Naughty little Catholic school boys!

I love to watch for my boys after school and watch them walk up our long driveway! Well today, they came walking up like this....

They told me that they were SO hot after getting off their bus today that they just had to take off their shirts! The funny part was, as they were walking up the drive way they were waving their shirts around like they were flags! Thank heavens we don't have neighbors close by that could of seen them!

funny little Aussie's!

I love when my girls come home from school nopw and tell me the kind of questions that they are asked by their Aussie friends. I thought I would just start listing them, cause they are worth a good laugh!

1.  Do you have cheerleaders at your school in Utah? Do they wear their uniforms to school? Are they all snotty like the girls on Glee?
2.  Do you have a Glee group at your school? Do people throw slurpee's in their faces while their walking down the hallway at school?
3.  Did you go to parties? Do kids really drink beer from those red plastic cups?
4.  Where do you grocery shop? Brittany said "Wal-mart", girl says. "oh yea I know about that place from the Simpsons".

I'm sure I'll get a lot more of these, so I'll keep posting as I get them!

A family of uniforms!

It was the morning of the girls first day of school and the boys came in already for school and then Clay came in ready for work and I just had to take a picture of my group and all their uniforms!

It's amazing how much things can change in just a few short months!



My girls first day at their new school

With a lot of hesitation and very unsettled feelings, the girls started their first day of school at Red Bend Catholic College.  I'm so happy for them because we have been here almost two months and the girls haven't had any kind of social life at all. With them starting school, hopefully this will jump start some friendships and some activities for them.  I know it's been really hard for them to read all the post on face book from their friends who are enjoying summer in America, while they sit here a world away in the cold winter! I pray they will make friends quickly, and feel at home at their new school quickly too. 

Clay took the girls to school on their first day. This is Brittany and Savannah sitting in the office waiting for their new lives to begin!

Brittany in her uniform waiting for Clay to take her to school. Tomorrow they will be riding the bus. It's a twenty minute ride to Forbes, the town where their school is at. So, they'll have plenty of time to make friends on the bus!

Hair must always be worn up, and no make up is allowed! I know what your saying! My girls are troopers to be so willing to give this a try! Can you imagine high school and no make up!

Beautiful girls, even without any make up! Good luck girls, I hope and pray you will love this and make great new friends!

Darling Harbor

 After spending most of our morning in Sydney harbor we took another ferry to Darling harbor.  Darling has got a lot of fun family stuff to fill your day with! The first thing we did was hit the wildlife exhibit.

 The unexpected surprise to the exhibits was the Lego people.  All over the exhibit they had Lego statues of all different kind of things. Here at the front of the exhibit they had this horse and cowboy rider.

 This is the enormous crocodile that is 45 years old! He was incredible to watch! They told us they caught him and took him to a wildlife park in hopes that he would mate with a girl crocodile, but this big guy kept killing all his girlfriends instead of mating with them. He killed two girls before they moved him here to be by himself!

 We could of spend the entire time watching this big guy, but there was much more to see so we moved on!

This is the biggest lizard roaming around Australia! I just pray I never run into one of these guys!

 This was my favorite part of the exhibit, the Koala! They let you get so up close and personal with these cute animals! We couldn't hold them or pet them, but we were close enough!

 Savannah and Cody got attacked by this giant crocodile

 Then it got Brittany!

 This is the worlds most dangerous bird. They have a real one, but this fake one was better to take the pictures with!

 Luke had a harder time getting on this giant bird so his sweet brother let him use him as a stepping stole to get on it!

 Another Lego's site that was too amazing, we had to take a picture by it!

More Koala's! Too cute

 Another exhibit is the aquarium, and here too they had cool Lego's statues

 The coolest part of the aquarium was the tubes under water that you could go walk through. Here Savannah is under a giant Manatee.

They also had turtles, giant sting rays, bigger than Clay, and of course Sharks!

Cody found his girlfriend at the aquarium!

