!

So with this new found freedom, Amelia and I have found ourselves at the beach quite often.  It's just 5 minutes down the road that there is a treasure trove there.  Here is just a smattering of one of our adventures:

Priceless!

Discovering sea shells.

Discovering the "river."  More like run off from a ditch.

And then we discovered later that night that in that ditch run off was loads of something that thought Amelia was tasty tasty!  We have now learned that it's either sand flies, sand mites, sand lice, or pelican lice.  All things that you can't see but sure are hungry.  We have also learned that those bite (from any of those mentioned above) are worse than mosquito bites.  Itchy, itchy, itchy.  And I have also learned that Calamine lotion is a thing of the past.  It has been a constant that just hasn't changed but has been a name that everyone has known and trusted.  But there is new technology out there that works much MUCH better.  

Brad's Work Partay!

Oh what a night this was.  It was a lot of fun though.  For Brad's work party his work had chartered a private boat to take us from Darling Harbour, (in Sydney CBD) through the harbour to a place called "Quarantine Station" 45 minutes away.  It was such a beautiful boat ride.  The wind was blowing, the water was up and down the whole time (Karl Blunck wouldn't have lasted 2 minutes).  It was great fun.

Our desserts:

A passionfruit jelly type stuff 

Showing every inch of those desserts.

And mine was a flourless chocolate cake.  YUM!!

Kim's first experience with caviar.  This is caviar on top, a strip of bacon, scallops, and seared tuna.  Just a little too fishy for my taste...and caviar is SO over-rated.

The boat ride!

Exhaustion!

This is why I love taking Amelia swimming.  Pure exhaustion.  On Monday when we got home, I let her watch some TV while I ran to have a shower.  I was only gone maybe 10 minutes, and when I came back downstairs, this is what I found:

Our homemade Christmas tree...

OK, so maybe it's not really homemade.  We are borrowing the tree from the Smith's.  They happen to have two beautiful trees (When Paul's parents immigrated over to Oz and had their stuff shipped over they brought Paul and Sharon's other tree.)  So lucky for us, we get to borrow one and have a big beautiful tree in our house!!!  Yay!!

So, we all know that Chrimmas (as Sharon's daughter Isobel says it) need ornaments and well, ours are all in my parents basement.  We have a LOT!!  So I just couldn't justify buying more, so I made some.  Nice and cheap, but it does the trick.  I found the star at a Supadollar for $5 and I love it!!  It's just paper, but I think I'll be taking it with us.

So our cousin Stephanie (go here and here to check out her work) is a brilliant photographer!  She posted this photo on her blog of her daughter standing by the Krimmas tree and it's beautiful!!  I wanted to try and copy it, but then realized, you gotta have more than 100 lights to make it bright enough.  Dang!!  Maybe next year.  So here's what Brad came up with instead.

How to Speak with an Australian Accent, Part 2

Step 2:  Learn to speak from the back of your tongue while limiting the movement of your lips. Hold the tip of your tongue as close to the roof of your mouth as possible while pressing the middle of your tongue down.

This is so true.  Americans speak from the front of their mouth, Aussies speak from the back of their mouth.  Don't believe it?  Try it.  Say "good day" then say "good die."  Say "car" then say "cah."  That right there is the main difference folks between an American accent and an Australian accent.  So simple right?!  And yet, it takes a bit of talent to go  between.  

How to speak with an Australian Accent: Part 1

OK, so I have decided I really want Amelia to pick up a bit of an accent before we leave Australia.  So I have been researching online to try and find websites that teach you how to pick it up the accent more.  Here is step one:

Step 1:
Talk to Australian natives or watch Australian films. (check) Listen closely to the dialogue to get a general idea of how Australians speak. (check) First practice pronouncing individual words. Mimic entire lines to familiarize yourself with Australian speech patterns.

Should be easy enough right?!  So you all work on that with us, and maybe we can all speak Australian together!  Too right, mate!!

(Step 2 tomorrow!)

Happy Christmas to one and all!

True Story!

I'm not kidding folks, this is a true story!  

Yesterday Sharon and I decided to head down to Hornsby to do some Christmas shopping with the kids.  To get to Hornsby we took the train which consists of a 40 minute ride.  

Now, as some of you may know, our daughter Amelia is...well...let's just say she is a VERY vocal little girl.  She has two volume levels: on and off.  That's it.  On or off.  And I often dread taking public transport for this very reason.  

So yesterday as we started out on our trip, we missed the first train.  No big deal, next one was in 20 minutes.  The kids did OK while we waited.  It wasn't until there was a minute or two left till the train arrived that Amelia started to make a bit of a fuss.  So I put her in her stroller and gave her a lollipop/sucker to keep her quiet.  (Those things work wonderfully!)  

