The Farmer's

2nd Week In Texas

2012-02-11T22:52:00.008+10:00

We got home from Teague Thursday evening. Peyton and I stayed up late to prepare for the biggest shopping night of the year - Black Friday. We left the house at 11:45pm to head to the mall. On the way to the mall we passed by Target. Check out the line! It wrapped around the side of the building. We talked to some ladies later who waited almost 2 hours just to get inside Target after it already opened!

Peyton and I went to Forever 21 hoping they'd have good sales, but no such luck. Morgan met us there. Our next stop was Victoria's Secret, and I wasn't too impressed with their sale selection either. The mall was pretty much a waste of time (shopping wise), but had some fun bonding time with my sisters. :) Morgan and Peyton headed home around 2am, and I braved the cold in the line outside Old Navy. It took over an hour just to get inside! They were having a HUGE sale, but once I picked out what I wanted, I was too tired to wait in the line to checkout. It wrapped around the store. I ended up putting everything back and going home. It was my first Black Friday experience at midnight, and I don't think I'll do it again.

I got a few hours of sleep then went back to the mall around 7:30am. That trip was a better - less people, more stores open, more sales, and I wasn't as tired! I was thankful for mom watching m that morning so I could go shopping. That afternoon Peyton, mom, m, and I went out for a bit. We stopped by Gap where I found this adorable hat I wanted to buy m. I would have if she would have been able to wear it more than a couple of weeks.

Saturday we did some Christmas decorating around the house. I LOVE Christmas decorations! Mom has so many decorations and they are all so cute.

Sunday we went to church. Here's mom with m at church:

Monday was a Girls Day with my sweet friend, Christa! I had been looking forward to this for awhile, as I don't get a lot of "me" time in Australia. Mom looked after m and they had a fun day together. Christa and I started off our day at the gym with a hip hop class. So fun! I used to go to a hip hop dance class once a week when we lived in Texas. I miss those! After the gym we headed to the Galleria for some shopping. I love the Christmas tree at the Galleria:

We did some shopping around and I tried on a few rings. :) After the Galleria, we went to one of my favorite restaurants, Gloria's. YUM! It was a wonderful day!

Tuesday Mom, m, and I hung around the house. I'm sure we did more "Christmasing" this day.

Wednesday was my Gran's birthday, so m and I drove to Greenville (2 hours away) to surprise her. Gran was so excited to meet m that she didn't even give me a hug! She took m from me and gave her lots of cuddles. Gran, m, and I went up to their church (where Grandad works). Gran wanted to show off her great grand baby! After that we went to see my Great Grandma and m's Great Great Grandma. In the pic below is - Gran, Grandad, Uncle Kendall, m, Uncle Bryan, Great Grandma, and me:

We went to Cracker Barrel for lunch where we met up with Aunt Amy and Ryan. I'm so glad m and I made the trip. It was fun to be able to surprise Gran for her birthday.

Thursday Mom, m, Mel, and I went to the crafters dream - Canton, TX. I could spend days looking around at the 7,000+ vendor booths of "stuff." They have food, antiques, clothes, pictures, shoes, jewelry, furniture, home decor, and a lot more! It was Mel's first time to Canton, so it was fun to show her around. Mom is a "Canton Queen." She knows where to park, where to walk, where to get lunch....she's a pro!

Mel getting a yummy sample of dip:

In front of one of the sheds:

Mom & I:

Friday mom, Peyton, m, and I went to the Gaylord Texan Ice attraction. The hotel brings in artists from China to carve ice sculptures out of 2 million pounds of ice. This year the theme was "Shrek the Halls." We got parkas to wear while we walked around looking at the ice in the 9degF rooms. They even had baby parkas for m!

Cold little nose!

We warmed up with hot chocolate after looking at the ice, then walked around the beautiful hotel. I love going to the Gaylord at Christmas time. They have the most beautiful decorations and a bajillion lights everywhere!

Saturday was the DAY BEFORE JOSH ARRIVED! I could hardly stand it. I checked him in for his flight and said bye to him on Skype for the last time. The next time I talked to him it would be in person! The past couple weeks m had started to recognize Josh on Skype - so cute.

Turkey Day

2012-02-09T15:07:00.007+10:00

After a MUCH needed cut and color (thanks Ashley!!!), I felt like a new gal. That afternoon we drove down to Teague for Thanksgiving. I just love visiting Memaw and Boompa's house - so many great memories there. We met the new addition to the family, Zeek. He's quite the bundle of energy!

Morgan & Zeek:

We spent the night, and m got to sleep in the "playroom." We woke up on Thanksgiving Day and started helping get ready for the feast. Brad, Jen, and Braelyn arrived first. I couldn't wait for Braelyn to meet m. M was still a bit too young to play with Braelyn, so they didn't get to know each other as much as I'd hoped. Maybe next time! Still good to see cousins. :) The rest of the gang (Aunt BJ, Uncle David, Megan, and Jordan) got there, and it was so good to see them! Aunt BJ got m the cutest Tech dress (one of Jen's friends made it). I can't wait for her to wear it!!!

Lunch was delish. Everything I'd been missing and more. I'm so happy I've been able to have Thanksgiving with our friends in Australia the past 3 years. It's been fun introducing them to my family's traditions for this holiday. It would have been better if Josh could have been there with us in Teague. I think he told me he had pizza for Thanksgiving dinner. Poor thing.

That evening mom, m, and I drove back to Arlington. (Dad, Peyton, & Morgan left before us) It was a short trip, but so good for my heart. :)

Aunt BJ talking to Braelyn and m (Jen and Peyton in the pic too):

Memaw & Boompa:

The FEAST:

Everyone!

Aunt BJ & Megan:

I am from Texas. :)

Mom's idea - 4 generation "hand" picture:

4 generations!

M's First Week In Texas!

2012-02-08T22:24:00.006+10:00

M did pretty well on the two flights from Seattle to Dallas. I was just happy this was our last time on an airplane for awhile, and the LAST flight without Josh.

Mom and Peyton were at the airport to greet m and I with cute signs!

It was Peyton's first time to meet m and she was in love. :)

P-Paw and Deedee :)

Even though "home" to me is wherever Josh, Mckinley, and Wrigley are....there's still nothing like going "home" to mom's. Not sure how late mom and I stayed up talking that night, but it was so nice to be there.

The next morning we bundled m up in her adorable borrowed car seat (THANKS Mel!) and headed out for the day.

First stop was a must when I visit Texas - (besides Mexican food) Sam Moon! I spent an hour or so browsing while mom babysat sleeping m. So nice to have a babysitter!

We met some friends for lunch at Cheddar's. The meal was excellent and the company even better. We met Natalie, Kelly, and their new baby boy - Coleman. Also, my boss from MetLife, Jan and her hubby, Mark were there. Jan and mom know each other from junior high (or maybe even earlier than that?!). It was so great to see them and catch up on life.

After lunch we went to MetLife (my old place of employment) so I could say hi to some old work mates. It was great to see everyone, even if it were only for a short time.

That afternoon mom's sweet friend and walking buddy, Mindy, came over to meet m. She brought over some cute outfits for m. :)

I love my ducky bath!

Bye P-Paw! Have fun at work! Think I'll just stay here and play all day. :)

Friday mom, m, and I drove down to see (and for m to meet) Aunt Morgan! Morgan had the cutest costume (borrowed from her roommate) on when we arrived - a kangaroo!

I went up to her apartment to look around. Her and her 3 roommates had their place decorated so cute. Much nicer than my first apartment! Then, we spent the rest of the afternoon driving around Austin. Morgan showed me her old dorm, her sorority house, the campus, a crazy toy shop (pic below), an outdoor market, her church, and a couple of other places I can't remember. :) Morgan wanted to hold m everywhere we went. She just loved m so much.

For dinner we drove out to a Mexican (of course!) food place on Lake Travis, The Oasis. Oh my goodness - this is my new favorite restaurant, as far as location goes. Check it out!!!! Yes, that ginormous structure is the restaurant.

Beautiful views!

I think Josh and I would have to go here once a week if we lived in Austin. It was so peaceful, so relaxing. The food was pretty good too!

After dinner Morgan took me to Hey Cupcake! I was so happy they had not sold out of red velvet cupcakes for the night. The cupcake place is in a portable trailer that is on the side of the road in Austin. On this street there were several other trailers lined up selling food, sweets, and drinks. They had cute little picnic tables out front of each trailer and lights strung up. Such a fun atmosphere.

Morgan, mom, m, and I checked into the hotel and had a good nights sleep. I was worried about sleeping with m in the same room - worried she'd keep us up. I didn't even hear a peep from her all night!

We needed a good nights sleep because we had a marathon outlet shopping day ahead of us in San Marcos. We barely made it to half of the shops in the 8 hours we were there. I was so thankful for mom watching m most of the day so I could do some serious shopping. It was SO much fun, but very tiring. Mom, m, and I still had to drive back to Arlington that night after all that shopping.

The next morning m and I were up early and off to Irving to go to IBC. It was so great to see our friends from our old Bible study group.

I put m in the nursery for the first time, and got a great report back! They said she was so quiet and just watched everyone. :) Our Sunday School class was having a Thanksgiving brunch that morning, so it was a great week to visit. After church, m and I went with some friends to Jason's Deli. Oh how I miss a good salad. Australia is missing out on good salad bars. Anyone want to open a few over here?!

That afternoon m and I drove up to Wylie, TX (about 1 hr away) to stay the night with our friends Liz and Travis. It was great seeing all of our friends, but it made me miss Josh even more. Here's Liz and m in her Tech room. Wreck Em!!!!

Travis making some yummy kabobs for us:

The next day m and I drove back to Arlington. That afternoon we went over to Grandma's house. Grandma was looking good. It was fun to introduce her to m!

That night my sweet friend and college roommate, Shanna was in town. She was in the process of moving from London, England to Idaho. (yes, very random - her hubby is in the Air Force) We went to dinner with mom, dad, and Peyton. It was so great catching up with Shanna! So fun how God planned it all out that we could see each other.

That was m's first week in Texas! I'm tired after just writing about it!

Seattle, Washington

2012-02-07T21:41:00.004+10:00

Krista picked Daddy, Mckinley, and I up from the airport. She was ready with warm coats for M and I, which we were so thankful for. (since it was in the 40sF!)

The drive to Gig Harbor was so beautiful. I loved all of the colors of the trees!

M was so tired from the long journey. :)

I was worried how m would do switching over times zones, but she did GREAT! She slept through the first night and every other night after that. :) Since it was so cool outside, I curled up with a cup of hot chocolate and yummy marshmallows. Yum. The marshmallows just aren't the same in Oz. Funny the things I miss from the States!

Daddy and Krista worked the next day, so m and I spent some time hanging out. We went on a long walk around their pretty neighborhood.

That night for dinner we had my favorite, Mexican food!!!! For being so far away from Mexico, Washington had some good Mexican food. Or maybe it's just been so long that I couldn't tell a difference. Either way, my tummy was happy.

Tuesday morning Daddy took off work and took m and I to downtown Seattle. We drove about a half hour away from the house, we caught a ferry (m's first boat ride!), and were in Seattle 45 minutes later.

Seattle, Washington

We had such a fun day together! We went to the original Starbucks coffee shop and got some Christmasey drinks. Mmmmmm.

Then we went to the "famous" Beecher's Cheese restaurant. This place was featured on Oprah's Favorite Things 2010. Their mac n' cheese was yum-o.

After some mac n' cheese we went to a diner for dessert. I had chocolate pecan pie and Daddy had pear sorbet. We rested our feet a bit, then were on the move again to the Gum Wall. So gross, but so cool at the same time.

My bunny all bundled up. :)

The next morning I packed for our next stop...TEXAS! It was such a nice and relaxing trip to Washington. I'm so glad we got to spend several days with Mimi and Goober PawPaw.

M's First Trip To The States

2012-02-07T17:18:00.004+10:00

We had to leave the house at 3am on Sunday morning for the 2.5 hour drive to the airport . That was errrrr-leee. We saw more kangaroos on our drive to Mackay than cars. :) Little missy was not the happiest when we arrived (see pic below).

Josh walked us to our gate and sat with us for a bit before our plane left. I was so sick to my stomach - super sad to leave Josh, excited to see my family and friends, nervous to be traveling with m by myself. After a tearful goodbye to Josh, m and I boarded the plane for our 1.5 hour flight to Brisbane. After we got settled in our seat, she got so fussy! When she's fussy on planes, it makes me very anxious. Not a good thing. I fed her to calm her down and she was happy for about half an hour, then got fussy again. Poor thing didn't get a good nights sleep, so I don't blame her. I felt bad for the people sitting around us.

We made it to Brisbane after lots of "Lord, please don't let Mckinley be like this on the 13 hour plane ride" prayers. M and I got checked in, I changed her, got a chai, and we went to our gate. We only had about half an hour before our flight boarded. We were the very first passengers to board, so I had plenty of time to get organized. Here's m in our row before everyone else boarded the plane: (you can see the 2 bassinets in the top left hand corner of the picture - they are on the wall)

We were about to take off and m decided to get fussy again. :( I wanted to wait a few minutes until we were taking off to feed her. (to help her ears) The flight attendant made it a point to tell me how Mckinley wasn't making it an "enjoyable experience" for everyone with her crying. I was so embarrassed! Couldn't she tell how stressed I was already??!! Luckily once we took off and m was fed, she was an angel for the next 13 hours. Whfewww. She took two long naps and played in her bassinet some. So thankful that she had a bassinet! The diaper changes were interesting. The toilet rooms were small, and the change table was tiny! I tried to sleep when m slept, but there was a family of 4 in the 3 seats next to us and the two kids were so naughty. They were old enough to be disciplined, but the parents just kept threatening to take them to the toilet to spank them. No sleep for me, but I was happy m slept.

Once we arrived in LA, my dad was there to meet us! It was so good to see him and also great to have some help with m. She had grown a bit since he saw her last.

By the time we got to our gate, the plane to Seattle had already boarded. On the short 2.5 hour plane ride to Seattle, m and I crashed. She was asleep in daddy's lap, which he loved. :)

Sharon & Jim's 50th

2012-02-07T16:59:00.002+10:00

The night before Mckinley and I left for the States, we went to a combined 50th birthday party for Sharon and Jim! It was a country n' western theme. They rented out a hall and their girls (Alex, Bianca, & Viginnia) decorated it so cute! They had good country music and even some dancing. It was fun and got me excited to be leaving for TEXAS the next morning. :)

6 Months Old

2011-11-09T18:26:00.006+10:00

Half a year gone by already?!?! Ahhh - she will be driving before we know it! What a fun 6 months it's been. M has been a bit crankier this past month. Normally she is the quiet one at our mother's group gatherings, but she has let everyone know she has a voice! It's a bit stressful at times because I don't want to bother other people when we are out and she's talking VERY loudly. Hopefully this is a stage and she will go back to her quiet little self. I've moved her night feed back to 9:30pm and she still sleeps straight through to 7am. Loving it! She will be crawling soon. She pushes up so hard on her forearms and acts like she wants to crawl. Still no teeth yet - hallelujah. I'm hoping that doesn't happen until we get back in January. She gets the hiccups every time she laughs - I love it. She went about a week this past month where she put her hands behind her head, like she was relaxing in a recliner. It was too funny! She doesn't do it anymore. She has a little curl on the top of her head that I love twirling around my index finger. She still sits up like a big girl. Last week we put her in a high chair for the first time. She has been such a cuddle bug the past few days! She puts her head right into your neck when you hold her - so sweet.

I did two sessions for her this past month - a 5 1/2 month session for Halloween and a 6 month shoot. She cooperated well for both, which makes a happy mommy! The cute little pumpkin outfit was given to her from my Gran, and the pink tutu from Josh's mom. :)

Our First Weekend Away

2011-11-09T17:21:00.007+10:00

Before I get to Josh & my first weekend away, here are a few photos from what's been happening lately...

Josh, Mckinley, and I went to the Merinda pub to watch the Melbourne Cup. Melbourne Cup is knows as "the race that stops the nation." It's the Aussie version of the Kentucky Derby, but a much bigger deal is made out of it. At Merinda, they had the restaurant area done up so nice. The tables were set like it was a wedding! We got all fancied up and met some of our friends there for lunch.

Mckinley was underneath the table on a pallet we made up for her. :)

Josh started night soccer a few weeks back. The last two seasons I haven't missed a game, but this season has been a bit different. M and I have only been to 2 of the 5 games, and we are going to miss the rest of the season. Here's Josh before the last game:

Daddy's biggest fans!!!

