House Tour

Hello.....We are still here. It has come to my attention that I have been neglecting this blog. I hope to change that as this is meant to document our journey. It may just be our parents who still read this blog but that's ok! I will try to be better:) So I think a lot of times when people think of us here in Australia, they have a hard time imaging what our life is like. I've had a few requests for a house tour. I don't have great pictures of every room in our house. In fact this will include no pictures of our entire lower lever that includes 3 bedrooms, a living space, and a bathroom. Instead we will show you the main areas of living. So here goes in no particular order:

We are very excited to have a pool in our yard. It is now warming up quickly so we spent the entire weekend in the pool. I will not mention the snake in the pool......that may be saved for a "Critters We Have Encountered in Australia Post"

We have a very big backyard beside the pool for the kids to play in.

The entire back of the house is a covered deck area. We spend a lot of time out there,

The kitchen has door that fold open to the deck so the food can go right to our outside table.

The boys bedroom-we have them in a room upstairs instead of one of the three bedrooms on the lower level. I think we all felt better having them a bit closer. I think they actually enjoy sharing a room.

Another photo of the boys room.

Master bedroom

Master bedroom closet into bathroom.

More living room

The windows in the living room all slide open as well.

My "office". Lots of Rodan+Fields and "home-managing" goes on here:)

Kitchen-my all time favorite room in the house. Complete with a pantry-my dream kitchen!

Dining room

This photo was from Halloween but is a good shot of the front of our house. The garage is to the left. 

So there you have it, a semi-complete tour of our house (minus an entire level).  Hopefully now when you think of us here in Australia, you can imagine where we are:)

Seasonal Confusion

Happy Spring everyone! While my mind is SCREAMING at me to pull out my fall decorations, go to my local Starbucks and get my first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season (We don't have a Starbucks by us....like at all), and drink some apple cider.......the calendar here actually says we have now entered spring. What?! Spring decorations.....I just don't think I can do it! So as we sit over here in Spring confusion, I will give you a brief overview of what we have been up to lately.

Whale watching:
Such an amazing experience! I mean getting sprayed in the face with the mist of the whales breathing kind of experience. It's days like these that make all of the hard days seem worth it. Watching our boys watch huge Humpback whales in their natural environment swimming wishing feet of our boat. I will not forget it........

These are our friends Paul and Charlotte and their beautiful girls. They were kind enough to host this excursion for us on this day. They are the only other Caterpillar family living on an international assignment here in Australia. They are originally from the UK so while we come from different places, we can very much relate to what each other is going through. We are thankful to have them!

Our boat for the day. It was a 3 hour tour from start to finish.

Seriously, the whales were THIS CLOSE!

We could still see the beautiful skyline of the Gold Coast while on the boat, which was probably a good thing as we needed land to focus on due to all the rocking waves-more on that later.....

2 Dramamine's later..........#drugged

More of the Gold Coast-gorgeous day in a gorgeous place!

So positives on the whale excursion-once in a lifetime experience. Slight negatives-holy seasickness warning! We were lucky that our friends had warned us ahead of time that the waters get a bit rough. The whole family loaded up on motion sickness meds. Many on the boat however did not......they were not so lucky. Even with 2 Dramamine's each for the boys and pills for Matt and I, we were all glad the tour ended when it did. As Matt said, the lower part of the boat looked like a "war zone". Many poor souls laying down with throw up bags right by them......in fact, the crew just walked around handing out the bags to everyone. This must happen a lot for them!

Remember how I talked about seasonal confusion? Well tomorrow is actually Father's Day here in Australia. The boys made gifts all through the week at school. They had what they called a "Father's Day stall" at school where the kids could bring money and shop for their dads. Gavin bought an "I love My Dad" picture frame for Daddy's new office and Brady bought a Coke (not pictured because previously consumed) and a pen for Daddy. I also volunteered a morning in Gavin's class and the kids made chocolate balls rolled in coconut to give the dads. We had to celebrate a bit early as Matt left today for Russia. Somehow he managed to miss both the American Father's Day in June as well as now the Australian Father's Day. Matt is 0-2 for Father's Day this year:(

Gavin had his last basketball game for term today. They unfortunately lost but he has had a lot of fun playing. Both boys will be starting baseball for term 4.

And wouldn't you know that at the same time Gavin had his game, Brady had a birthday party. Since I was single parenting it this weekend I had to beg for some help from some kind parents to keep an eye on Brady until I could get back from Gavin's basketball game. I felt quite confident in his safety as the birthday boy's mom is a police officer. The birthday party was complete with a magician and a rabbit in a hat....for real.....his name  was Marshmallow.