When the train arrived, we hopped on and luckily we got a train where we could sit down with the strollers right next to us so the kids could have the option of the stroller or the seat.

And like most kids, they all of course chose the seat.  The three of them, Joseph, Isobel, and Amelia were so excited.  They were screaming and singing and carrying on like little kids do when they are experiencing something new and exciting.  

Now, here's where it gets good, keep reading.

Well, about 20 minutes into the trip a woman approaches me and asks what station we are getting off at, I kindly told her Hornsby, and smiled politely like you do.  To which she responded, "Well good.  It's a bit out of control and I was going to change carriages."

Sharon, being the good friend that she is, stood up for me and told this woman she was being extremely rude and that she should change carriages.  Sharon asked her if she had ever had children and the woman said, "Yes, but they never acted like this."  The argument went back and forth for a few minutes and then the woman looked at Sharon and said, "I wasn't talking to you."  And stormed off back to her seat.

No joke!  That really happened.  True story.  I was shocked, embarrassed, no, humiliated.  It was my little girl making the most rukus.  

I love my little girl.  How dare this woman come down on her excitement!!  I know she's loud, (she was definitely louder than Isobel or Joseph) but at least it's a happy loud...most of the time.  

I just don't think the world is ready for my little girl.  

heaps beached az, bro

We absolutely love this little animation parodying the New Zealand accent (and no, we don't think its racist towards Kiwis...please)

Its sweeping the nation here, and strolling thru the shopping centre you're bound to see some of these tee's on the rack (here)

"wanna chup?"

(az/as = AUS/NZ slang for extreme, ie: "far az" would mean really far, etc

Just a Few Firsts...

This week we had just a few firsts for Amelia.  Things like Amelia's first haircut!  It's taken a while for Amelia's hair to come in, and we're so happy that it has, but unfortunately it's grown in as a mullet.  Her hair on top is taking it's sweet little time, while the hair on the bottom is growing out of control.  So we had it trimmed up a little.

She looks ecstatic doesn't she?!

And then she learned the best way to hide a bad hair cut...

No, it doesn't really look bad at all!  It looks much better.

Nostalgia

OK, so we still haven't cleared any room off our computer.  It's might take some time.  So in the meantime, I thought I'd share some photos from when Brad and I were dating.  

These two are photos from our second date.  We had just had our first date a week or two prior to this, and had been hanging out playing frisbee and croquet an awful lot.  But on this day, I was at work and my roommate Andrea called me (or maybe I called her?  I can't quite remember) anyway, she said that Brad was there at our apartment and she said (whispered it in the phone because Brad told her not to tell me, you know how girls are,) that Brad really liked me.  My heart sped up!  How exciting!  She told me to hurry home, he wanted to see me.  So of course I did.  I drove quite a bit over the speed limit and maybe even ran a red light, oops!  But when I got there he asked me to go for a walk with him, so we walked up to the Bean Museum on BYU campus.  Oh that was a fun night.  

This is a typical photo from our dating years, er, months.  We lived in the same apartment complex, "Sparks II," he was in my Family Home Evening group, and his brother was my home teacher, so we saw an awful lot of each other.  Good times!

Introducing Brad to the farm!  I thought I could wow him with the animals!  It worked!

Brad and Miss Piggy.

Jersey and her daughter, (does she have a name Dad?)  Ironically we just buried that daughter (the cow) a few years ago.  To read about it go here.

My Choice

I've been having a lot of discussions lately with moms from church and moms from swimming lessons about working after having children.  And I find it interesting that the line isn't as clearly defined as I would have thought.  I find myself almost feeling guilty for choosing to stay home with Amelia.  And yes, it's my choice.  Heaven knows it'd be fantastic to enjoy the bliss of a dual income, but at what cost?  (obviously, if necessity dictates that both MUST work to survive, I understand)

I know I am doing something important by being here cleaning up her messes. I know that wiping her runny nose is making a difference, even if for now that difference is only that it's cleaner afterwards.  I want to be the one who puts her to bed at night. I want to be the one (well one of the ones, Brad included here!) who first sees her in the morning. I love that. I don't want to miss a moment. I want to be right here with her. I'm happy here.  I know its important.

No.

I choose to stay home with my daughter. Period.

My choice.

Besides, I would miss this if I was working.

Breakfast time bliss!

Help!!

We are now the proud parents of a picky eating toddler. I need some new ideas of meals and good foods for toddlers to eat. Amelia has always been a bit picky, but the last few days she won't eat anything she used to love. I admit, I am in a bit of a food rut with her. PB & J has been my specialty, that and noodles. Those were ALWAYS the two things she would eat no matter what, but the last few days, she won't even eat those. So help me out here people. Tell me what are some of the favorite foods your kids eat.