Summer, snakes and India

I haven't posted for a while cause things have been pretty boring! I'm not complaining mind you, cause I'll take boring any day over drama! Our days consist of the kids going to school, Jess and I do our P90X work out, laundry, cleaning and running errands. The kids come home from school and do homework after which the boys quickly head out to the pool and will spend the rest of the afternoon swimming! The girls usually go on a afternoon walk, then we have dinner, always homemade and sitting at the table cause we don't eat fast food only because we don't have fast food! That part Clay and I have really enjoyed! Then Clay and I go on our evening walk, kids will shower and get ready for bed, we do scriptures and prayers and then it's lights out for everyone, including the grown ups! It really is like ground hogs day over and over again!  But, like I said, it's normal and I'll take it!

With the warm weather we have been nervous about snakes! According to most of the people we know (from Clay's work), it's not normal to run into snakes. In fact, most of the people we have talked to have only run into a snake once or twice in their entire life! So we figured we would be pretty safe. Well, last week Brittany was out on her daily afternoon walk and saw a snake basking in the warm sun on the side of the road. She quickly turned around and ran home! This weekend our neighbors called informing and warning us that they had just seen a snake in their front yard! And then Clay sends me this email from work because there was a snake caught in front of his office. In fact, it was spotted in the morning as everyone was arriving to work. As you walk into the office at the mine you have to pass through a guard shack, you check in and once you are approved you walk through a turnstile which locks as you walk through it so you can't go backwards. The guy who saw it had just walked into the turnstile and the snake was on the ground right in front of him! He couldn't go backwards so he had to jump up out of the turnstile in order to get away from the snake that was now sitting up in attack mode ready to bite him! Wouldn't that your worst nightmare! These have all been brown snakes too, which in case you don't know are one of the most deadly in Australia! So now every time I set foot outside I'm watching where I'm walking, checking to make sure I don't run into our new slimy friends!
On a happier note, Clay left a few days ago for a work trip to India! In order to go he was required to get many vaccines, and his worked supplied him with a medicine kit filled with prescriptions and over the counter medicines in case he gets sick while he is there. You should of seen how many bottles of medicine he took with him, crazy!!
Clay sent this picture of his arrival at the airport in India. He was given a Indian blessing followed by the dot on his head and a lei! Pretty sweet if you ask me! But Clay's isn't feeling the love so much by the look on his face in this picture!

This is a picture from his window in his hotel room.

I have to admit, the pool is looking pretty sweet.

This is a CFO seminar that he is attending for Rio Tinto.  It's his first one cause he has only been CFO for five months now. Clay was really excited about going because he will be able to see many of his friends there from Rio that he hasn't seen since our move and because they asked him to do a presentation on one of the days. This is a big deal cause like I said he has only been CFO for a short while, so this is really putting him in the spot light! Which always makes me nervous cause when Clay does well at work it always means another move is in store for us! Then again, maybe it's a good thing cause then maybe it will be a move back to Utah!

The Dish

Our town of Parkes is known for two things, the Elvis Festival held every January. It is the 2nd largest Elvis Festival in the world, Vegas being number one, and The Dish! This dish was used to telecast the first walk on the moon to the world! There is even a pretty good movie made about this historic event, called The Dish, go figure!

These pictures don't do it justice as to just how big this dish is, so I had Jessica go stand next to it so you can see it in comparison!

At the dish you can take a tour of the gift shop, which will take you about 15 minutes, not too big! But, it is interesting and they even have a deli you can have lunch in! We skipped eating since they only served meat pies!

Outside the gift shop Jess and I found this sign..

After a good laugh we realized what it meant! There are two smaller dishes about 150 meters away from each other, Jess stood by one, I stood by the other and you can literally whisper into them and hear each other. We had fun telling each other our deep dark secrets! Yes, we were a little bored today!

You can see one of the whispering dishes behind me in this picture!

Lately I've been feeling a little overwhelmed with some things that have been going on in my life, so I had Jess take this picture of me with the weight of the world on my shoulders! Yes, once again we were a little bored!

 I am enjoying my time with Jess! It's been a lot of fun having her home with me all day! So, if your ever bored, rent the Dish and enjoy watching how our little town of Parkes got their 15 minutes of fame!

Summer has officially begun!

Our big move to Australia started in June of this year.  The weather in Utah when we left wasn't cold enough for snow, but it definitely wasn't warm! We get to Australia and it's the dead of winter, which means we haven't seen or felt the hot sun in over a year! You wouldn't think this would be a big deal, but let me tell you, when your body expects summer and then it doesn't get it, it goes into a depression! Our family struggled all winter in Parkes with endless rain and cold days! And Face book didn't help it at all! Watching all our friends enjoying summer was torture! Thankfully it was a mild winter, but it was winter non the less!

For the last week the weather has become increasing warmer and warmer and today the boys couldn't take it any more! They had to go swimming!

It's been raining so much this winter our pool is too full of water! But, the water was warm and the sun was out! The boys were in heaven!

On a different note, Luke a few weeks ago asked if he could turn our hall closet into his bedroom. I thought it was a funny request, but knew it was something he just needed to get out of his system, so I let him. Three weeks later, Luke is still sleeping in the closet!

He just piled a bunch of blankets on the floor and uses that as his bed.  He also brought in his stuff animals, lamp, fan (Luke has to sleep with a fan blowing on his face all night),  pictures, deodorant and clock. I thought it was cute he brought in his picture of Jesus and his missionary savings bank too! I don't know how long he will keep this up, but I'll keep you updated!