3 Months

Well we have officially been in Australia for 3 months now. At times it seems it has gone fast and at other times it seems like a lifetime ago that we landed here. We have had some really cool and fun experiences as well as some challenges and emotions that we could never expect. Here is a short summary of how things have been going:


-School
The boys have settled in well. It seems this transition has been easier for Brady. I think maybe the age poses a little more of a challenge for Gavin to overcome. They are the only Americans at their school so they are getting the full "Australian" experience. They have had a lot of sports carnivals which I have been able to attend and the boys really enjoy. This is basically where the whole school participates and competes in different sporting events and races. They both like to play handball at recess which is somewhat equivalent to American Four Square except with a smaller ball. Brady is working on his Term 3 project which is to research a country that is participating in the Olympics.....we picked the United States-shocker!

I was able to help out in Brady's class today while they worked on reading procedural text. They read a recipe and had to follow the instructions to make it. As a parent leader of a group it would have been helpful for me to know what it was we were actually making-fairy bread. For those wondering fairy bread consists of bread, butter, and sprinkles (also known in Australia as 100's&100's)

-Travel
Matt's travel schedule has been brutal for us all. Of the total 13 weeks we have been here he has been gone for 5 of them. He assures me after the first of the year it will slow down a bit. It is horrible......that is all I will say about that......


-Driving
Going much better! I have paid my speeding ticket and have not done any "wiper checks" in months! I'm actually a bit concerned about coming back to the US and driving. Hopefully my brain can continue to remember what to do!

-Fun Stuff
We need to have things to look forward to and really take advantage of some of the awesome places around us. We are looking forward to a whale watching trip off the Gold Coast in a few weeks. We have scheduled a long weekend to Sydney when the kids are on break in Sept. We are also researching beaches to holiday at over Thanksgiving. We have our home leave to the US booked for Christmas so we are so excited to see all of our family and friends! It will be a bit of a weather shock for us as we will be coming from summer and extreme heat in Australia to winter and possibly snow in the US.

-Wildlife
I'm happy to report we have been wildlife free in the house! We have had a few evenings when we have woken to some strange animal screeching outside and have no idea what it could be-but at least it's outside!

We did see this guy in a tree at the boys school. It was amazing! Koalas are truly as amazing in person as they are in pictures. And this guy was awake which is also rare since they sleep 23 hours a day.

-Sports

Both boys do swimming once a week and will also start baseball in September. Gavin is still playing basketball but will take a break from that once baseball starts as the training schedules overlap.

-House

Stay tuned for a house tour on the blog. We plan to put a video up, we just have to pick a moment when it's clean:) I've been working on decorating it and making it seem more "homey". That has included a few trips to some home good stores. Matt loves it!

The Tale of the Cockroach

*Warning, this post may cause your gag reflex to fire up, if you have a weak gag reflex, you may want to stop now...........

This story really happened a few weeks ago but I am just now able to talk about it without wanting to throw up in my mouth.

It was a Friday night. We had been watching Netflix and it was getting late so I headed to bed. Matt is usually the one to make sure all the doors are locked and lights are off so I headed into the bathroom a bit ahead of him to brush my teeth. As I opened up the bathroom drawer something caught my eye and I jumped back. Upon further investigation I see a giant cockroach in the bathroom drawer! I do not have an actual picture of the culprit as the situation was too intense for pictures but I'll give you an example of what we're talking:

(This pic was from one in our closet)

Panic arose with me yelling at Matt to kill the disgusting thing. Now keep in mind, this is in our bathroom drawer, with all of our toothbrushes.......ugh...... I'll save Matt the embarrassing part of the story where he was afraid of the thing as well. His "death stare" method of killing the cockroach didn't work and it got away. We took everything out of the drawer, changed our toothbrushes, sealed an area around a pipe where we figured it got into, story over right?? Wrong!

The next night as we are putting everything back into the drawers I start to wonder what these little brown specks around the drawer could be. I had seen them before but since we all use the bathroom I just figured it was just someone not cleaning a mess up.They were very tiny, smaller than a grain of rice but after the incident the night before I began to panic in my head as to what this could be. So I hesitantly google "cockroach poop". The results:

-"often referred to as 'specks', can be the size of coffee grounds. One or two of these droppings of these frightful guys often go unnoticed. But a cluster of droppings-that means you have a significant problem"

As if having a cockroach in our bathroom drawer with our toothbrushes isn't bad enough, we have no idea how long this disgusting thing was going in and out of the drawer. We also had no idea that these "tiny specks" were cockroach feces. That is all. End of story. I have mentally been scarred forever. Chalk this up to "part of the adventure"!

*I feel the need to put in a disclaimer that we live in a beautiful, clean home-although this story would lead you to believe otherwise!

The Real Move In

Hi there. It's us. We're still here.....we've just been buried under a pile of boxes.