Sydney Harbor

Sydney is amazing and beautiful! It's made up of all these harbors and full of trees. In fact, while your driving around, the roads are covered in these tunnels of trees. It makes it hard to see any of the landscape around you and to know where in the world you are, thank goodness for our navigation system in our car or we would of been lost! Because of all the harbors there is no need to drive to most places, you can take a ferry! So to get to Sydney, we took the ferry from Manly harbor to Sydney harbor. It's only a short 30 min boat ride and along the way you get breathtaking scenery!

 Here is a picture of one of the ferries that we passed on our way to Sydney harbor.

The cliffs in between Sydney and Manly, they gone on forever!



 Sydney skyline from our vantage point



Sydney opera house, the only way you can see it from the front is on a ferry!

 Sydney harbor bridge, if you look closely there are people on top of it.  We promised Cody the next time we go we will find out how we can get to on the top!

 Out in front of the opera house! I love this picture, my girls look so happy!

 On the steps in front of the opera house

You know a lot of place look really pretty in pictures and then when you see them in real life it's disappointing, well the opera house is just as beautiful in real life as it is in pictures. It's surrounded by water and beautiful landscape! It's a must see for everyone!



Manly Beach

After being in Australia for a month, Clay and I felt like we needed to take the kids out of our small town and show them what this country is really like! Over the next few years we want to see a lot of different places around here but the first place we had to go was Sydney. We heard Manly harbor, which is close to Sydney harbor was a nice vacation spot to take the family. Clay did some searching on the Internet and he found a condo right across the street from the beach. We arrived late Saturday night so we didn't get to see much, but the next morning we were amazed at how beautiful it was! It's unlike any beach we have stayed out before. There are huge pine trees that line the beach, trees that you would expect to see in the mountains, not the beach.

Even though it's winter here the weather is in the 70's most of the time.  The water was extremely cold but that didn't stop the kids from getting in it. The boys went swimming in the ocean every day we were there! Crazy, I know!

 Savannah really enjoyed her alone time on the deck outside the condo. We were on the 6th floor of the building and we had a incredible view of the ocean. She would spend most of her time reading out there. The other kids enjoyed spending most of their time out on the beach.

I wanted to give you an idea of what the beach looked like during the day. This was Sunday, so it was more busy than the other days we were there. As you can see Dave, mostly families here, not a gay beach!



 Just some more views from our balcony!



I didn't realize Clay had even taken this picture of Luke. Luke is our country boy, he gets up with the sun.  He has learned to keep himself entertained until the rest of us our awake.  He usually makes himself a bowl of cereal and watches TV, but being here, even Luke couldn't resist the views from our room. He would sit outside and play on the Ipad, until we were up!

 On one of their walks, Clay and the boys found these glasses on the ground, so they thought it would be funny to take a picture of them in Manly, not being so manly!

Cody first Rugby game

It didn't take us long to find Cody a sports team to join! Cody just isn't himself unless he is out on a field and playing some kind of sport. His first true love is Football, but since they don't play it here we found the closest thing to it....Rugby! I admit, I love watching Cody out on the field, doing his thing. I will miss not watching him play tackle football the next few years, and Rugby in no way matches up to football, but it will keep him in shape and ready for when we move back to the states and he can play football again!

 If any of you have seen me at Cody's football games, I'm on the sidelines pacing back and forth, oh yea and I'm screaming, well cheering screaming! Here they don't let you on the field with the boys, you're forced to sit in the bleachers and there isn't much to cheer about! Do you like how I'm sitting exactly like the older lady below me!

 They line the boys up at first before the game begins and the boys shake hands with the other team. Cody is number 11

 Cody next to his mate Harry, number 4, it's really fun when Harry runs the ball for a try (touch down in America) cause all the parents are chanting, Harry, over and over again. I feel like I'm in the Harry Potter movie at a Quiditch match!

Since Cody just started playing and doesn't really understand all the rules, his coach came out during half time to teach Cody a little more about what the heck is going on! Nothing like playing a game you really don't understand!

His team mates were really great and made an extra effort to give Cody the ball! But his favorite still, of course is tackling! That's Cody taking down the kid with the ball!



Cody pushing the ball back with his foot after being tackled.

The Parkes team (our team) ended up winning this game 38-6