One of Josh's assistants left, and they've hired a new girl which happens to be one of my friends! I'm SOOOO happy that she was hired and know she'll do great. Josh took his assistants out for lunch last week and M&I joined. We put her in a high chair for the first time. It was nice for Josh because he got to eat his meal without a squirmy little one in his lap. :)

Now for our weekend away...

When we got the wedding invitation to our friend's wedding, I was so excited but also nervous. I was excited because it was on Daydream Island, but was nervous because it meant if we wanted to go, I had to find a sitter for m. The first person I thought of was Sharon (Xavier's nan) and her family. They have been around m the most and I knew they'd take extra special care of her. When Sharon agreed, I booked our hotel room on the island.

When the wedding weekend rolled around I was a bit nervous/sad/excited, but didn't cry when we left m. We dropped her off on a Saturday morning. I had all the bottles and solids measured out and labeled (of course) and a big suitcase full of toys, wraps, diapers, clothes, and everything else you can think of. There are always several people at Sharon's house coming and going, so I'm sure m had fun with all the attention! Alex was sooooo great and sent me pictures of m and Xavier playing throughout the day Saturday. It was so helpful to have updates and pictures to see!

We arrived at Daydream Island around lunchtime Saturday. I made my way to the bride's room and started taking photos of her getting her hair and makeup done. (The photographer she hired was for 3 hours and she didn't have anyone to photograph her & Carl getting ready. As their wedding gift from us, I offered my services!) Josh hung out with one of his friends while I was "working." I took photos for a couple of hours, ate a very quick lunch, then ran back to the room to get ready. I dressed and did my hair and makeup in less than 20 minutes. I was very proud of myself. :) Josh was ready to go and looking handsome as ever. We made our way down to Lovers Cove, a beautiful wooden deck on a coral beach, for the wedding at 2:45pm. The wedding started at 3pm and what a gorgeous setting it was! After the wedding Josh and I went with some friends back into the aircon for some drinks. It was a couple of hours before the reception started. At sunset (still before the reception) I went back to Lovers Cove with the wedding party and took some pics of them at sunset. I'm so happy with how they turned out! The reception started at 6:30pm and went until well after 11:30pm (that's when we turned in). The food was great. The music and dancing was fun. It was a great night!

Sunday morning Josh and I slept in. The aircon was out in our room all night, so I didn't sleep well. (of course the ONE night I don't have m) We went and enjoyed the resort's yummy buffet brekkie and then hung out poolside the rest of the day. Sunday was such a relaxing day. It was good for Josh and I to have some time together.

We got wonderful reports back about m. I reckon Wrigley was happier to see us than m!

Leaving m with Alex & Sharon

At the wedding

What a view!

With the happy couple

Daydream Island

Thanksgivoween

2011-11-09T16:39:00.006+10:00

Since Mckinley and I will be in the States for Thanksgiving this year, I wasn't going to be able to have our annual Aussie Thanksgiving dinner. I decided to have it a year early and combine it with a Halloween party! It turned out great. I started preparing for the party months ago. The party was on a Friday night and I started cooking for it the Monday before. Krista and Daddy brought us cute Thanksgiving plates, and Laura sent a BIG box of candy and decorations. We had around 20 or so of our friends over to the house and had SO much leftover food! (7 people cancelled the day of) I had such a nice night. All 3 of the babies behaved themselves, which helped. :)

Here are several pics from the night!

Our friend Lauren works on the farm in Bowen that grows the Halloween pumpkins! These were all going to be thrown out, and we got take as many as we wanted for the party. We carved some, I painted some, and the rest were used for decoration around our house.

BIG box of goodies from Laura!

Give Thanks banner

Guess how many candy corn

Our costumes - rock, paper, scissors, fire!

Some of the group

Games!

more games

Carving pumpkins

Dessert - red velvet cake balls. I made a few into turkeys with milk chocolate, malted milk balls, and candy corn. The rest are dipped in white chocolate.

Pecan pie and punch

Goodie bags!

Some of the pumpkins

5 Months Old

2011-10-15T09:12:00.002+10:00

Luckily Mckinley doesn't stick her tongue out as much anymore. :) Guess she's almost over that phase. I thought she might be about to cut a tooth, but no sign of one yet. I have been busy trying to get ready for our upcoming trip to the States! I spent last Saturday morning (6 hours!) researching brands of baby wipes, food packs, shampoo, laundry detergent, etc for Mckinley for our trip. I made a massive order from diapers.com because I thought it would be easier to not have to lug that kind of stuff halfway across the world. I found a good brand of baby food pouches for M for our travel days, but will still be making her food for the days we are in Arlington and Albuquerque. (I love when I read a food label and there's only one or two ingredients listed and you can pronounce each one!) Daddy has volunteered himself and Krista to make Mckinley food so we don't have to do that when we get to their house. We will be stopping in Washington first, then on to Texas! I'm kind of nervous about using disposable diapers for 2 months. I know people use them all the time, but M hasn't had any problems with the cloth diapers we are using. I hope she doesn't start getting diaper rashes with the disposables.

Little Miss M is 5 months and getting bigger each day! She is around 6.5kg (14.3lbs), 25.5in in length, and 16.75in for her head circumference. She can roll both ways now - tummy to back and back to tummy! She started solids around 4.5 months old and loves trying new foods. She eats rice cereal, potatoes, sweet potatoes, zucchini, pumpkin, apples, pears, carrots, and turnips. Pears are her favorite. She had her first dip in the ocean at the beginning of the month and wasn't too excited about it. When you live 3 blocks from the beach, you're bound to have a little fishy! We will keep taking her to get used to the water. She loves the spa at Alex's parent's house. It's a nice warm temperature. M got hear ears pierced at the end of September and was so brave. She sat up for the first time for our 5 month photo shoot! (see below)

The 5 month photo shoot of my little bunny has been my favorite so far. I had about 5 minutes to prepare for it (pick out an outfit for her and Josh and get my camera gear loaded up) and a window of about 20 minutes (because the sun was setting) to snap some pics of M. She cooperated the best for this shoot out of all the other shoots. I had so many favorites from this session, but didn't want to overload our blog with even MORE pics of M. :) Enjoy!

So happy I was able to capture her sitting up for the first time!

A Very Very VERY Long Post

2011-10-14T20:31:00.019+10:00

This is what I get for not blogging for over a month - writing this SUPER long post. I reckon only the moms (and maybe grandmas) will make it through this post.

Let's rewind back to Josh's FIRST Father's Day, September 4th. Aussies celebrate Father's Day in September, and this year it fell 3 days before Josh's 26th birthday. Last year for Father's Day I gave Josh two onesies for my little bun in the oven. One said "My heart belongs to a Chiropractor" and the other "Made in Australia". Here's Josh a year later with our little "bun" wearing one of the onesies!

We had a great day celebrating Josh. Mckinley gave Josh some American candy and a mug (for his tea drinking at the office) with pictures of herself on it. It turned out so cute, but there was a little hiccup. I ordered the mug a week or so before Father's Day and when I received it in the mail, it wasn't Josh's mug! It said "Happy Father's Day, love Baylee" with pictures of a 10 or so year old. Kinda creepy to think someone else might have a mug with our little one's pics all over it. I rang Snapfish and they were able to send Josh's mug. I wrapped up the mug for Baylee's dad and gave it to Josh since I didn't have his. When he opened it I asked him if he had some news to tell me - another child I didn't know about?!? :) Mckinley's mug ended up arriving on his birthday a few days later.

For Josh's birthday this year, we celebrated with our Bible Study/Home Group. I made one of his favorite Aussie desserts, Mars Bar Slice. It's basically melted Three Muskateers bars with Rice Crispies. YUM.

Josh got his birthday present (a new Xbox) a few months early this year, so he didn't have anything to open on his birthday. I had to give him something to open, so I gave him a card from Mckinley with a voucher for a massage! We also went to lunch with our friend Lisa, who was helping Josh out at the office. She is normally a CA at the Airlie practice, but helped out a few times at the office in Bowen.

On Mckinley's 4 month birthday, we decided it would be a good time to put her in her Jolly Jumper! Boy did she LOVE it!

We didn't stop there though....we had to let Wrigs have a go. Josh and I were both laughing so hard watching Wrigley. Tears were running down my face I was laughing so hard.

On September 10 we went to the local rugby playoff game. Little missy behaved herself and we had a nice afternoon. Here's a pic of her with Scott & Alex.

Bowen's rugby team beat the Collinsville team. Collinsville is about an hour away.

Josh has been reading a book to M most nights before bed. This is normally when I'm in the kitchen preparing dinner, but some nights I sneak in the hallway to spy on them. Precious moments like this make my heart smile.

M and I have gone to lots of outings with other mums and bubs the past couple of months. Normally we meet 3-4 other mums/bubs once a week for a coffee and chat. It's always a nice time catching up and exchanging stories about our bubs. Here's M with her 2 boyfriends. Judd is on the left and Xavier is on the right.

September 17 was our third time to attend the annual Bowen Fishing Classic. Last year at the Fishing Classic we volunteered to help at one of the food stalls. I was pregnant and nauseous the whole morning. This year was much more enjoyable. Saturday afternoon we listened to some of the live music...

...and watched some of the weigh-ins for the fishies.

Sunday afternoon we went to watch the fashion show.

M and Xavier were teaching each other how to share. :)

September 20 M started solids! I was so excited to watch my little bunny try something new. She loved her rice cereal. We were able to have some of the grandparents on Skype to watch. I love both Josh's and M's expression in the pic below. :)

The book that I am using to guide me with her solids feeding has her try a new food every fourth day. The pic below is her first taste of apples. She wasn't too sure about them!

The book walked me through an easy way to prepare M's food. I take the veggie or fruit, wash it, peal it, chop it, steam it, puree it, put the "mush" into ice cube trays, freeze it, then pop the cubes into labeled & dated ziplock baggies for the freezer! Each morning I defrost her food for the day. Easy. Cheap. Healthy.

September 22 M got her ears pierced!!! I was a little nervous about this, but Alex (ear piercing is one of Alex's many talents, and yes she's certified to pierce baby's ears) assured me this was a great time to get them pierced. She's done this to a lot of little ones and reckons if they are any older it takes a lot longer to heal because the kiddos touch their ears, causing infection. Alex put some numbing cream on M's ear lobes, so she couldn't feel it. M was more upset with Alex trying to put the mark on her ear than the actual piercing! My little bunny was so brave, and I think she looks so cute with her little earrings. :)

September 24 we went to Townsville for a day of shopping. Josh got to use his massage voucher (from his birthday). He also got some new glasses and work clothes. He looks soooo handsome and smart with his new glasses!

Sunday, the 25th we had a lovely dinner at the Cove celebrating Dan's birthday. It was so nice to have M asleep in her stroller next to us and chat the night away with friends.

October 1 was our third time to attend the Bowen Cup - the horse races. We didn't have a babysitter for M, so we brought her along. I had to make her a cute fascinator for the day! I love how it turned out.

M did SO well at the races! She skipped her afternoon nap and was still in good spirits. It was kind of a last minute decision to go to the races, so I didn't have an outfit. Viginnia let me borrow one of her super cute, super comfy dresses. I had so much fun dressing up! I had a fascinator Josh's mom bought for me. I borrowed jewelry from Viginnia and shoes from Bianca. So blessed to have girlfriends here!

Josh with his two girls -

My attempt at an up do (thank you Pinterest) -

Hangin out with M in the car for a bit in the a/c -

With Lauren & Alex -

Josh, Brett, & Scott -

With Melita & Lian -

With Vigin -

We had such a great day! We went out to eat that night with friends, and Alex's dad "watched" Mckinley for us. So nice! I say watched instead of babysat because she goes to sleep at 7pm without a fuss and will sleep until I wake her at 10pm for a feed. I love my baby.

Sunday the 2nd we had our first semi-successful trip to the beach. This was our third time to Horseshoe Bay with Mckinley, but the first two times she cried the whole time. This trip we got her in the ocean and she only fussed for a little bit!

Xavier wasn't happy about getting his "togs" on. Mckinley saying "it's ok Xavier." :)

My poor neglected fur child, Wrigley. I might not blog about her much, but she is still a very important member of our family! She is so much fun. She knows when M goes down for a nap that it's Wrigley time. She'll bring me a toy and want to play. :) This is her new favorite spot to relax.

My bunny playing games with her daddy:

October 8th we went to the Bowen Rodeo. We had a good time watching the bull riding, bucking broncos, wrangling, and barrel racing. It was pretty similar to the rodeos I've been to the States, just a small town version.

One of my goals after M was born was to run a 5k, and I did just that on October 9th. I was so proud of myself. Josh and I competed in the Bowen Triathlon. Josh was on a guys team and I on a girls. Josh did the bike leg and I did the run. It was a HOT day, but we both made it! Getting packed up ready to go...

Josh and his running teammate, Jamie -

I left my camera with our cheering section (Alex, Scott, Mckinley, and Xavier) and they took some great pics!

Josh has Thursday afternoons off, so we decided to take M for another dip in the ocean yesterday. She did so much better!

I LOVE this photo of Josh & M -

On the way home from the beach we drove through a new neighborhood to look at the houses and came across....

...can you see them? Some wallabies! (or maybe kangaroos, I can never tell)

Josh thought yesterday would be a good time to shave his long hair. Before -

After -

That's what has been going on at the Farmer's house lately!

4 Months Old

2011-09-22T08:34:00.004+10:00

Life seems to get busier and busier. Just when I think it's going to slow down, it speeds up again. Keeps life interesting I guess! Mckinley gets cuter and cuter everyday. (of course I'm supposed to say that, but she really does!) Most pictures these days look like this:

For some reason she has her tongue out a lot of the time. Makes me laugh. She is still rolling over and is so strong when you put her on her tummy. A few weeks ago she was talking in this funny voice. She sounded like a man baby talking. She only did the "back of the throat" talking for a few days but she had me laughing to the point of tears when she'd do it. She laughed for the first time this past month. Josh had her in the bathtub talking to her and he yelled at me from the bathroom, "Babe, come here!!! She's laughing!!!" We were both so excited to hear our little munchkin laugh. There's not a sweeter sound. She hangs onto her piggy toes with her hands and rocks back and forth. She started grabbing for things when you hold them in front of her face. She had her first snotty nose, but it only lasted two days! SOOOO happy to have her daddy to help keep her well. She ran a fever the first day so I put a cool rag on her forehead, which brought her temp down. We also got to use the snot sucker thing - that made me gag. :) She was adjusted 5 times by her daddy in 2 days and the third day she was back to her happy snot-free self! It's amazing how the body can heal itself without drugs if you just let it. She is definitely finding her voice. She talks - loud - when she wants to be heard. The grandparents didn't believe me, so I had to video it and show them. It's not a mad scream. It's a "pay attention to me!" scream. At four months she was 6.25kg (13.8lbs).

The four month session was like the three month session. If she had anything to do with it, it wasn't happening. I ended up talking the photos at our house again. Maybe she'll cooperate for 5 months. ??

Hello blue eyes.

Daddy, Krista, & Mckinley's Session

2011-09-16T23:37:00.002+10:00

Daddy and Krista wanted me to shoot a session of them with Mckinley. Mckinley likes to get cranky when the camera comes out, so it was a challenge to get her to cooperate. We stopped during the middle of the session so M could have a quick nap. That did the trick! During her nap I was able to capture a few images of Daddy & Krista. They have been married for 20 years (is that right?) and have never had professional pictures made.

Here's my fave of the two of them...

I LOVE Mckinley's expression in this one!!!

The only Mckinley smile of the day:

I love you thiiiiiiis much!

Tough work being a model.

Visitors!

2011-09-08T15:34:00.009+10:00

Mckinley had so much fun meeting her Great Grandad, PawPaw, and Mimi! They came for a week long visit at the end of August.

Friday was a rest day. They flew into Prosperpine, "hired" a car, and drove up to Bowen. Mckinley was still napping when they arrived, so they got to wake her up! She was a bit confused when she woke up and saw three new faces looking down at her. After that was LOTS and lots of cuddles.

Saturday I put everyone to work! Saturday afternoon was Mckinley's Dedication and there was so much to be done. I couldn't have pulled off what I did without their help. A BIG thank you to all of them (and Josh!). After the dedication, everyone was tuckered out! Sunday morning we (minus Josh & Mckinley) were up at the crack of dawn to go on our reef trip. I will do a separate post about this day. Monday was a rest and recovery day. Daddy got to give Mckinley a bottle Monday night! It was a special time for him as she's still a fully breast-fed baby. Tuesday we went for a picnic at Front Beach, as Josh has Tuesday mornings off. Wednesday we ran errands and did some stuff around the house. Wednesday afternoon Daddy, Grandad, and I went bushwalking around Bowen. It was such a beautiful day.