Summer Term

Summer term officially began on Monday for the boys, Tuesday for the girls.  The girls love that they go to a boarding school, even though they are not boarders themselves, because the first day back of a new term at their school is set aside for the boarders to move back into their dorms.  This means no school for them! Because it's summer term it also means out with the old winter uniforms and in with the new summer ones!

If you look back of the first day of school in their winter uniforms the girls were not smiling this big! In fact, they were not smiling at all, I had to force them to for the picture!

 The boys uniforms didn't change very much, instead of long pants they wear shorts and their long shirts and replaced by short shirts.  The biggest change is that they no longer have to wear their ties. This was something they were both SO happy to give up!

Luke told me that this was going to be his new smile! I think if he keeps this up through high school I'll be in big trouble! How can the girls resist that face?

Surfers Paridise

Downtown Surfer Paradise is filled with only hotels, restaurants and shops! This is the downtown area you saw in my earlier post. If you stood on our beach back by our condo and looked to the North you could see all the high rises from surfers paradise.  All the high rises are hotels, below its bustling with shops, food and tons and tons of people!

One of the many ways to entertain yourself while downtown is to take a tour on the aquaduck! This amazing bus takes you on a tour of the downtown area, but then gets into the water and floats around the marina! At $40 a person, we decided we would just walk!

Walking around all the shops we found it a struggle to hide our children's eyes from the many adult shops that offered many interesting things! This was the only one I could take a picture of to show you what I'm talking about, the other ones where just to disgusting! And if your wondering, yes, they had people in the shops!

The greatest part about this place was the fact that the beach was so close, it's right behind us in the upper picture!



The beach at surfers paradise was a lot more crowded than our beach by the condo. My girls also decided they liked the beach in Sydney better, it's Bondi beach, because the life guards there are hot and famous, thanks to the show Bondi Rescue (find it on the Internet it your in the US)! The life guards here in surfers are old and well, look at the picture and it will explain itself!



Which one to buy?

Savannah wasn't feeling much love in this store!

The Gold Coast

It took us only ten minutes from the time we got out of the car to get on the beach!

And it couldn't of been a more perfect day! There was a warm breeze, the waves were amazing and the sand was squeaky and white! It was the cleanest beach we had ever been on as well! NO sea weed at all, and the water was warm and clear! Perfect!

If your wondering about Luke's shirt, yes he made it himself, and it's sonic if you can't tell!

This was our view from the south. Clay and I would walk all the way to the hill every morning at sunrise. It's about a couple of miles and such a great work out walking in the sand! And you can't beat the views!

This is the view from the north of our Condo.  The city you see, that looks like it's in the ocean is Surfers Paradise.  I have pictures of when we went into the city in later posts!

 Luke loved this beach because there were these pockets of water in the sand before you hit the surf. You can see it better in the picture below. Anyways, in certain spots it could be about a foot deep, so Luke would swim around in these when he was tired of playing in the waves.

 As soon as we got on the beach Luke started collecting and finding these amazing shells. We had to walk a ways down the beach to the flag area (that is the only area you can swim in) and Luke was taking forever to walk because he wanted to keep finding shells. Well, look at the picture below and you'll see how many shells were on the ground! It was like this along the entire stretch of the beach! Clay actually got into collecting shells as well, so every morning as we walked the beach he would stop as well to find unique shells! We now have the largest shell collection thanks to my two boys!

It didn't take the boys long before they were in the water and playing in the waves! Thankfully our condo had boogie boards for us to use so we enjoyed our time riding the waves!

Poor Cody got smashed in a wave and it threw him into the bottom of the ocean! He got a pretty bad case of sand rash from being dragged across the sandy ocean floor! This guy looked so beat up by the end of the day. His face got swollen and then to boot he got croup later that night and woke up with a scratched up face and a barking cough!

The biggest treat of all was the show we got to watch everyday from the whale mums and their calves just right from off our balcony!  You need to click on the pictures so that you can see them larger than they appear on my page.  It was amazing to watch these animals jump around and splash and play in the water like you would expect little children to do! What an amazing treat to go out on the balcony of our condo and watch this anytime we wanted too!

Driving to the Gold Coast

The kids had a two week holiday for the term break so Clay decided we needed to see more of Australia! My sister in law Becky, is from Brisbane and we have heard for the past ten years how amazing the city and the gold coast, which is about an hour from Brisbane is. Clay went there on a business trip three years ago and fell in love with the city! So it wasn't a surprise when he told me he wanted to show the rest of the family how amazing Queensland is!

Even though it is a 12 hour drive, it was such a beautiful drive it didn't seem so bad!

The roads we took to Queensland were very narrow and never straight! I had to take a picture so you could get an idea.  This road seems wider than they really are because of the overtaking lanes. Overtaking means passing out here and occasionally they will offer an overtaking lane so you can pass the slow car in front of you!

The landscape reminds Clay and I of Hawaii. It's so lush and green, you really can't find an ugly place anywhere!

This was our first view of the ocean! After 11 hours in the car you can't believe how happy we were to see this!

I had to take a picture of this rest stop. All along the way they have signs telling you to stop, revive and survive! So they offer rest stops about every 100 k. I can't imagine stopping at the sleepy hollow rest stop, especially at night!

After 11 hours in the car we finally reach Queensland! It was a long drive but totally worth it!

This was our condo, the Casablanca! And when we walked into the lobby there was a huge cardboard cut out of Humphrey Bogart!