On July 15th this was the welcome sight outside of our house....It contained all of our items from our home in Illinois. It took this container 3 months to arrive in Australia by sea. It's amazing how during those 3 months we learned to live without all of the "things". That being said, there were also items that we really wanted and needed to make us feel settled in our new home. Among them being kitchen items so I could cook a full meal and our beds. It was the most amazing feelings laying our heads down in our beds! We spent almost all of the weekend unpacking and organizing things into their new home. It was fun opening each box and discovering what was in them. Looking back, when we packed our house in Illinois we were in sort of a blur with all the change that was happening around us. I probably shouldn't have packed certain items (like anything electrical that I cannot use here due to the voltage difference!). Some of the boxes we unpacked we basically packed right back up and put in a space to store because we cannot use them. Oh well, next time we move across to the world we will know better:).......just kidding mom!

I plan to post pictures of the house once I have it all settled, but here is a sneak peak of the boys room. Long story short, they share a room on the main level. We do have 3 empty bedrooms in the lower level not being currently used but we all felt a bit more comfortable having them close to us at night.

So while most of our time is spent getting settled, we have still kept busy and have been having fun:

Brady participated in Sports Day at school. It consisted of running races and other relay type activities. It was hot that day but no he is not sunburned, he had red sprayed in his hair to represent his team that ran down his sweaty head.

We managed to catch some Pokemon while at Southbank last weekend. I do not understand it all but the boys had a lot of fun playing. It seems to be crazy popular right now!

Very focused......

Our thousands of other friends at Southbank also playing......so crazy!

Brady: "Mom, don't move, there is a Pokemon by you!" 

The rest of this week will go by fast. It is our 11 year wedding anniversary on Saturday. We have romantic plans of opening it together at the school carnival! That's ok, quality family time before Matt leaves Sunday for a 12 day trip to Russia and China:(

The End of Term Break

We are nearing the end of our two week break between the end of term 2 and the beginning of term 3. I thought I would be ready for the boys to go back to school after these two weeks at home but I'm not, I'm so not.......We have had a lovely two weeks. Here is what we have been up to:

Some mornings, we just stayed in our pajamas. We were lazy-no making lunches, getting uniforms ready, racing out the door frantically to get to school on time. Just lazy!

Pure relation.......

We got our Brisbane library card and visited two of the local libraries.

We tried out a few new local restaurants.

The second week of break I had signed the boys up for a golf camp at a course called Victoria Park. It is a beautiful course that overlooks the city. The boys loved the camp and we are hoping to continue with lessons. Gavin is really getting pretty good.

I had two hours to kill each morning at the golf course while the boys did camp. I split my time watching them and trying out the cafe-yep it was good! This particular morning I had a great view of Gavin's group on the green and was still able to eat my doughnut and coffee in blissful peace. It was a tough job, but I got it done!

We also played countless games of Uno, went to Bounce (indoor trampoline park), met friends at the movie theatre to watch the new Ice Age movie and visited some parks close to us. 

Saturday we took advantage of one of our last free days and the beautiful weather and visited Sea World in the Gold Coast. We loved seeing all the amazing animals. The boys liked watching the penguins being fed and the amazing dolphin show the best!

It was such a nice time to feel like we could relax and breath a bit before we head back to school. Matt also leaves for India on Monday-a short 4 day trip this time so no complaints here.

Oh, and remember this:

The sea container which is loaded with all of our belongings from Illinois. It left our home on April 28. It has traveled from Peoria to Chicago to Long Beach, CA to Taiwan to Melbourne to Sydney and finally to Brisbane. It is clearing customs now, and we are crossing all of our fingers that it will be delivered to us on Friday next week. The thought of seeing all of our things, having kitchen tools to cook with, sleeping in our own beds-almost makes me cry.........

A Little Bit of Everything

We've had a busy week the week. Matt made it home from his first trip-he was gone for 9 days.........9 long days to Singapore then China. This trip was extremely difficult for all of us. It feels good to have the first one out of the way. The hope is they will all get easier from here. We have a brutal travel schedule him coming up. Through August it will be about every two weeks with one of the trips being 12 days. We better all find something to like about it (I can hear you telling me that Alison Pauli!). So anyway here are a few random thoughts and happening from this week:

I am a coffee drinker. I really like coffee. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. It helps give me the kick I need to get going. Australians are SERIOUS about their coffee. I have found cafe's everywhere. Here are just a few examples: 

In the hardware store-nails, hammers, lawnmowers, coffee-check!

At the movie theatre.

Even at Brady's swim lessons! Now mind you, his swim lessons were from 4:30-5:00. People were grabbing their coffees left and right at this place. How do you people sleep?! There have been a few events at the kids school that parents are invited to watch-bring in the coffee van! 

On another note:

Brady started swim lessons this week.....

My friend for the day......

I got a speeding ticket in the mail from a speed camera for going 7 km over-that translates to about 4mph over......4! Technically the ticket was in Matt's name since the car is registered in his name and they can't see who was driving-but it was me:( $150 lesson learned.

I do not like cockroaches. This was a baby compared to that one that jumped out of my box of Starbuck's Refreshers packets. Maybe someday I can kill them myself, but for now I am thankful for nice neighbors!