Thursday we went down to Airlie to the lagoon. Grandad loves talking to Mckinley. :)

Daddy and Krista stopped in Hawaii on their way over to Australia. They brought Mckinley the cutest little hula girl outfit. I love it!

It was a bit too cold for Mckinley to go swimming, but we let her put her toes in the water.

We had lunch at the new marina in Airlie. Such a great lunch spot!

Thursday night Daddy, Krista, and Grandad "babysat" for us. Josh and I left for dinner at 7:15pm and Mckinley goes to sleep at 7pm. They had a hard job. :) Before we left for our date, we let Daddy give Mckinley a bath. He was pretty nervous, but did a great job!

They left Friday morning. A quick trip, but it was a great week. We are so thankful that even though we live far away from home, we are still able to have family come visit us so much. Here are a few pictures from Friday morning, before they left...

Tired of taking pictures!

The best picture of our little family we could get. Mckinley was very fussy at this point!

Great Barrier Reef Trip

2011-09-08T15:07:00.005+10:00

I FINALLY got to take a trip to the Great Barrier Reef! Josh and I have lived in Australia for a little over 2 years now and a trip to the GBR has been on the list since we arrived. It's one of the 7 wonders of the world. It's actually made up of around 3,000 individual reef systems. We wanted to save the trip out to the reef for when family came to visit because #1 - it's expensive and #2 - it's a 3 hour trip out there. (1 hour drive, then 2 hour boat ride) Josh and I tried to go out to the reef when his family was visiting last Christmas, but we were rained out. When Josh's family came back for a visit in June, he got to go out to the GBR. When my family came a few weeks ago, it was my turn.

I'm so blessed to have such a hands-on husband that was willing to watch his little girl for 12 hours so I could go play. It was the longest time I'd been away from Mckinley and I was a bit nervous leaving her for so long. What if I didn't leave enough milk? What if she didn't take the bottle at each feed? What if she started screaming and Josh couldn't calm her down? I had to reassure myself that everything would be ok. I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief at the end of the day when I was finally able to talk to Josh. (he reported they had a great day together!)

Daddy, Krista, Grandad, and I drove down to Airlie Beach early Sunday morning. Our coffee/breakfast stop took a bit longer than expected so we were the very last people on the ship. Not the best way to start the day, but at least we made it. Our Fantasea ship was pretty full. We had a quick stop at Hamilton Island to let some passengers off and pick up some passengers. It was the end of Hamilton Island Race Week, so there were some race boats still there.

On the 2 hour ride out to the reef we saw heaps of whales! It was so neat seeing so many of them. The captain was great at pointing them out . It was funny to watch people go from the left of the ship, to the right, back to the left, to the right, you get the point - to see the whales.

Once we arrived Daddy and Krista practically sprinted off the ship (I think they were excited about getting in the FREEZING cold water). They went to get their snorkel gear on while Grandad and I toured the ship. I figured the water wasn't going anywhere, so I got nice and hot before jumping in the cold water. Here are Daddy and Krista snorkeling. This picture was taken from the pontoon's underwater observatory.

I forgot to mention, on the boat ride there we went through a lot of fog. I was so happy that the fog lifted while we were at the reef. Here is a picture taken from the pontoon's top sundeck:

My tanning spot....ahhhhh to be back there again:

After getting some sun we ate lunch on the deck. After lunch Grandad went on a helicopter ride - so cool! He got to see the famous Heart Reef that Oprah saw on her trip to Australia.

While Grandad was on his helicopter tour, we went on a semi-sub tour around Hardy Reef.

After being on the pontoon boat at the reef, the tide had gone out. It was crazy to see the water level change in just a few hours!

I was tired after the long day out at the GBR, but had a wonderful day. So happy to have spent it with family. Just wish Josh and Mckinley could have come along. Maybe next time!

Mckinley's Dedication Slideshow

2011-09-08T14:51:00.003+10:00

I made this for Mckinley and played it after the ceremony. :)

Mckinley's Dedication

2011-09-08T14:16:00.005+10:00

The day Mckinley becomes a Christian will no doubt be the most important, life changing day of her life. We got to celebrate the second most important day of her life a few weeks ago. We dedicated Miss Mckinley to our Savior. Josh and I made a promise to our friends and to God that we will bring her up in a home that puts Christ first. We had 30 of our friends over to the house to witness the event and help us celebrate. I was so happy Daddy, Krista, and Grandad were able to be there. Grandad married Josh and me in 2007, so we thought it would be special to have him do M's dedication. We were able to have my mom and Josh's mom & dad join us via Skype.

I did a LOT of planning and preparing for M's dedication, but that's what I love doing! It was so much fun to pick a color theme, design the invitations, shop and plan for the decorations (of course to match the invitations!), pick the menu, and make a slide show! I should have been an event planner. I couldn't have pulled off the day without the help of our family and also some last minute help from the Stace girls. (THANK YOU!)

On the menu was slush punch, a fruit tray with caramel dip, a veggie tray with ranch dip, white chocolate cupcakes with butter cream icing, Texas caviar, basil & sundried tomato dip, Mars bar blondies, and vanilla cookies. Yum!

You can see some of the decorations below. I used a craft punch (thanks Gran!) for the guest book tags. I tied them to the branches and had people sign their name on one side and write a note to Mckinley on the other. I love how it turned out. I also used the craft punch for the cupcake toppers. I browsed the internet for hours looking for cupcake toppers that I liked and never found any that I just HAD to have, so I made my own in Photoshop! I did some toppers with "M" on it, some with "Mckinley Adyson", and some with "Jesus loves me!" My favorite decoration was the fabric bunting! I love looking at different fabrics at the craft store. I picked out some coordinating purple and yellow fabric to match the invitations and had some twine to connect the bunting. It was cah-yute!

Proud Daddy

Putting the family to work!

Josh with M and Viginnia with her nephew, Xavier

The boys helping with Skype

Some of the guests

Grandad doing the ceremony

I was so happy with how the day turned out and how lovely the ceremony was!

Swimming With Mckinley

2011-09-08T13:52:00.002+10:00

Mckinley was invited to go swimming with Xavier the day we got home from Mackay. She had such a fun time! Xavier's grandparents have a spa bath (hot tub) in their backyard and warmed it up for the little ones. M & X are going to be such little fishies. Can't wait till they start swim school.

3 Months Old

2011-08-22T16:02:00.002+10:00

I am loving my little girl at this age! She has become so much more alert and aware of her surroundings. She smiles SO big when we talk to her. She sleeps through almost anything. I can do the vacuuming while she takes her naps! She feeds every 4 hours and is still sleeping through the night. if she wakes up, she self settles within a few minutes. Hallelujah! She has become quite the chatterbox! Guess she's taking after her mom. :) She does her "shy smile" when she notices herself in the mirror. She smiles really big then turns her head away and buries it into your chest. I love it. She rolled over for the first time at 3 months and 1 day old (or 13 weeks old). I didn't have my camera, shucks, but Josh got to see her roll over 1 week later. Guess she's camera shy with her tricks, because I still haven't been able to get it on camera. She went 15 straight days without doing a poo - a record! Our midwife said breastfed babies can't technically get constipated, and if she was doing plenty of wees not to worry. I was a little bit frightened of how big the explosion would be when she actually went, but it wasn't bad at all! At 3 months old, she was in the 75% for weight and 97% for height. We have a tall little girl on our hands! Hoping she grows up to be a star volleyball player. :) She went on her first train and plane ride in Sydney just shy of 3 months old.

I had a heck of a time trying to get 3 month pictures taken of Mckinley. The week she turned 3 months old we were flat out with just getting back from our Sydney trip and trying to pack up for our Mackay trip. When we got home from Mackay, the first day my "assistant" was available was Thursday. Of course Mckinley chose that day to be irritable....which is why there aren't really any good pictures of her pretty face in this post.

We attempted the feet on the end of the bed pic (thanks Kristy for the suggestion) and I think the test shot (below) turned out better! Oh Wrigs...

My sleeping beauty

LOVE them!

for Memaw :)

TLC Workshop Mackay

2011-08-19T21:21:00.004+10:00

After our weekend away in Sydney, we had three days to get back to our normal lives just to pack up and go away the next weekend! This time we headed down to Mackay for the annual TLC Workshops.

The TLC Workshop weekend is always a good time. This weekend was no exception. I wasn't too worried about Mckinley since she behaved herself in Sydney. Mckinley and I ran a few errands Friday afternoon while Josh was in his sessions. Friday night was the TLC BBQ at our resort. I didn't stay long at dinner because it was past m's bedtime, but still had fun visiting with our long lost TLC family while I could. Josh brought Brett & Lisa back to our room and we stayed up pretty late (for me!) catching up while the boys watched rugby.

I bragged about how good of a sleeper m was to Lisa. M has slept through the night since 8 or 9 weeks old with no problems. She's now 14 weeks so that's what we're used to! I should have kept my big mouth shut because at 4:30am Mckinley woke up screaming. I felt so bad for the other hotel guests. Josh did everything he could to settle M. He tried bouncing her on his knee, talking to her, walking around, taking her for a walk in her stroller....nothing seemed to be helping. He finally settled her with a short drive around and she fell asleep. Such a good daddy. I really felt blessed that night (not at the moment, but a couple of days later) to know just how wonderful it is to have a baby that sleeps through the night! I can't imagine dealing with that night after night like some parents. Thankfully she only did that one night.

Saturday she was worse than Friday night. She was unsettled most of the day - poor baby girl. I had to give her a couple of extra feeds just to calm her down. Growth spurt maybe?? I never know. Too bad babies don't come with an instruction manual. :) I planned on popping into some of the sessions if M was asleep, but that didn't happen. Mckinley finally was back to her normal happy self around 6pm. Just in time for bed, of course.

Saturday night was the Cowboys and Indians party! Here are a few pics:

Lisa, Julie, and Me (I was a saloon girl)

Josh, me, Julie, & Braxton

Me with Josh's CA's, Tammi & Rachel (we got 2nd place in the best dressed competition!)

The pool at our resort

It was a pretty good weekend considering how much screaming little missy did. I'm so happy she's back to her normal happy self!

Sydney

2011-08-10T10:28:00.005+10:00

For Mckinley to be able to go to the States for Thanksgiving/Christmas, we needed to get her a passport. To get a passport for her we had to travel to a US Embassy. The closest US Embassy is 1200 miles away in Sydney, so Mckinley got to go on her first airplane ride!

M is a pretty good traveller. :) We had a 2.5 hour drive from Bowen to Mackay. Our plane left to Brisbane at 11am and then we hopped on another plane to Sydney. (both of those were quick 1 hour flights) On both of the flights M slept most of the time. She got a bit cranky on the second flight, but only for a few minutes.

I have such a sweet and thoughtful husband. Our old neighbors and great friends, Jason and Leila live a few hours drive from Sydney. About a month or so ago Jason and Josh started talking about surprising us girls with a little reunion in Sydney. The boys ended up having to tell us (probably because we are pretty clever and would have figured it out anyway! haha), but I was SOOOO happy they planned the meeting. Jason picked us up from the airport and drove us to the hotel we were both staying at. I was SUPER excited to get hugs from all three of them. It's been about a year since we've seen them.

Saturday afternoon the boys watched the Wallabies and the All Blacks game, the kiddos napped, and Leila & I chatted. I LOVE chatting with Leila. We used to go on walks together on the beach when they were our neighbors in Bowen. Oh how I miss those times.

Saturday night we ate at Simple & Irresistible, a Thai food place. I had the BEST pad Thai ever. The kiddos behaved themselves, for the most part. Mckinley got pretty fussy towards the end of dinner, but didn't get too loud. Olly is entering his "terrible two" phase (not looking forward to that!), so he was a little stinker at times. Jason and Leila handle it so well though! I hope I have that much patience when M is at that stage.

Prior to the trip Leila had been working with Olly on being gentle. Olly is a fair bit bigger than most kids his age and can be pretty rough. Leila did a great job with him and he was such a sweetheart with M. It was so precious to watch. He gave her lots of kisses:

Sunday morning we ate at Jago's on Miller. It was a bit fresh Sunday morning, but the cafe's patio had lots of heaters. It felt so nice out on their patio and the food was great! I had sourdough pancakes with blueberries and maple syrup. Yum. After breakfast we headed into the city and did a bit of shopping and walking around. I was so thankful that Jase & Leila brought a stroller for us to borrow. We were sad to say goodbye to our sweet friends, but I was happy that I got to see them!

Group shot

Olly telling M goodbye :)

Sunday night Josh, M, and I got all bundled up and walked to the bus stop to catch a shuttle to...

I've been wanting to go to a service at Hillsong Church ever since I found out it wasn't just a Christian singing group. It was such an amazing service - the worship was great and so was the sermon. M did so well! I had to feed her before the service started and loved their mother's room. There was everything you could ever need - comfy chairs, a good view of the sanctuary, change table, high chairs, toys & books, a bumbo, even a staff member bringing the mums water and fruit! I hope I get to go back one day, maybe even to a Hillsong Conference! After church we went to the Aussie version of Chipotle, Mad Mex. Brownie points to Josh for finding this place! Their burritos were great, but the churros were the highlight. Mmmmmm good.

Monday morning we walked to the US Embassy and submitted the application/paperwork to get M's passport. We were only there about half an hour. Our plane didn't leave until 3pm Monday afternoon, so we had several hours to do some sightseeing! We caught a train, then a bus to Bondi Beach. We got lucky with the weather; it was such a beautiful day (the forecast was cold and rainy)! We ate breakfast at Trio and had a nice view of Bondi Beach. I had the banana bread and it was to die for. Banana bread warmed on the grill with caramelized bananas and maple syrup. My mouth is watering thinking about it! After breakfast we walked down to the beach and took a couple of pics. We caught a bus to Circular Quay where we got this picture with the Harbour Bridge in the background:

Circular Quay looking at the Opera House

We caught a bus back to our hotel and then a train to the airport. M was soooo tired after the big day of travelling all over Sydney. She was pretty cranky and cried most of the day. I was happy that she slept most of both plane rides back to Mackay.

It was such a wonderful weekend. Great catch up with friends, lots of yummy food, M's first plane & train ride, and FUN in the BIG city!

Mmmmmm Good

2011-08-10T09:42:00.002+10:00

The delish "pizzookie" I made for Josh last week. Warm chocolate chip cookie in a ramekin, topped with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce!

Recent Pics

2011-07-22T20:57:00.002+10:00

Haven't posted in a couple of weeks, so thought I'd post a few pics of Mckinley!

Is watching mom cook that boring?

All smiles :)

Wearing her "fur" coat

This one's for mom and her love of feet pj's

The best kind of laundry to do. Love seeing all the tiny clothes on the line. :)

2 Months Old

2011-07-11T17:07:00.005+10:00

Another month has flown by. We have enjoyed watching our little girl grow and change over the past month. She's getting stronger in her neck each day and doesn't have as much of a bobble head anymore. She eats every 4 hours and sleeps GREAT at night. It is so wonderful to have a baby that sleeps well at night! She's able to self-settle at each sleep. We put her in her bed awake and she'll only fuss for about 2 minutes - 5 minutes max and then she'll be asleep! We put her in her bed in her room for all her sleeps during the day (at night she sleeps in her cot in our room). When we go in her room to get her out of bed, she's normally staring at the crib mobile I made for her. I'm so happy she likes it. She is super talkative after each feed. I love listening to her talk. It's so stinkin cute! She absolutely LOVES her bouncy bounce. We'd be lost without it. Her sweet smiles melt our hearts. She makes a little piglet noise when she's hungry. It makes us laugh. Miss Sharon babysat for us last week and said Mckinley did great! That made me so happy. Mckinley loves getting adjusted at the chiropractor's office! Lucky her daddy is such a good doctor. She's going to be such a healthy baby because of him. :) She now weighs 5.42kg (about 12 pounds) and is 60.5cm (about 24 inches) in length. She's outgrown her newborn clothes and has a new wardrobe now, the next size up! I just love dressing her up in her cute little outfits.

Here are several pics from Mckinley's 2 month old photo shoot. My parents said how much they loved seeing pictures of Josh and Mckinley, but wanted to see some of me too. Josh was a trooper and let me boss him around. I got to set up the shots, tell him where to stand and what to do, and he did such a good job! I told him I'd hire him. :) I still got to edit the pics to my liking. (oh and I took the ones of Mckinley where she's by herself)

The Farmer's Visit Part 2

2011-07-06T15:22:00.008+10:00

Saturday, June 25 we drove up to Townsville (the Farmers rented a car). We met with Kate for Mckinley's 6 week check up. She was doing "beautifully!" as Kate said. She weighed 11lbs and was 23.2in long. That afternoon we did some shopping. The mall was having lots of great sales because it was the end of the financial year. Uncle Ken and Laura bought me some cute clothes and shoes for my birthday!

Saturday night we went to a professional bull riding competition! It was so much fun!

Mckinley slept for the first half of the show. I couldn't believe how well she was sleeping. It was sooooooooo loud! I spent the second half in the family room nursing.

Saturday night Nana babysat so Josh and I could go out. It was so nice to have some "just us" time. Josh and I joked about pulling up to the pub with our family car with the car seat in it. I kept joking about my mommy clothes. Times have changed from our college days! haha. We met up with Bianca and her boyfriend Jason at the Mad Cow. We had so much fun dancing! I didn't want to leave, but we needed to get back for Mckinley's night feed.

We got back to the room around 1:30am and Nana said Mckinley did great! I got ready for bed and ready for her night feed. I got in bed and next thing I knew it was 6:15am! Mckinley slept through the night! I was so happy. :)

Sunday morning we met the Stace family at The Balcony for brunch. It was delish!

Sunday afternoon we walked around the Flinder's Street Markets and did a little more shopping. Monday Laura and I went to Airlie Beach for lunch. G-Pop and Uncle Ken were on baby duty. They did such a great job! Laura and I had a nice day in Airlie and met up with Lisa.

This is a blanket Ron's mom made for Mckinley. She used pieces of his old jeans! So cool.

Monday night we had our Bible study group over for games. Bianca and Alex brought me a cake bouquet. It was super cute:

Wrigley is cute too :)

I got to open my cards/presents before everyone got to our house. Ron gave me some really nice pots/skillets! They know I love to cook. :) I have used them and they are so much nicer than the pans I had. The picture below is me reading the card from Josh. He didn't have a gift for me to open because he wanted me to pick it out. He's buying me an acoustic guitar!!! I've wanted to learn how to play for a long time. I think it will be fun to sing and play to Mckinley.

Game night was a blast. I love having people over to our house.

Tuesday Josh had off from work for Show Day - it's the Aussie version of fair day. We had a great time at the Bowen Show.

Wednesday night Laura babysat again and let Josh and I go out for dinner.

Thursday was a sad day - the Farmers were leaving us. :( We dressed up Mckinley in a few of her new things. Here she is in her pancho!

Here she is with Uncle Ken. Check out his "Great-Uncles Rock" shirt!

Right before they left Mckinley got her first haircut!

Smiling with Nana :)

One last picture

LOVED spending time with Nana, G-Pop, and Uncle Ken. I'm so glad they came for a visit. It's always hard saying bye to family, but at least we have our trip to the States to look forward to! Only a few months and we'll be in the US of A!

The Farmer's Visit Part 1

2011-07-06T13:57:00.009+10:00

When Ron, Laura, and Josh's uncle Ken planned a visit to come meet 6 week old Mckinley, I expected 10 relaxing days of them spending time with our little one. Boy was I wrong! They were go, go, go! Josh and I were exhausted after their trip, but we enjoyed having them.

They arrived on a Sunday afternoon. Mckinley and I weren't able to go to the airport because our car wouldn't fit everyone. :( Josh was meant to ring me when they got close, but he forgot. I panicked when I heard the garage door go up - I was still feeding Mckinley! I quickly got myself decent and finished dressing Mckinley. Nana, G-Pop, and Great Uncle Ken were instantly in love with our little one.

I finished feeding Mckinley while they got settled in. Laura brought one suitcase filled with gifts for Mckinley! Uncle Ken brought us lots of yummy American snacks. It was Christmas in June at our house. We opened a few of the gifts (the cute sunglasses in the picture below and some adorable outfits) and then all 6 of us, plus Wrigley, went on a walk.

That evening we got to open the rest of the gifts for Mckinley! She is sooooo spoiled by her Nana! They also brought several gifts from their friends for Mckinley. Her closet is full. Wrigley was even tired after the opening of the gifts!

Monday Mckinley had some cuddle time with her G-Pop. So sweet.

Studying Uncle Ken (Laura's brother):

Found that thumb!

Monday afternoon I got my haircut! Uncle Ken did a great job at giving me a fresh new do. :) Tuesday we went for coffee at Food Freaks. I wanted to dress Mckinley in her cute jean skirt, but it's the middle of winter here. I figured out a way though and was very proud of myself!

Wednesday at lunch I went with the boys for a short hike. Nana got to spend some alone time with Mckinley. Here are the boys at Horseshoe Bay lookout:

Wednesday night we went to The Cove for dinner. Mckinley behaved herself during dinner, but got cranky when the dessert menus came.

Bath time with daddy and G-Pop:

Thursday everyone, except for Mckinley and me, went on a trip to the Great Barrier Reef. They all seemed to have a fun time. I can't wait till I can go! (in August)

Friday we went to Horseshoe Bay for a picnic lunch. It was a very windy day, and I spent most of the time with Mckinley in the car. She didn't like the wind. It was a fun and busy first week!

Bowen's 150th Birthday Bash

2011-07-06T13:35:00.003+10:00

**I'm going a little out of order. This took place the night before the Farmers arrived, note the long brown hair I still have in the pics. :)

We like to take Mckinley to loud places, so if she screams no one is bothered! haha. We thought Bowen's 150th Birthday Bash would be a perfect outing since there was going to be live music and fireworks. I'm so glad we went. We ran into Dan and Beth as soon as we arrived. Beth is about to pop! She only has 3 weeks left - baby "bean" will be here before we know it! (I mushed Beth and Dan's names together and refer to them as "Bean.")

I was starving, so we jumped in line for the mini Dutch pancakes straight away. I'm so glad we did because they ran out soon after. We enjoyed the live music for a little while and chatted with Bean.

I told Mckinley we were going to get to see some fireworks. She was excited and surprised... :)

A few minutes before the fireworks started, Mckinley started screaming. I didn't get stressed out though because no one could hear her! I tried to calm her down, but she was ready for bed. A few quick pics and we made our way back to the car. Here I am showing off that I can fit in my jeans 6 weeks post-pregnancy. :)

She was much happier to be home. Check out her adorable monster shoes.

It was a fun outing!

My New Do!

2011-07-06T11:22:00.003+10:00

I LOVE getting my hair done, but I'm too cheap to maintain it! Luckily, Josh's uncle is a hairdresser. While they were visiting, he gave me a fun cut and color that I love! I call it my "yummy mummy" look. Here's a before and after pic.

1 Month Old

2011-06-10T15:28:00.003+10:00

Wow, a month has gone by already?! We have LOVED watching Mckinley grow and change the past month. Right now she looks just like her daddy did when he was a baby. She is getting stronger each day. She still has a bobble head, so we're constantly saying to her "don't let your head fall off!" She is starting to make the cutest little noises. I think she's talking to us, so I translate for her. Josh laughs at me. She loves lying down in bed with us in the mornings and cuddling daddy. She's still sleeping in a portacot in our room, but will eventually be moving into her own room. She's very tolerant of all my picture taking! Poor thing will have sooooo many pictures taken of her. I take her to get adjusted with me once a week. She loves going to see dad at work. We've gone out a few times for tea and she's done great! She eats every 3-4 hours during the day and only wakes up once during the night. (most nights) She's such a joy to be around - I love being her mom!

Here are a few pics from her 1 month old photo shoot:

Blue eyes :)

My fave!

New Post

2011-06-08T12:39:00.000+10:00

Don't miss the new post about Mckinley's birth story!

Mckinley's Room

2011-05-31T12:00:00.009+10:00

Mckinley's room isn't completely done yet, but I really wanted to post pictures! So here's her 97% finished nursery. :)

Mom was a BIG help in making these cute pom pom's. I ordered the lanterns online. Krista brought the dots (from Target!) when her & Daddy last visited.

Debbie made this cute cover for my rocker. She contacted the company that made the bedding and they sent her some fabric. I love how it turned out!

I made this a couple of months ago.

I made the circle things with leftover fabric from the mobile. They were so easy!

Another sign I made :)

One of the cute boxes that Krista made. I love these! I use them to store Mckinley's clothes, cloth diapers, and socks.

M's change table.

The crib mobile! This might be my favorite thing in the room. :) Click the link for a tutorial.

A little closer...

The bedding

Some of the closet

Picture frames from Aunt BJ and Memaw. Yes, I have ordered photos to put in them!

Mckinley's book collection, so far

Mckinley's room from the door

I have plans to put a BIG "m" on the wall. I just have to find the perfect one. I'll also put a framed picture or two on this wall.

Love this wall!

Welcome To The World Little One

2011-05-30T22:07:00.017+10:00

This post is more for me to remember the events leading up to and during the arrival of our little one. That's why there's so much detail!

Throughout my pregnancy I prepared myself for our little one to arrive after my due date of May 2nd/3rd. I heard a statistic that for first time moms, 15% of babies arrive before their due date, 5% arrive on the due date, and 80% arrive after the due date. I don't know how true that is, but thought it would be best to prepare myself for baby to arrive late. I told myself that Baby Farmer would make her appearance in mid-May, and that's what we told everyone else. Josh had two long weekends - one the last weekend in April and one the first weekend in May. I was hoping and praying that if baby was to come early that she'd come on one of these weekends so Josh wouldn't have to take as many days off work. (it's hard to take off days when you're the only chiropractor in town) Those weekends came and went without a baby. I would always joke with Josh that our little one would come into the world at the least convenient time (for him with work) - on a Sunday night. :)

Friday May 6 mom was due to arrive in Townsville around 3pm. After Josh finished work he loaded up the car with our birth center bags - just in case - and we headed off to Townsville. We got in around 8:30 that night and went straight to our hotel room where mom was waiting. She was sound asleep and couldn't hear us knocking. I was so excited to see her and was knocking pretty loud, but no answer. We had to get the front desk clerk to let us in the room! It was pretty funny. A bit later I had an ice cream craving, so we went down to an ice cream shop on The Strand. The night markets were on and the three of us had a good walk around the markets.

Saturday morning I had an appointment with Kate, our midwife. Everything was a-ok at the checkup. Kate talked a bit about the possibility of inducing since I was already overdue. I kept a positive attitude saying God would bring our baby before it came to that. I wanted to have the most natural birth I could. Kate confirmed baby was fully engaged and ready to make her debut. (this explained the awful pain I'd had the past 5 days anytime I sat down) Josh, Mom, and I spent the rest of the afternoon walking as much as we could to try and get things going for me. We made a stop by the hospital to welcome baby Xavier James into the world. Our friends Alex & Scott had their baby a few days early. Alex was due after me, so it was a bit frustrating that our baby wasn't here yet. I tried to keep telling myself our baby would come when she was ready. Mom was good at keeping me positive. Josh, Mom, and I walked around a shopping center after the hospital, we had lunch at Jamaica Joe's (where I had a spicy chicken sandwich), we walked along The Strand, and we got some yummy gelato. Mom said I got sympathy looks from all the women that passed by us. I was the size of a whale - see pic below - and I'm sure my facial expression showed how ready I was to have baby out!

I had several contractions that afternoon, but they were never consistent. They'd only happen when I was walking around and would stop when I sat down. We made the decision to drive back to Bowen that evening since I wasn't progressing. Since we didn't know when baby would arrive, we all thought it would be best to be at our house. I wanted to be as comfortable as I could. That evening I showed mom around our house and took Wrigs on a late night walk.

Around 3:15am I woke up with AWFUL low back pain. The next 4 hours I tried all different things to help the pain. I took a steaming hot shower, stomped in place, put a hot pack on my back, had Josh rub it, paced up and down the hall, and took another hot shower. It wasn't getting any better. The pain wasn't off and on like I thought a contraction would be and it was in my back not my stomach, so I just thought it was another fun pregnancy thing.

Around 7:15am Sunday morning the three of us (plus Wrigley!) went on a looooong walk on the beach. Around 9am we decided to start timing my back pain because at that point it was coming and going, like a contraction. A couple of hours later it became consistent and we realized I was having back labor - supposedly the worst labor you can have. Joy joy. It's caused by the position of the baby on the mom's spine, and it's not fun. Around 11am Josh texted Kate to let her know we thought I was having contractions. (I still wasn't feeling any pain in my stomach, but it was hardening every time I had the back pain) Kate said to wait a few hours and head to Townsville when my contractions were 6 minutes apart for 2 hours. At this point the pain was bearable. I was walking around and rocking from side to side leaning over the back of the couch. I read a great book, Birth Skills by Juju Sundin, that prepared me for labor. It had all these great things to do to take your mind off the pain of labor.

At 3:40pm it was time to head to Townsville! I was so excited. I knew the pain was going to get a lot worse, but I knew I'd get to see my baby when it was all over. Josh and mom were excited too. Josh loaded up the car, again, (I have such a GREAT hubby!) we said goodbye to Wrigley, and we were off. During my pregnancy, I had soooooo many people make comments like "aren't you afraid you're going to have your baby on the side of the road?" and "wow, 2.5 hours is a long way to drive when you're having contractions". I'm so glad I didn't let their comments bother me - I did great on the drive there. Yes it was uncomfortable, but we arrived in plenty of time. Josh and mom were great - they would talk me through each contraction. During one contraction mom had me list the States in alphabetical order, a trick I learned in elementary school. I really wish we would have gotten that on video. Too funny. The closer we got to Townsville, the more intense the contractions were. I still wasn't having any pain in my stomach. At this point laughing and talking wasn't doing the trick. I really had to concentrate on keeping my mind off of the pain. Mom would have questions prepared for me that I'd have to answer during the next contraction.

We made it to our hotel room by 6:15pm. My contractions were about 5 minutes apart. At 7:30pm Dancing With the Stars came on. I normally don't watch that show, but for some reason it was a good distraction that night. Mom fell asleep before the 2 hour season premier of the show was over. If you ask her she was just "resting her eyes" and wasn't asleep. :) I told Josh he should try and get some rest, because I figured it would be a long night. I even tried to lie down and close my eyes, but the contractions were so much more painful when I was lying down.

At 11pm, my contractions were 3 minutes apart. If I kept that up for 2 hours consistently, it would finally be time to go to the birth center! With each contraction I was pacing the floor. Josh got up with me and would talk me through each contraction. I had a focus point - my big toe on my right foot. Josh would tell me to focus on my freshly pedicured toe and count my steps. The more pain I felt, the harder I would stomp. I paced back and forth counting each step/stomp and stared at my big toe. I later started squeezing stress balls in each hand. All of these "skills" I read about in the book I mentioned earlier. By using all the other parts of your body that aren't in pain, it tricks your brain to think that the contractions aren't as painful. I think it really helped! I got in the shower (at least 7 times!) and let the hot water hit my low back. Josh applied a HOT wash rag to my low back and would pace around with me. He asked me if I wanted to use the TENs machine Kate brought to us. It was meant to help the pain. I thought I'd gotten that far, I might as well keep going without any help. The pain was still manageable at that point. Josh and I had some really good conversation during my labor. We talked about what we hoped our little girl would look like (his eyes, my nose, his hair, my fingers). We talked about her future and what we hoped for her. Those moments got me through. I kept thinking how the labor felt forever at that point, but it was such a small amount of time when I thought about her whole life.

Monday morning, May 9. I missed having a Mother's Day baby. It was 1:27am and time to go to the birth center! We told mom and she popped out of bed - literally like a piece of popcorn. :) Her and Josh ran around the room like little bumble bees grabbing things right and left. Even though I was in a lot of pain, I still managed a smile and was super excited. I was ready to meet our little one! There were absolutely no cars on the road for our 10 minute drive to the birth center. Mom kept telling Josh how cool it would be to get pulled over and have a police escort to the birth center, but no luck. As soon as we arrived, Kate led us into the "forest room". It was the one of three birth suites in the birth center. We were luckily the only people there. Kate watched me have a couple of contractions - I paced the floor and counted like I'd been doing most of the night. She took mine and bub's heart rate and both were fine. She suggested I get in a hot shower or walk around. She said I could get in the tub at any time. (Josh and I planned for me to have a water birth.) I opted for a shower and was in there for about an hour.

At 3:15am Kate did an exam and I was 7-8cm dilated. She said that we'd have a baby by sunrise! A few contractions after that I decided to get in the tub (pic below). It was so nice to get off my feet. My legs were hurting so bad from all the hours of walking around and stomping. It was a nice break. The next 3 hours were the longest 3 hours of my life. I asked Kate what I could do or positions I could get in during the contractions to help. She kept assuring me that my body knew what it was doing and would work it out. At the time that was NOT what I wanted to hear, but today I'm thankful for her advice. Most of the time I hung my arms over the side of the tub and faced Josh. He was kneeling in front of me facing the tub. He was SO helpful. I could not have gotten through a drug free labor without him. He would give me water, ice, Powerade, or anything else I asked for. During a contraction I would squeeze the stress balls as hard as I could and bang them on the side of the tub. After a contraction was over I would look up at him and he would have a very worried look on his face. I know it must have been hard for him to see me in that much pain. I never punched him or bit any of his fingers during the labor! haha. I did, however kick the bottom of the tub so hard that I ended up with blisters on my toes!

5:15am Kate was concerned my water hadn't broken yet. She asked if she could do another exam on me to see if I was fully dilated. She did a quick check and I was good to go. She said I could push whenever I got the need. The very next contraction my water broke! The contractions had slowed a bit at this point so much so that I'd fall asleep between each one. I was exhausted. I felt so weak and was doubting that I could finish what I started. With a lot of encouragement from Josh and visualizing holding our little one I was able to (literally) push through the pain. I still couldn't believe I hadn't asked for gas yet. I guess I wanted to see how strong I really was. Towards the end I was screaming so loud during the contractions. Kate suggested I try keeping my mouth closed during the next few to save my voice. That's a nice way to put you're screaming way too loud. :) I felt bad for mom - she was down the hall in the waiting room and could hear all my screams.

FINALLY Kate said she could see our little one's head! She had a small mirror (about the size of a frisbee) that she would slide under me in the tub during the contractions. I pushed as hard as I could and yelled even louder. I pushed for what seemed like an eternity. It hurt so bad. I can't even describe how much the stretching burned.

6:14am we had a baby! She stayed at the bottom of the tub for what seemed like 5 minutes, but was probably only 30 seconds. Babies that are born into the water don't take their first breath until they are brought out of the water. Kate asked Josh if he wanted to pick up our baby and set her on my chest, but he was too excited/nervous. :) Kate reached in and placed baby on my chest. The umbilical cord was so short she was kind of sitting more on my stomach. I was in shock. I felt like I'd just watched the entire birth from the ceiling. I leaned over and gave Josh a big kiss. We were both crying as was Baby Farmer. (mom said at this point she was so relieved to hear a baby crying instead of me screaming!)

Kate, Josh, and Allison (another midwife that came towards the end) helped me out of the tub. I got onto a mat and leaned up against a bean bag with little one on my tummy. After the umbilical cord stopped pulsating, Josh got to cut the cord. He then took little one for some cuddle time on his chest. He was such a proud daddy. After the next stage of labor (that wasn't fun either - after all that work you still have more work to do!) I got up and rinsed off in the shower. I crawled into our big king-sized bed and relaxed. I could not believe what I'd just done. Josh handed baby back to me (we still hadn't officially named her yet) and went out to tell mom she was a grandma!

After Kate stitched me up (I had some tearing) we had mom come into meet Mckinley Adyson. Mom was instantly in love. She told me how proud of me she was. I told her that was the hardest thing I'd ever done.

Kate did a few tests on Mckinley and we found out she weighed 8lbs 13oz! Big baby girl! She was 52cm in length (20.5in).

Josh wanted more cuddles with his baby girl:

Mom held Mckinley for a bit while Josh and I got some rest. Then it was time to call the rest of the family! We Skyped Josh's family, my daddy & Krista, and Pete, Morgan, & Peyton. Everyone was so excited!

After a long nap, Katherine (midwife) came in and took Mckinley's footprints and did a few more tests on her.

At 2pm it was time to leave the birth center and go to our temporary home, the hotel. Here's our second family of 3 picture! (Kate took a picture of the 3 of us right after the birth, but I look awful.)

I was so happy to have our little one with us! Josh was so careful driving to the hotel - it was cute. We got settled in and had another nice long sleep.

I'm sure several people think I'm crazy for not having any drugs during the labor. We wanted to have the safest birth possible for me and the baby. Here is a small list of some of the side effects the drugs (epidural, gas, pethidine) can have on the mom & baby: nausea for mom, inability to use upright birthing positions, drowsiness for mom, drug addictions for baby later in life, depression of baby's respiratory center, breathing difficulties for baby, jaundice for baby, difficulties establishing breastfeeding, dizziness for mom, longer labor, increased risk of forceps/vacuum extraction, increased risk of caesarean birth, will not feel the urge to push during labor, leaking of spinal fluid, chronic backache following the birth for mom, difficulty to empty the bladder, foetal distress, and colic for baby. (taken from Well Adjusted Babies by Dr Jennifer Barham-Floreani)

A Lot Of Firsts

2011-05-30T21:24:00.010+10:00

I thought it would be easier to blog about the first 3 weeks of Mckinley's life through pictures! It will save me time (yay!) and still give you a little preview of what we've been up to. :)

Beautiful flowers from Josh

First family photo - Wrigley loves her little sister

I love these moments :)

GREAT pic of Deedee & Mckinley!

First bath :)

First outing - we went to the grocery store

First family walk

The sweet "sign guy" next door made this sign for the office - too nice!

First feed with dad - precious!

First time out to eat - Mr Bone's pizza in Airlie Beach

Sleeping beauty

First time to church

First feed with Deedee

2nd play date with Xavier - born 2 days apart!

first adjustment at the office -

her FIRST adjustment was at the birth center at 1 hour old!

saying bye to Deedee :(

We've been managing ok without the help of Deedee the past week. Mckinley is still figuring out her schedule. Josh is the most helpful dad ever! I can tell he loves being a dad. He helps with anything and anything - washing cloth diapers, cooking, cleaning, burping Mckinley, settling her when she's screaming, and lots more. He even let me go to a ladies get together Friday night at church. It was nice to have a break from my new full time job. I am SO grateful for him. I really don't see how single mother's manage - this is hard work! I spend most days in my pj's and I'm lucky to get a shower before lunch. I know I will cherish these moments, so I'm doing my best to enjoy every minute with Mckinley. I love staring into her BIG baby blue eyes! Wrigley is coping well with the new addition to the family. Wrigs snuck into Mckinley's room today and got one of her outfits out of her dirty clothes bin - yuck. She just loves giving kisses to Mckinley.

Well, it's late and I seem to be all over the place with this blog. I better get some sleep while Mckinley is sleeping!

Mckinley Adyson

2011-05-30T21:11:00.004+10:00

Ok, so I promise to eventually blog about Mckinley's birth (wow - she is already 3 weeks old!). I'm sure most of you understand how little blog time I have on my hands these days. For now these pictures of our precious little one will have to do. Mom took the pic of the three of us. Mckinley's already changed quite a bit from day one.

Another Giveaway :)

2011-04-30T04:13:00.004+10:00

What to do when it's 4am and you can't sleep? Oh you know me, just enter another giveaway! This time it's Laura Winslow Photography's and it's massive. Over 138 vendors for this one! Wish me luck!

Giveaways

2011-04-27T11:22:00.002+10:00

I have a new obsession.....entering giveaways on Facebook. It seems to have taken over my life the past week. :) I get all excited when a new contest is announced and spend hours (yes, hours) entering the contests! Ahhhh!!! Maybe I'm realizing that I won't be able to do stuff like this in a couple of weeks, so I'm spending all my free time on it now! haha. Haven't won anything yet, but fingers crossed all this work pays off!

The latest giveaway I entered was Olive to Sew's April Showers/May Flowers Giveaway.

5 New Posts

2011-04-17T11:27:00.001+10:00

I've been at it again...5 new posts today! Don't miss the post about the earthquake we went through yesterday!

More Celebrations

2011-04-17T11:10:00.003+10:00

We had a very busy weekend last weekend! Saturday afternoon was Alex's jungle-themed baby shower. I have never seen so many people at a baby shower! (not that I've been to a lot of showers) There had to be around 50 people there. I had a great time! Bianca and Vignnia hosted the shower for their sister and again did such a great job. We played a lot of fun games. Alex looked so beautiful. Baby S will be here soon! Here's Alex with her sisters, the hostesses.

Krista and I headed home after the shower and I rested. That night Josh and I went to Viginnia and Jason's engagement party/Vigin's 21st party! It was so much fun! Here's the happy couple cutting their cake:

The next morning I had my Skype shower, which I've blogged about. (keep scrolling down!!!) Then, we dropped Krista off at the airport in Proserpine. Daddy, Krista, and Grandad will be back for a visit in August! Sunday night we went to Brett's birthday party.

Alex, Beth, and Lauren (Brett's wife):

Scott, Bianca, and Josh:

Lauren and the birthday boy!

A fun but exhausting weekend! I've spent this weekend resting and getting things ready for Baby Farmer. Mom will be here May 6th. Can't wait to see her!

My Kitchen Cleaning Fairy

2011-04-17T10:53:00.003+10:00

First let me start off by saying how much I miss eating bananas. You might be wondering "why can't you eat bananas?" This is why: Yes folks, that's about $6/lb! Mom reported bananas around $1(or less)/lb in the States. Grrrr you cyclone Yasi. The cyclone wiped out the majority of the banana trees up North, which caused the price of bananas to skyrocket. Back to what this post is about....my kitchen cleaning fairy. Daddy offered Krista's services and I gladly accepted them. Daddy stayed with us for a week and Krista stayed 2 weeks after helping me. She was so helpful! Her big project while she was here was to make the boxes for the baby's room. Here's an almost finished product: (I'll post the finished product when I post pics of the baby's finished nursery)

Krista also made it her job to keep the kitchen clean for me. I must say, this was my favorite job that she took on. There was never a dirty dish in the sink! It was so wonderful. She also took Wrigs on several long walks, cleaned the house a few times, and helped freeze some meals for us. She made chicken enchilada soup, lasagne, chicken & rice, taco soup, and king ranch chicken. These meals are going to be so great when the baby comes and I don't feel like cooking. :)

THANK YOU KRISTA so much for helping with Baby Farmer's arrival!

Josh has been getting things ready too. Here he is putting in the ginormous car seat for the little one:

The pic below is what she'll sleep in for the first month or two in our room. Josh showing off the portacot:

Baby Showers

2011-04-17T10:01:00.003+10:00

Our little one is one blessed baby! Two friends from Bible Study, Bianca and Viginnia, hosted a very cute polka dot themed baby shower for Baby Farmer and I. They did such a great job with the games and decorations.

Here's me next to the food table:

They brought yummy vanilla cupcakes, meringues, made a sherbet punch, and brought different "lollies." I made chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, pink & green oreos, and 3 different kinds of sandwiches (that were polka dot shaped). Viginnia and Bianca were so sweet to let me pick a time for the shower where all of the grandma's could be there.

Here's mom (computer on the left), Laura (computer on the right), and Krista at the shower!

Bianca and Viginnia planned some fun and funny games. :) We started with a name game. We each had a sheet of paper with Josh's & my full name written at the top. We had 5 minutes to use only the letters in Josh's & my full names to write down other "people" names. I didn't do very well - I only found 17 names. :) The second game was a memory game. The girls had a basket full of 20 or so different items in it. We got to study the basket for about 30 seconds, they took it away, and we had to write down everything we remembered seeing. It was so much fun and very challenging for my very forgetful self! Some of the things in the basket: a peg (clothes pin), sunnies, a bib, a nappy (diaper), a q-tip, a band aid, and chap stick. The third game was called "nasty nappies." Bianca had 5 different kinds of chocolate bars and 5 diapers. She melted a different kind of chocolate bar in a nappy and we had to guess (by smelling or tasting!!!) the nasty nappies! It was funny to watch everyone smell/taste chocolate out of a diaper. The last game we had to guess the baby food flavor. Bianca had tins of baby food and we had to smell/taste each kind and guess the flavor. I didn't do so well at that game either. :) The girls had everyone write down a guess at how big (in cm) my belly measured. We measured at the end of the shower and I think I was around 107ish cm!!! I'm HUGE!! (my midwife assures me I have a very normal sized belly with a very normal sized baby in it, no matter how many fat comments I've received)

I'm so grateful to have such sweet friends! Thank you Bianca and Viginnia for throwing me & the little one such a fun baby shower.

About to pop!

I had another sweet friend throw me a shower, but from 10,000+ miles away! (side note: I just Google-mapped the driving directions from Bowen, QLD to Irving, TX and step #34 is to "kayak across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii." I am laughing so hard right now!) My sweet friend Melanie hosted a Skype shower for the little one and me. So many of our friends from Irving Bible Church sent Baby Farmer gifts. Here are a few of them at Melanie's house. I'm SO bummed I didn't think to get a group picture! There are several very important friends missing from this picture!

Opening some gifts for Baby Farmer:

Josh showing off the nursery with Krista in the background:

Not long now to go! I can't believe we're going to have a tiny little person in our house soon. :) Interested so see what miss Wrigley things about her.

Fun Baby Shower Photos

2011-04-17T09:51:00.003+10:00

Here are just a few fun pics from my polka dot baby shower and Alex's jungle baby shower. Bianca and Viginnia did such a great job!

Green, Pink, and Brown Oreos (to match the little one's room!) I made for my shower. :)

The table at my polka dot shower:

LOVED this:

Alex's shower - her guest list. Such a cute idea!!!

Alex's shower - one of the food tables:

Earthquake!!!!

2011-04-17T09:40:00.004+10:00

We had a nice surprise yesterday afternoon.....a 5.2 magnitude earthquake! That was our first earthquake experience and I would be fine if we never have to go through one again!

It happened around 3:35pm yesterday. Josh, Wrigley, and I were in the living room relaxing and all of the sudden the house started shaking. I grabbed Wrigley and looked at Josh with a "what the heck is going on??" expression. I started laughing, because that's what I do when I get nervous. My heart was racing and I was hoping I wouldn't go into labor. :) Josh stood up and looked outside. He thought the house had been hit with something, and I thought there was some kind of explosion from the coal mines. We called a friend and asked if they felt the tremble and they didn't, so we ruled out earthquake. We later found out it actually was an earthquake....not only just an earthquake, but the biggest to hit Queensland in 100 years.

As Josh put it, we've been through a cyclone, 20in of rain in four days/flooding, and an earthquake in the past 3 months. What's next? Maybe all this crazy stuff will be finished before our little one arrives.

Don't Miss A Post!

2011-04-03T16:23:00.002+10:00

Scroll down...there are 4 new posts!!!

Nursery Projects

A Post From Wrigley

Funny Cartoon

Daddy & Krista's Visit

Enjoy :)

Nursery Projects

2011-04-03T15:07:00.008+10:00

Since I've stopped working, my main focus has been getting the nursery in order. I had several craft projects I wanted to try and finally had the time! I'm going to go a little out of order, so you'll just have to get over that. ;) Also, I'm not going to post pictures of the nursery until it's finished. That will at least be another month, so please be patient. The project we (Krista and I) started a couple of days ago is making fabric boxes for the shelves. It took me for-ev-er to find shelves that I liked for the baby's room. I've looked at garage sales, 2nd hand furniture shops, online, and FINALLY found some cube shelves at Super Amart. (Daddy and Krista bought the shelves for us!) Once I found the shelves, people asked what I was going to use as boxes/bins to put in the cubes. I wanted the cube shelves instead of a dresser, so I needed boxes/bins to put her clothes and things in! I searched online and after about an hour of searching, I decided it would just be easier (and cheaper!) to make the boxes myself. I measured the inside of the cubes and found some tomato packing boxes at the supermarket that worked perfect! Krista thought it would be best to get some polyester batting to put on the outside of the box before we covered it with fabric. I'm so glad we went with her idea - the boxes look so much cuter with the batting. Here's the boxes with the batting. We used spray on adhesive to make it stick: We got some really cute fabric that coordinates, but doesn't match perfectly, with the baby's sheets. We cut the fabric, ironed it, and then Krista and Josh sprayed the fabric onto the batting on the box. Krista then went around the hard edges and sewed them together so it has a nice clean look. They turned out SO cute! You'll get to see the finished product when the nursery is finished. :)

A project Daddy and Josh got to work on was putting the polka dot stickers on the baby's walls. I love how it turned out!

Here's Josh putting together the cube shelves:

A big project that I started working on first was to make this adorable crib mobile. I LOVE how this project turned out! This project was definitely a team effort. I had Daddy start with painting all the beads. He had a good idea of wearing plastic gloves and rolling the beads around in his hand with paint. It worked out well!

Then, Josh and Daddy made the top part of the mobile.

Krista and I worked on cutting out all the dots

I ironed the fabric dots together with iron-on adhesive. You'll get to see the finished product soon!

A little mini project I did was to make a frame with a Bible verse in it. I started with cute scrapbook paper and cut it down to the size I needed. I typed up the verse and printed it out on the craft paper and framed it! So fun and so cute. :)

I never thought of myself as very crafty, but have proven myself wrong! I also (with the help of Josh & Daddy's painting skills) made some cute frames for the wall.

I've had a blast the past couple of weeks getting the nursery ready. I can't wait to show you the finished room!

A Post From Wrigley

2011-04-03T14:02:00.009+10:00

Wrigley has started to notice us going into the nursery a lot more these days. She knows somethings up! I didn't want her to feel left out, so I thought I'd let her blog what all she's been up to. :) Hi everyone! This is Wrigley! A couple of weeks ago Mom got some of these funny looking things in the mail! Mom kept calling them "nappies"! I think they are supposed to be for my "little sister"! Whatever that means. Dad thought he'd be funny and put one on me! Don't I look cute?! Last week Mimi and Paw Paw came for a visit! They are so nice! They pet me all the time and talked to me! They took me for lots of walks! Paw Paw let me lick peanut butter off his head! Dad's never let me do that before....well maybe because he doesn't have a bald head. They also taught me how to pick up my toys! Mom liked that! Dad gave me a bath last week! I don't like the cold water, but I love running around the yard after my bath! I smell so pretty now! Paw Paw left last weekend. He had to go back to work. Mimi stayed though! It's been raining a lot lately here. Dad doesn't like the rain! I don't like it either because I can't go outside and play! We've been playing lots of games though! I had a REALLY busy day Wednesday! I helped mom with the washing! I ate some of Mimi's smoothie! It was so good! Mimi and Mom left me in the car with their smoothies! What was I supposed to do.....not eat them?! Mimi told me to not lick her straw while they were in the store, so I just took the lid off and helped myself! That night I helped mom fold nappies for the "baby"! I'm going to have to learn what these new words mean!

I told you I've been busy! I think I'll go take a nap!

Funny Cartoon

2011-04-03T10:20:00.002+10:00

This is how I've been feeling lately. :) If you can't read the caption, it says "I can't sleep, breathe, or walk. How am I supposed to find the energy to glow?"

Daddy & Krista's Visit

2011-04-02T20:16:00.001+10:00

Daddy, Krista, and my Grandad are coming for a visit in August to meet Baby Farmer. I was so excited when Daddy called to say him & Krista were going to come for a visit before the baby was born too. :) Daddy and Krista flew into the Proserpine airport on a Saturday afternoon. Yay for family visits! They were so wonderful and brought us all kinds of yummy goodies from the States!

There was only one little mess up with all of the food they brought.....a bottle of syrup leaked into their suitcase. Luckily Krista had packed well enough that it didn't damage any of their clothes. Don't worry, I was able to save most of the syrup! :)

We had a great week hanging around Bowen. We went swimming, went for a picnic on the beach (pic below), got smoothies, and worked on projects for the baby's room.

We also got to celebrate Daddy's birthday! It was the day before he had to go back to the States. Krista made a yummy pizza and delicious warm chocolate cakes. (thanks Josh for being a dork in the pic below)

I'm so glad Daddy was able to take a week off work to come half way around the world to come visit us. Wrigley really had a good time getting to know Daddy. He took her on lots of walks and she loved it! Krista is staying another week to help with nursery/baby stuff. I am enjoying having a "kitchen cleaning fairy." There's never any dirty dishes in the kitchen - it's awesome. I'll blog more about that later. This pic is riding back to Bowen from dropping Daddy off at the airport:

As soon as Daddy left, the weather took a turn. We got over 20 inches of rain from Sunday to Thursday! Ahhhh!!! I'm ready to see the sun again. :)

Update

2011-03-10T07:49:00.002+10:00

Just a quick update on what our little family has been up to...

Last week we went to Townsville for a baby checkup and for Josh to get some xrays done for permanent residency. Everything went great at the checkup. Bub's head is down and she's moving around a lot. Her heart rate was around 140bpm, which is what it's been the whole pregnancy. We are going fortnightly now (every other week) for visits. That means it's getting close! Ahhhhh! Is it ok to say I'm not ready yet??!! I have a list a mile long of "stuff to get done before baby arrives." Less than 2 months to go...

Also while we were in Townsville we picked up a cot (crib), change table, and pram (stroller) for the little one. Her room looks like a room now! We decided to get 2nd hand furniture because as I've mentioned many times, everything is SOOOOOO expensive in Australia! The nursery furniture at the store cost around $900 and a nice new stroller is around $700. We just weren't ready to spend that much. We ended up finding the furniture and stroller on ebay for a good price. The furniture is in excellent condition and the stroller is faded from the sun, but works great. :) Josh spent all evening last Friday setting up baby no-name's room.

I actually have some "free" time on my hands now. I finished up work this week. As sad as I was to leave the office, I am so ready to get to work on my to do list! I worked crazy hours the last 3 weeks with training the new girls. I was working 10-12 hour days at least three days a week and 6-7 the other two days. It was 8pm before I got home most nights which meant something easy for dinner and I was too tired to do anything after dinner. I'm happy to report that this week (for three nights in a row!) I've had the table set with dinner ready when Josh walked in the door from work. I've also been walking Wrigley every morning on the beach. I think she likes me not working. :)

Daddy and Krista arrive one week from Saturday. It's always good to have family come visit! Daddy will stay a week and Krista will stay a couple weeks after. She's going to be my food and house helper. I'm hoping to get the house ready for baby and lots of meals frozen.

Tuesday we celebrated a fun anniversary...Wrigley has been in our family for 1 year! Her actual birthday is on Christmas Eve, but we didn't get her until March last year. We spent Tuesday loving on her (which happens every day!), and I made her a sign with some of her puppy pictures around it. I hope her a the little one get along!

Here's Wrigs after finding some mud in the backyard. She was so proud of herself. :)

Maternity Sneak Peek

2011-02-24T17:50:00.004+10:00

Here's the sneak peek Danielle posted on her blog:

I LOVE THEM!!!

http://daniellehamiltonphotography.blogspot.com/2011/02/sneak-peek-mandi-josh-brisbane.html

Brisbane Trip

2011-02-23T11:15:00.008+10:00

I love going away for the weekend, especially when it's to a big city!!! I miss living close to a big city with all the fun and exciting things to do.

We had such a great weekend. It started off not so great....our plane from Proserpine to Brisbane was 2 hours late. After we got our luggage and Braxton & Julie picked us up, we got to the hotel around midnight. We got to sleep close to 1am and I was up at 4am getting ready for our maternity photo shoot. I am so mean to plan our maternity session so early in the morning, but I thought it would give us the rest of the morning to explore the city. (this was Josh's first trip to Brisbane) The morning light is best for pictures, so Josh and I caught a cab at 5:30am to the Brisbane Powerhouse to meet the wonderful Danielle Hamilton. She was the only photographer I could find in the Brisbane area that shot the photography style that I liked and was in our price range. I was SUPER impressed with how they turned out! I will post about that later...

Here's tired Josh at 5:45am before the photo shoot:

Danielle was so much fun to work with! She had great ideas and was so friendly. We were at the Powerhouse for about an hour and a half. We caught a cab back to the hotel to meet up with Braxton and Julie. Here was our awesome view:

The four of us walked to the Pancake Manor for breakfast Friday morning. Oh my goodness. This is the closest we've found to a good breakfast restaurant in Australia. As Julie described it, "it's like IHOP's skinny little brother." :) Aussies are really missing out on the good breakfast places. Pancake Manor was soooooo good though. I had a yummy strawberry banana smoothie and heart shaped waffles. Josh had a mango smoothie and pancakes. I should have gone with the pancakes, but I went with the waffles to be different. We'll have to go back soon because the pancakes were that good. We had to spend the rest of the morning walking off breakfast and ended up at the Queen Street Mall. Julie was in need of some shoes for the fancy ball. Here's the middle of Queen Street:

After some shopping, we went back to the hotel for a nap. Josh and I were so tired since we only had a few hours of sleep the night before. Josh, Braxton, and Julie left for their conference around 2:30pm that afternoon. I spent the rest of the day reading magazines, resting, walking around the city trying to find wireless internet, and getting ready for dinner. There were about 15-20 people from TLC who were in town for the conference and we all met for dinner Friday night at Toscani's. Dinner was so great. I love catching up with our TLC "family."

After dinner we went back to the hotel and the boys watched a movie. I ended up getting the internet to work on my phone to work so I could look at the pictures from our maternity shoot. Danielle is so awesome to have posted a few images on her blog. I was SUPER happy with how they turned out.

Saturday morning I woke up early to walk Josh to his conference. Here's the loooong bridge that connects the city with Southbank:

The walk from the hotel to the convention center was about 1 mile. I did this at least 6 times (plus all the other walking around!!) during the weekend. I thought my feet were going to fall off. :)

After I dropped Josh off at the convention center, I went by the arts center to see if they still had tickets to Wicked. The lady said there was only 1 ticket left for the matinee show and it was $95. That didn't really help because Lisa and I wanted to go see the musical together. A sign caught my eye as I was walking out that they had a lottery draw 2.5 hours before each performance. I met up with Lisa at the museum and told her there was still hope. We browsed around the museum a bit. One room had fake people that we thought were real. Lisa and I both did a double take - pretty funny stuff:

Here's me with a drawing of the world's tallest man in recorded history: (he was from the States!)

After the museum we walked back to the arts center to put our name in the draw for the Wicked tickets. We had 1/2 an hour to kill before the draw, so we walked around Southbank. I just love this area in Brisbane:

We weren't sure how many tickets they had to "give away" (if you won the draw, the tickets were $35) for the performance, but we were hoping and praying one of our names would be picked! (if your name was chosen, you got 2 tickets) Good news - we were picked!

So so so happy! We rushed back to the conference center to tell our hubbys the good news. They were on a lunch break and we said our quick hi's and bye's, then booked it back to the hotel to change. Lisa and I got ready as fast as womanly possible and met back at the arts center. Remember the loooong bridge picture from before??? Now imagine seeing a chunky pregnant lady wogging/jalking across it. I'm sure I looked hilarious trying to get back to the performance before they closed the doors. I made it with literally seconds to spare. Lisa and I enjoyed the show from the front row. :) The cast was great - especially the lady that played Glenda the Good Witch. She was so funny! After the show I did a bit of shopping, and headed back to the hotel to get ready for the fancy ball.

Braxton and Josh are goof balls and decided to dress up as Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber. There were lots of people at the ball who dressed up with different costumes, but Julie and I decided to wear dresses. Here's me & my goof ball:

The band was so great! I would love to say I danced the night away, but my tired legs only lasted about 45 minutes. :) I had such a great night though. Here's me with Julie & Lisa:

The food was excellent and it was so much fun to see everyone dressed up. Josh even danced with me for a couple of songs! That rarely happens - he is NOT a dancer.

Sunday Josh had the conference in the morning and I did some shopping and got a MUCH needed pedicure. We met up with Julie and Braxton for lunch, then had to catch a train to the airport.

It was a wonderful weekend!

Valentine's Day!

2011-02-23T10:00:00.003+10:00

Valentine's Day was on a Monday this year and we had to work all day, so I started celebrating early! The Thursday before Valentine's Day I made a cookie cake for our Bible Study group. Here it is pre-cooked and pre-decorated:

By the time it cooked, I only had 5 minutes to decorate the cake. Let's just say it ended up looking like an elementary student decorated it. :) It tasted so yummy though!

The day before Valentine's Day I made heart shaped pancakes for Josh. I also found a recipe online for Auntie Anne's pretzels. Pretzels kind of look like hearts, so I thought I'd try them out. :) Josh was a big help when it came to the twirling and twisting of the dough. We made original pretzels with salt and Josh's favorite - cinnamon & sugar. They turned out to be pretty tasty!

I also made some heart shaped cookies. Laura sent us a box of cookie mix and some icing from the States. (Thanks Mum!)

Monday night Josh was to cook dinner for me, like he has the last 6 Valentine's Days, but we had a little scare. Everything ended up ok with me and the baby. I was back to normal the next day, but we didn't get home until late Monday night. Josh cooked dinner for me Tuesday night (sun dried tomato pasta, salad, garlic bread, and green beans) and it was delish!

Josh bought me a lime squeezer and a Good Grips can opener. Both have been on my kitchen gadget want list. :) I bought him a neck pillow for the airplane. He's been talking about them for awhile and I found one that was Cubbies colors!

I LOVE Valentine's Day and I LOVE my Valentine! :)

Cyclone Yasi

2011-02-15T11:33:00.004+10:00

"A massive category 5 cyclone is headed for Bowen! The biggest North Queensland has seen in years." This is not the news you want to hear after getting home from a week long relaxing holiday in Bali. We got this message about an hour after we landed in Townsville on the Monday night. We spent a lot of time looking at the weather radar, and Yasi was predicted to hit Bowen Wednesday night. We worked Tuesday at the office and kept going back and forth with the decision of if we should get out of Bowen. The reports showed the storm was headed a bit North of Bowen, but we were still expected to get lots of wind, rain, and flooding. Wednesday at lunch we made the decision to head down to Airlie. The wind was already so strong! We taped up the office:

We ran home and got the house ready, then drove down to Airlie. (Josh did a lot of work on the house the day before - taping up the windows, tying down things in the yard, putting things in the garage. So thankful for all his hard work!) We were so thankful Brett & Lisa were able to put us up for the night.

The storm started to pick up a bit and we couldn't even see the town from their balcony!

I ended up going to bed around 9pm and the storm was meant to hit around 10pm. I was very happy to have a good nights sleep. I never woke up and we never lost power!

Yasi ended up hitting North of Bowen (Tully area) and did a lot of damage. We were so blessed to have a house to come home to. Thanks everyone for all of your prayers!

Here's a sign down in Bowen:

The Morning After Yasi

2011-02-15T10:51:00.003+10:00

Here's a quick video Josh took in Airlie Beach the morning after Cyclone Yasi hit. Normally the ocean is very calm and flat here.

Bali Babymoon

2011-02-11T13:26:00.012+10:00

So this post is only 2 weeks late, but I finally have time to blog about our Bali Babymoon/Early 4th Anniversary trip!

Strategic Airlines has a new non-stop flight from Townsville to Denpasar (Bali). They ran a special on the flights for $200/pp one way and Josh jumped on the deal. We were kind of worried since we hadn't heard of Strategic Airlines before, but after reading some good reviews we decided to book the flights. The flight was about 1/2 full on the way there, so we had plenty of leg room. :)

On the way there we watched Life As We Know It and The Social Network. I was happy because I hadn't seen either movie. (Bowen takes for-ev-er to get movies) On the flight and for the first time in my pregnancy, my feet swelled up! They looked like giant marshmallows. It was pretty funny. I was happy they returned to their normal size a few hours later.

We landed in Denpasar an hour before our scheduled arrival time (which was really cool), but that meant we had to wait awhile for our ride. It was quite muggy when we landed, but we only ended up waiting 20 minutes for our driver. It was crazy to see how many scooters and motorbikes there were on the ride from the airport to the hotel. I've never seen that many scooters in one place! Some scooters had as many as a family of 4 on them. It was like yellow cabs in NYC x 10. I loved their countdown to green on their stop lights. I think every country should have these:

On the way from the airport to the hotel we saw a Maccas (McDonald's) and a KFC. The Balinese people are cah-ra-zy drivers. I'm not sure why there are lanes on the roads because no one was driving in their own lane. There were wild dogs and chickens walking around everywhere. I thought our hotel would be on a quiet street in Nusa Dua, but I was wrong! Luckily the hotel was tucked back far enough from the road that the traffic didn't keep us up at night. We got yummy welcome drinks when we checked in that the front desk employee called "fruit fun." (I later found out it was fruit punch, but none of the hotel staff spoke English very well.) I didn't care what it was called, I just liked that I tasted like a sweet tart!

Our room was very cute and cozy. The bed had a mosquito net around it. I'd heard the mossies were pretty bad there, so I came prepared with my bottle of OFF! We took a quick walk around the hotel and then a nap before dinner. I woke up from my nap sweating, and we realized something was wrong with the air con. The front desk was great though and switched us to a much cooler room later that night.

One of my only complaints about the hotel was the food. It was an all inclusive hotel, so we felt that we needed to get our $s worth and eat at the hotel for most of our meals. Looking back, I wish we would have not stayed at the all inclusive and just went out to different restaurants.

Monday morning we woke up early, ate breakfast, and caught a cab into Kuta. I loved how cheap everything was in Bali. Our cab ride to Kuta, for example, was about 30 minutes and only cost $7! We spent all day exploring Kuta. Josh went by a SCUBA shop and got some info for a dive. We walked by a lot of shops and made our way to Kuta Beach. The 20 min walk to the beach was a bit stressful. Every 10 steps there was a shop worker trying to get us to come into their shop, or a lady asking if we wanted "manicure, pedicure, hair braid?" I was overwhelmed at first, then it was just funny how many times we said "no thank you."

We heard Kuta Beach was the hot spot where all the locals and Aussie surfers go. Kim warned us to be careful if we went swimming here because the current was so strong. We found this cute giant and mini turtle:

Josh had to get a Bintang - the Bali beer of choice. It was only $2 on the beach. We saw them later at a store for $1.35. Crazy!

After watching the surfers for a bit, we made our way across the street from the beach to find a place to eat. We didn't eat at Maccas, but I had to take a picture of this. I'd never heard of Maccas delivering!

We settled on Rosso Vivo for lunch and I'm so glad we did. Everything about it was great. The service was wonderful, they had a beautiful pool that Josh relaxed in while we waited for our food, they had a HUGE drink menu (that had lots of mocktails for me!), they had relaxing lounge chairs, the food was great, and it was cheap! About halfway through our lunch it started raining so we quickly moved to an inside table. Here's our outside table:

After lunch we did some bargain shopping on Poppies I and II. Josh talked a guy down from $1 million Rupiah (about $110US) to $170,000Rp ($19) for 2 tshirts and 2 board shorts. I was very impressed with Josh's bargaining abilities. :) Bali didn't have a lot of clothes for girls, so I mainly looked at kitchen/house stuff and purses. After a few hours of looking around we caught a cab back to the hotel. We saw this across the street from the hotel:

Apparently it's a new kind of spa treatment. You place your hands or feet in this tub full of tiny fish and they eat away a layer of skin. I was too grossed out to try it.

Tuesday morning Josh left at 7am for his diving trip. I spent the day relaxing, reading, sleeping, and journaling. I really needed a day like that! Josh got back to the hotel that evening and told me all about his dive. He said the 1.5 hour drive to the dive site was way too long. He said they drove through some rough places, so he was glad I stayed at the hotel. The dive company he went with was called Scuba Duba Doo - how cute is that? His first dive was at Tulamben, a wreck dive of a 400ft US Army transport vessel. Josh said they got to explore a lot of the ship and he really enjoyed it. His second dive was at a coral garden. He saw lots of fish and he said the coral was beautiful.

Wednesday was our spa day. I had been looking forward to this for weeks! I heard from our friends Scott & Alex how good the spas were in Bali. After lots of research online, we went with Sekar Jegat in Nusa Dua. They were so great! It was definitely worth the $ we paid. (it was $175 total for a couple for 4 hours of treatment) Included in our package was transportation from our hotel to the spa. We received ginger tea and a consultation when we arrived. We were then lead to our open air room:

I would have to say the next part of our spa day was one of the most awkward moments in my life. We were given these TINY see-through black "hairnet jocks" to put on and nothing else. Ahhh! For a conservative person like me, this was most embarrassing and even more so with my husband in the room. Josh and I cracked up laughing to the point of tears after we were in our "outfits." The two massage ladies came in, and I had to do everything in my power to keep from bursting out laughing. We were taken over to 2 chairs and the ladies washed our feet. Then we moved back to the massage table and had a 75 minute massage. Then, they poured this milky creamy stuff on us and let it sit for 15 minutes. They came back in the room and rubbed the now hardened milky mixture off. They did this again with us lying on our backs. Then we were washed down and got to soak in the flower bath. The flower bath was so pretty! I'm going to have to put flower petals in my bath at home sometime. After the bath, we were given robes to put on. (hallelujah!) We went out into the salon area and the ladies washed our hair. Then they massaged this creamy milk stuff into our scalp and that was my favorite part of the day. I love getting my head massaged, washed, scratched, brushed....all of the above. It felt amazing! The ladies followed the hair cream bath with a neck and shoulder massage. The last treatment of the morning was a pedi for me and a mani for Josh. Josh's lady tried to talk him to getting clear nail polish - haha. After our wonderful morning, they lead us up to the restaurant and we had a very nice lunch! If I could do-over any day from our trip, it would be this one. We were so relaxed after our spa day, we spent the rest of the day on the beach outside our hotel.

That night the hotel had a Balinese dancing show. The music was really loud and annoying, but the dancing was pretty!

Thursday morning our tour guide for the day, Barman (a cab driver who also does day tours of the island), picked us up at 8am. He agreed to drive us around for the day (10 hours) for $40! I had a map prepared of all the places I wanted to go on the island. He filled up with gas ($0.45/litre which he said was very expensive) and we were on our way. Our first stop was ata Batik processing place in a little village called Batubulan. Barman said that each village is known for something. Some are known for Batik (a type of clothes), some for wood carving, some for stone statues, some for silver making, and so on. The Batik processing was interesting to watch. They use hot wax to make designs on the material and it's beautiful! Our next stop was in the next village where we saw silver making. After that we stopped at my favorite of the day, the Ubud Monkey Forest. It was so beautiful and the monkeys were so cute! Here's Josh standing in the middle of the monkey forest.

Josh and a Balinese macaques:

The babies were adorable!

The monkeys were so used to people feeding them bananas. They would look at us like "aren't you going to feed me?" We didn't buy any bananas from the front entrance, but probably should have. We saw monkeys climbing up tourists to grab bananas out of their hands.

After the monkey forest we walked around the Ubud Art Markets:

There were so many shops! They all started looking the same, so we only stayed an hour. Our next stop was the Tegalalang Rice Terrace. It was breathtaking. It was so green!

After a quick stop and a few pictures, we went to Tampak Siring, a temple build around a spring. There were several bathing spots and lots of pretty stone carvings.

During our day tour we saw lots of these:

No, it's not bottled wee, it's petrol! I cheated and knew this ahead of time, thanks to Kim. I had to get a picture of it though - it looks so gross! Kim said you just pull off the side of the road, leave some $, and fill up your scooter with this stuff.

Our next stop was the Batur Volcano and lake. It was beautiful! We stopped at this restaurant, but didn't eat here. We just went down to their platform to view the volcano and lake.

Our last stop was at a cocoa/coffee making place. We got to sample different kinds of tea and hot chocolate. Here's Josh and Barman at our table:

The drive back to the hotel was nice - lots of beautiful scenery and heaps of rice fields. We made a quick stop at the Galleria and walked around to stretch our legs. It was a long day, but so much fun! We ate at the Chinese restaurant, Chopstick, that was attached to our hotel. It was the best meal we had at our hotel. We went to bed super early that night.

Friday morning we got an email from Leila asking if we were alright. She'd heard about a volcano erupting in Indonesia that was blowing ash over Bali. She said lots of flights were being cancelled. Sure enough, I went to the Strategic Airlines sight and our flight for Saturday was cancelled! That's all the info I had at that time, so I was a little worried about how much longer we were going to stay in Bali. I emailed work, the pet resort where Wrigley was staying, and told the front desk what was going on. Later that day we found out our flight was changed to Monday.

Friday Josh was feeling a bit under the weather. We took a shuttle from our hotel to the Bali Collection. - a set of nice shops in Nusa Dua. Josh slept on a bench while I explored all the shops. We layed out by the pool and on the beach the rest of the day.

Saturday we looked at other hotels in Bali online to see if we should switch for the extra 2 nights we had to stay. We ended up deciding to stay at our hotel to make things easier. Josh got the front desk to give us the rate that was advertised on Expedia, so that saved us some money. We took the shuttle back to the Bali Collection and had lunch there. The rest of the day we relaxed (again) by the pool and on the beach. The theme of our trip was "relax". Can you tell?

Sunday we took a cab into Kuta again. We did more shopping and went back to the beach to watch the surfers.

We ate lunch at the Hard Rock and enjoyed Root Beer floats. It had been ages since we had one of those! We headed back to the hotel where we found out there was a cyclone headed towards Bowen that night. We were happy to be missing the cyclone, but were worried about Wrigley.

We didn't let it ruin our day though and went back to the pool for some reading/relaxing. :)

Monday morning we went to the airport and waiting in a loooooooooooong line to check in. I was worried we were going to be stuck in Bali for longer. I didn't think all of the people in front of us would fit on the plane. We didn't know that we would have to pay $30 to leave the country and we had barely any money left. Josh had to leave me to go find an ATM. Luckly we were at the airport in enough time. We got to board the plane first (I guess I am looking super pregnant these days!) which was cool. I was starting to feel a bit under the weather, so the 4.5 hour plane ride wasn't fun. It was a completley full flight and the girls sitting behind us had a really bad cough and b.o. Yuck. Once we landed in Townsville it took forever to get through customs. We didn't end up getting through customs until 5:30pm (our plane landed at 4:30pm) and that was when the pet resort was closing. I called the pet place to let them know what was going on and the lady was not very nice. She ended up waiting for us, thank goodness since we lived 2.5 hours away from Townsville.

I spoke with Jus from Head Office when we landed to let her know Josh and I were back in Australia. She said our practice in Bowen was on Sunrise that morning because of the cyclone. (Sunrise is like Good Morning America) We also found out a second cylone, Yasi was headed our way and it was WAY bigger than Anthony that just went through Bowen. Not the news you want to hear after just getting home.

Overall it was a great trip. Josh and I like to go on a trip every year for our anniversary, but since I won't be able to fly in April, Bali will be our 4th anniversary trip.

A Farmer Christmas

2011-01-06T17:32:00.006+10:00

It was so wonderful to spend Christmas with family this year! We enjoyed spending Christmas with friends last year, but it's so different when you are around family. Josh's mom, dad, and sister arrived on a Wednesday afternoon. We took an extra long lunch that day to go pick them up in Proserpine. It was so great to see and hug them!

We had to work the next day, but Ron and Laura made our work day go by a bit faster by coming in and "working" a shift with us! My mom did that when she came last March and really enjoyed meeting some patients and see what we do at work. I think Josh's parents enjoyed it too. The weather wasn't the best the next couple days, so we did a lot of this:

I love love love playing games! We had our fair share of gaming since the weather was so crummy. We were meant to go out to the Great Barrier Reef for Christmas Eve Day, but the road to the ferry terminal was flooded over. Grrr. The Farmers will just have to go the next time they visit!

Christmas morning we woke up to this:

Santa came! I was sure to leave Santa milk and cookies this year. I forgot to last year, and got a note from Santa making sure I'd leave him some this year. He even left Wrigley a stocking full of goodies. She loved them. :)

We went to church Christmas morning then came back home to open presents. We got some really cute and fun presents! How cute is this Cubbies shirt?!

Josh got me an ice cream maker (my latest craving) and I got him a Kinect!

A family photo:

With all the flooding and rain, we were worried the roads would be closed up to Cairns. We reserved a rental car and were supposed to be driving up to Cairns the Monday after Christmas. We ended up deciding to drive up to Townsville (2.5 hr drive) then fly the rest of the way to Cairns. I'm so glad we ended up flying, because on Monday morning the road to Cairns was still closed.

It was great to actually see the sun! In Cairns the girls did lots of shopping. The boys went on a disappointing fishing trip one morning. It was a guided fishing trip and no one on the boat caught a thing! Josh was really bummed. They did get to see 3 crocs. Ahhh!

One afternoon we hired a car for the day and drove up to Kuranda. It was such a beautiful drive. We got to see one of the prettiest waterfalls I've ever seen, Barron Falls.

Kuranda is where Josh's mom and sister got to cuddle a koala! This is a must do when you're in Oz.

They also got up close and personal with the roos. :)

Here's a fun jumping beach pic:

In Cairns we had a nice 3 bedroom apartment right on the esplanade. It was so perfect! Here's the view from our room:

The last day we were in Cairns we had the best weather! We walked around town and bit and ended up at the lagoon. Josh, Amanda, and I were at the lagoon a couple days before this and it was raining. I'm glad we went back and got some sun.

We were so sad to see the Farmers go, but enjoyed their visit so much! We are looking forward to spending next Christmas with them in the States for a cold Christmas!

After Cairns, Josh and I had a few more days off work so we decided to spend a couple of nights on Magnetic Island. Maggie Island is just a 20 minute ferry ride from Townsville. Here it is from the plane:

It was pretty overcast the whole weekend, but we still managed to have a good weekend. We took a bus around the island one day and saw a few of the 23 beaches that were on the island.

New Years Eve day there were hundreds of 18-21 year olds coming on to the island. I guess it was the place to be for NYE! If you look through all the posts/railing, you can see a cram-packed full ferry in the pic below:

We made it to midnight on NYE and saw some fireworks right outside our hotel room! We also were super impressed with the Sydney fireworks that we watched on tv. I'm going to have to add that to my bucket list - be in Sydney for NYE one year. It was the best fireworks show I've ever seen and I want to be there to see it one year!

We picked Wrigley up from her kennel the next day and she was so happy to see us. This is what happens when she doesn't get brushed every day for a week:

Ahh!! I think she had a good time at the "puppy resort" because she slept the whole way back to Bowen!

Aussie Humor That's Not So Humorous

2011-01-06T17:02:00.003+10:00

My baby belly is becoming more and more noticeable these days. I've received several ugly comments from people (old men) about my belly. I try and have a laugh about the comments, but some days it really irritates me! Apparently this is "just how the Aussies are" in that they say what ever they are thinking. Here are some of the things I've heard:

- You need a bigger shirt. That one is too small.
- When are you due? (me: May) Whoa!
- You need to lay off the Maccas. (McDonalds)
- Are you sure you don't have twins in there?
- Are you sure they have the due date right?
- How much longer to go? (me: 4 months) (old man: eyes wide, not blinking, no comment)
- How much longer will you work? (me: probably through March) That will be good, you'll need the exercise.

Grrrr. The women are much nicer and have given me lots of sweet comments. :)

On a nicer note, the little pip squeak is very active these days. She moves like crazy right after I eat and when we watch movies. We got several cute outfits for her for Christmas from friends/family.

22 weeks

Farmer Cookie/Beer Exchange

2010-12-15T13:39:00.004+10:00

Before I get to our oh-so-fun 1st cookie/beer exchange I'll update you on a few other things.

First, I attempted another (this was was SUPER easy) craft project! We were invited over for "tea" (dinner) to a friend's house and I wanted to bring a bottle of wine. I remembered this cute project, and thought I'd take a stab. Didn't look to hard. I thought it turned out cute!

I was also asked to bring dessert. How can you go wrong with banana pudding, especially when it looks so cute?! (it tasted as good as it looked!) Banana pudding is a luxury for us here. You cannot buy Nilla wafers in Australia. Thanks for sending Daddy & Krista!

Ok- back to the cookie exchange. I wanted to have a cookie exchange, but also wanted to have couples come to the party. Josh mentioned having a beer exchange for the guys and have the girls exchange cookies. His parents have done the cookie/beer exchange in the past. (A huge thanks to Josh's mom for all her help! She gave me lots of good tips that helped make a fun party.)

I've been working full time at the office, since the other assistant left. I was so busy the week leading up to the party, I was worried I wouldn't be able to pull it off. I ended up getting everything (almost) ready for the party on time. I had sooooooo much help from Josh before hand - don't know what I would have done without him! I also had quite a bit of help from Alex & Viginnia when they arrived. :)

We had an afternoon party since it's such a busy time of year with work Christmas parties at night. We had 8 girls and 9 guys come. Here's the cute cookie table:

I also had nibbles out for everyone. We had sherbet punch, 7 layer dip, fruit & fruit dip, crackers & sundried tomato dip, holiday bark, and Christmasy m&ms. I heard Josh telling one of the girls I worked the hardest at making the Christmas m&ms. :)

The guys did the beer exchange first. Josh had each guy draw a number out of a stocking. They went in order number and picked a 6 pack of beer from the pile. Only a few of the 6 packs were "stolen" during the game. They ended up all trading with each other at the end of the game, so I'm pretty sure each guy had 6 different beers to try/take home. I think they had a good time!

Then it was time for the cookies. All of us girls went around the table and put cookies into our container. I also asked each girl to bring printed out copies of their recipe. I'm so glad I did because I want to make each one of the cookies again. They were all so yummy!

It was such a fun day. I for sure want to have another cookie exchange next year!

That night Josh and I met Shannon and Shane at The Cove for dinner. Shannon has been helping me out at the office on Wednesdays so I can have a break. This was our "TLC Christmas Party." We had a nice dinner - the food was great!

Dear 2nd Trimester

2010-12-08T12:36:00.002+10:00

Dear 2nd trimester,

We seem to be getting along quite nicely! You have only made me sick/nauseous a few days in the past 8 weeks. Thanks for that. My energy has come back, for the most part. I don’t feel like I’ve completed a marathon each day anymore.

What you have brought me is a few extra pounds. Not too excited about that, but it is fun to see the baby bump growing. I just wish all the extra pounds would go straight to the baby area instead of my bum, hips, thighs, arms, face, etc. Wishful thinking I guess.

Why are you bringing me these crazy mood swings? I feel so sorry for Josh. He either gets the wife that is happy and bubbly, sobbing uncontrollably, or just plain mean. I know these hormones are normal, but I don’t like them. Not one bit. (I think Josh would agree!)

One super exciting thing you brought me is the ability to feel the little bub move around! I felt baby move for the first time the night after my big Thanksgiving dinner. It was weird, but so cool. We were in bed about to go to sleep and I felt little butterflies in my tummy. I gasped and think I scared Josh. I closed my eyes and concentrated, then felt it again! Now I feel the little one moving around all the time. Josh felt baby move yesterday for the first time (he thinks). It will be easier for him to feel bub in the next few weeks when it gets bigger.

2nd trimester, please continue to be nice to me in the next few weeks. (Especially when Josh’s family is here!)

Love,
Mandi

17 weeks

Buddy The Elf, What's Your Favorite Color?!

2010-12-08T10:58:00.003+10:00

I'm so happy Christmas is just around the corner!!!!! I LOVE Christmas! What's even more fun is this year we get to spend Christmas with the Farmers! Whooo hooo!!! (sorry for all of the exclamation points....I'm just very excited!)

The weekend after Thanksgiving I got busy decorating the house. It took all of about an hour or so since we don't have that many decorations. It was still fun to have Christmas music blaring throughout the house. :)

We received 2 packages - one from Gran & Grandad and one from my mom with lots of fun Christmas things inside. Gran sent the cutest preggers ornaments! One says "Mommy to be" and has the baby's due date on it. So cute! Mom sent some Christmas M&M's which were gone rather quickly. (speaking of packages...we got another one the same week from Josh's mom. It had lots of cute maternity clothes, books, and food. The Butterfingers she included hit the spot!)

Josh was busy working on the yard while I was inside (it's been soooo stinkin h-o-t here! I haven't felt like going outside much.) decorating. He asked me to come check out what "he grew" in the backyard and bring the camera.

Isn't this the most ginormous cucumber you've ever seen?!

Ok, so he didn't technically grow it. Our neighbor has a veggie patch in his backyard and the cucumber vines are coming through the fence. This cucumber ended up in our backyard on the vine, so Josh is taking credit for it. :)

After I finished decorating we HAD to watch Elf! It's a must in the Farmer household. We had some friends over, ate popcorn, and watch Elf together. It was a fun night.

Here's our cute little tree all lit up!

Baby Gifts

2010-12-08T10:41:00.003+10:00

I decided to try my hand at a little craft project. I love looking at blogs where other girls have gotten "crafty" and made things. The end result just looks cuter than something store bought. I have a long list of craft projects I want to try, just have never made the time for it.

We had a couple of friends have babies last month, and I thought the perfect gift would be a homemade dinner and homemade craft project! I started with these supplies:

I got my inspiration for these paci clips from this website. Josh had to help with these. The snaps and I didn't get along, and Josh had to come show them who was boss. :)

Since I was making both families a yummy sour cream chicken enchilada dinner with homemade guac and salsa, I didn't go overboard on the gifts. I got inspiration for this cute gift from this post. Here's the finished projects!

Our 2nd Aussie Thanksgiving

2010-12-08T10:11:00.004+10:00

Since Thanksgiving was such a success last year, I thought I would cook a big feast for our friends again this year! We had 14 guests - for 4 of them it was their first Thanksgiving experience.

Josh was a big help Thanksgiving Day. He made sure the outside of the house was presentable and even did some work for me on the inside of the house.

Here's my blue eyed boy and my brown eyed girl on Thanksgiving Day:

I was a bit overwhelmed last year with it being my first year as hostess. This year I seemed more prepared. I started cooking 2 days before and did as much prep work as I could before Thanksgiving Day. It made for a much more relaxing Thanksgiving this year.

The menu:
Turkey & gravy
Cornbread (I was MOST excited about these this year! You can't find cornmeal anywhere here, so I had Daddy send us some. So glad he did. The cornbread muffins turned out great!)
Sweet green beans
Spicy corn
Mashed potatoes
Deviled eggs
Fruit Salad
Sweet potato casserole
Strawberry jello salad
Pumpkin pie
Chocolate pie
Pecan pie
Punch

(here's the pecan pie)

When the guests arrived we played a Thanksgiving trivia game. Whoever answered the question correctly (or was close) got to help themselves to the food first. It was fun. I also made thankful cards. We had everyone write down a few things they were thankful for. Since I didn't have a wire tree to tie the cards to, I just tied them to my new clock! I loved how it turned out.

Bianca was so sweet and brought table decorations! I thought she did a wonderful job considering she'd never done Thanksgiving arrangements before. :)

Here's Jim carving the turkey:

Warm and ready to be devoured!

Two other girls brought me flowers. So sweet!

Here's my cute thankful clock. :) One of the girls used her card as a way to announce to the group that she was expecting. The other girls in our bible study group better watch out - that's 3 preggers ladies now in our bible study in just the past few months. Crazy!

Melbourne Weekend!

2010-11-19T12:58:00.004+10:00

We had such a great weekend in Melbourne! This was our second visit to the big city, (people compare Melbourne to San Fransisco) and both visits we've seen some not-so-good weather. What everyone says is "if you don't like the weather (in Melbourne) wait 10 minutes." It's so true! You can really have all four seasons in one day!

When we landed on Saturday afternoon, it looked like what I would picture landing in London might be like - low clouds, dreary, misty, grey, and gloomy. We laughed when the captain made the announcement that the temperature was 15 degrees C. It was 27 deg C when we left sunny Queensland! We were in for a cold and wet weekend, and weren't that prepared. Living in Far North Queensland, we don't have a need for jumpers (jackets), warm pants, or clothes-toed shoes. Luckily I was able to borrow a jacket from a friend (which you will see in most of the pictures below. haha)

Our hotel was in the CBD (which basically means downtown in the middle of everything), which I loved. It was right next to LOTS of shopping, good restaurants, and a major tram stop. Our room was teeny tiny. Good thing Josh and I get along. :)

We heard Lygon Street was the place to go for Italian food, so we gave it a go. We were not ready for what Lygon St had to offer. There were HEAPS of Italian restaurants - one right after another. Each restaurant had a cute little (covered) outdoor seating area. We had a couple of recommendations, but also were told you couldn't really go wrong with any of the restaurants on Lygon St. We started off by going from one place to the next reading the menus. We were bombarded at each restaurant with waitstaff claiming their restaurant had "the best Italian on Lygon Street." It kinda felt like we were at a car dealership. After many a menu read and many a waitstaff trying to "sell" us their restaurant we decided on Johnny Careno's. Josh and I just loved how the owner (or so he said) greeted us when we were reading the menu with "I have the best homemade pasta on Lygon Street. My name is Johnny Careno and I would not lie to you." He was just too funny to pass up. Josh ended up watching Johnny trying to lure more people to eat at his restaurant the rest of the time we were there. I was happy to be out of the cold and rainy weather. Josh ordered a pizza and it looked delish! I went with my favorite pasta dish - gnocchi and it was amazing!

After dinner I had a surprise planned for Josh. It was probably one of the worst things we could do on a cold and rainy night, but we went anyway. I planned for us to visit, Chill On Ice Lounge. Everything from the bar, to the seats, to the cups were made of ice. It was so much fun but soooooo cold! I'm glad we ended up going, even though we didn't make it the allotted 30 minutes in the lounge. It was probably the most we laughed the whole weekend. After about 5 minutes in the lounge our jeans were frozen/stiff from the rain!

Here's a picture of us after: (Chill On lets you borrow gloves and a heavy jacket before you go inside)

Sunday morning Josh left for his seminar at 7:30am. I slept in and took my time getting ready. I had the whole day to explore the city and SHOP! I stopped for brekkie at a cute little bakery, then hopped on a tram to the Queen Victoria Markets. It was very similar to Canton - lots of vendors selling clothes, shoes, house stuff, and other trinkets. I had the best time! Here's the outside of one of the buildings:

One of the many rows of stuff:

My feet hurt after a few hours of walking around (I still didn't get to see all of it!), so I grabbed a smoothie and enjoyed a live band that was playing. I caught a tram back to the hotel and rested a bit. After resting up and a foot rub, I hit some of the shops around our hotel. I found the Christmas section at Myer and spent at least an hour there. I LOVE Christmas stuff! Here's a Christmas tree I saw: (might have to squint to see it - it's on the left)

I met Josh back at the room and asked all about his seminar. He had a good time and learned a lot. He was a bit disappointed because the title of the seminar was "Chiropractic Paediatrics and Pregnancy" and they didn't even mention pregnancy once. Weird.

We walked around town a bit together enjoying the city.

Josh's favorite - Lord of the Fries. (he's making his "they're hot!" face)

Not sure what this outfit/hat won at the Melbourne Cup, but we took a picture anyway. :)

We had the BEST Mexican food Sunday night. We ate at a place called Fiesta. Their guac was soooo yummy. We split the fajitas, and I still ate too much! Our waitress was from California. She informed me I did "not have a Texas accent". Maybe the Aussies are rubbing off on me like my hubby? I get told all the time that Josh sounds like an Aussie. :)

After dinner we walked around the ginormous casino. It was a fancy hotel, had lots of shops, and the biggest casino I've ever seen. Yes, even bigger than the Vegas casinos. We had a nice long walk (at this point I felt like my feet were going to fall off) back to the hotel.

Monday morning we had something we haven't had in ages:

Yay! The little worker guy was asking us heaps of questions when we told him we were from the States. It was a teeny tiny shop and they didn't serve you fresh warm donuts right off the conveyor belt, but they were still yummy!

We did more shopping Monday before we had to leave for the airport. Isn't this tree beautiful?

Our flight back to Mackay was awful. We flew a budget airline that we had been warned about numerous times, but thought we'd try it out ourselves. That will be the last time we fly Tiger Airways. Ughhh. We waited in line for an hour and a half only to find out we had to pay $50 to check in. Apparently this was something determined when we bought the tickets online, but was not ANYWHERE on our itinerary we had printed out. I showed the lovely Tiger lady, and she agreed that it would be nice of them to put it on the itinerary but still took my $50. The lady that was waiting in line behind us was 4kg over weight. They told her to rearrange her things and then rejoin the back of the queue (which was longer than when we joined it for the 1.5 hour wait). I felt sooo bad for her. Not a good first impression Tiger. We went to the gate and when it was time to board, we lined up. We were supposed to board at 10 till 4pm and it was now 4:20pm. They finally made an announcement that they were having "technical difficulties" and would board in an hour. Ugghhh. An hour and a half passed before we had another update, just to be informed we'd be waiting longer. We ended up leaving 3 hours late for something the captain said "wasn't really a big deal, but needed to be fixed." I was in the worst mood! I just kept thinking how they had better at least give us a complimentary snack or drink to say sorry. Nope. Tiger did nothing to at least try and make up for their tardiness. They did however come around with the snack/beverage cart and try to get more of my money. I'd rather starve, thank you. I kept telling Josh how much I miss Southwest Airlines!!! We ended up arriving over 3 hours late and I felt awful for the kennel that was watching Wrigley. They were so understanding and let us pick Wrigley up when we arrived in Mackay. We got back to Bowen around midnight and had to work the next morning. Not a good end to our fun weekend. Another reason we won't be flying Tiger - they had the worst seats ever! I felt claustrophobic and I'm not even tall. I don't know how tall people survive on their flights. Oh wait - you can pay an extra $30 per seat for more leg room. Wow.

I'll try and put my bad experience with Tiger behind me. :) It was still a wonderful weekend in Melbourne!

First Visit

2010-11-18T08:08:00.002+10:00

Our first visit at the Townsville Birth Centre went great! We were hoping to get to visit with our midwife, Kate, but one of her patients was in labor. Another midwife, Lisa, talked with us instead. The Birth Centre has 12 or so full time midwifes. The three of us went into one of their patient meeting rooms and got comfortable. We were in there for what seemed like forever answering ALL kinds of questions! Luckily I did my homework, so I knew what to expect. She asked things like what diseases/disorders ran in our family, if Josh and I were related (gross), what my diet was like, and lots of other things. Lisa gave us a tote bag chock-full of goodies to take home. After the series of questions and a few tests, we got to hear the heart beat! It was amazing. Josh recorded it with our video camera, so we were able to show the future g.parents. It was a very strong heartbeat! Lisa said the baby was moving around quite a bit; she had to move the little probe thingy a lot to keep up with it. After our visit, Lisa walked us next door to the hospital. We got to make an appointment for the ultrasound. :) (it's 3 weeks from today!)

I also had to get my blood taken. That was the worst part of the trip. I (like most people) really don't do well with getting my blood taken. Ughh. Josh was very helpful, and I'm so glad he was there.

The 2.5 hour drive back to Bowen was fun. Josh and I chatted a lot about the baby. It still doesn't seem very real yet. I hope to start feeling the little one kick soon.

Josh has started reading to the baby, since it can hear now. Wrigley thinks we're reading the book to her - it's really cute. Hopefully she won't be too jealous when the little one comes!

Speaking of reading, we got a fun package in the mail yesterday from Daddy and Krista! They sent lots of Thanksgiving goodies, a super cute maternity dress, and a couple of books for bub. :) (pic below)

Here's an updated tummy picture - 15 weeks:

Josh's Flight

2010-11-17T11:10:00.004+10:00

Josh's Tigermoth flight from my perspective. :)

(You might want to read the post below first.)

Adrenaline Rush

2010-11-17T10:48:00.005+10:00

Josh received the coolest gift voucher - a boarding pass for a flight with Tigermoth Adventures. A couple of weekends ago we drove to the Whitsunday Airport for his flight. He was so excited and I was so nervous! The gift voucher said "The full monty mate! Sit down, belt up & hang on." Ahhh!

I asked the pilot how long he had been flying these small planes - he said it was his 2nd week. Haha.

Here's a quick pic the pilot took of us before Josh got geared up:

I didn't realize it would be an open cab! Josh got to sit up front. The pilot fitted Josh with a life vest, head gear, goggles, and strapped him in tight. Josh wanted to take my small point & shoot camera, but I was worried he would drop it. :) The pilot said he'd only ever lost people, never cameras. Funny guy.

A few minutes later they were off. I jumped in the car and drove the quick 10 minute drive to the lagoon in Airlie. That's where the majority of the aerobatics would be performed.

Josh said the ride over to the lagoon was pretty peaceful. They flew over a few of the Whitsunday Islands. Then it was time to get crazy. Josh said they flipped, spinned, and did every other kind of aerobatic trick. He loved it! At one point, they flew straight up to 4,000ft and the pilot cut the engine. I was standing on the beach filming with our video camera. My stomach was in knots! The ride lasted about 25 minutes and Josh had a great time!

Here's Airlie from the sky:

Upside down pic of Airlie:

We purchased a video of Josh's flight and it's so much fun to watch! There were 2 cameras filming his reaction to the flight inside the plane. The video is too long to put on the blog, and I'm not that smart to figure out how to edit the video. You can watch a demo video on Tigermoth's website (link at the beginning of this post) under the "about" section.

Airlie Weekends

2010-11-04T07:59:00.005+10:00

We've made the quick 1 hour trip down to Airlie the past couple of weekends. The first trip was to meet Brett & Lisa for the Reef Festival Parade. We didn't really know what to expect, but went anyway because I love watching parades. :) Instead of standing on the side of the street, Brett & Lisa found us seats on the 2nd floor of one of the backpacker hangouts. It was perfect. We could see all of the floats AND I got a chair. Whoo hoo! The parade was pretty small - there were only 30 or so floats and it took all of 20 minutes for them to walk by. My favorite by far was seeing the camels. We are so used to seeing horses in our parades, but not camels!

The emcee for the parade was cracking Lisa & I up. Instead of asking parents to "please watch your children" or "make sure you keep an eye on your children" he kept saying "parents, please keep your kids under control." He said it at least 3 times and it made us laugh each time.

After the parade we had a very filling dinner at Cactus Jacks. I was craving Mexican food, go figure, and Cactus Jacks is the closest Australia has to "Mexican" food. Funny tidbit...our waiter was from Chicago and had just moved to Airlie. He was born in Bowen and wanted to take advantage of his dual citizenship.

After dinner we made our way down to the foreshore to enjoy some live music. It was a beautiful night and there were lots of people out. We stayed around to watch the first round of the bartender's flair competition. It was awesome! We finished up the night with some more live music at a small Irish pub in town. There were maybe 5 other people in the pub when we got there (including the 2 who were singing/playing the guitar). It was very relaxing, the band was great, and so was the company! It's also nice that Australia has a no smoking rule in their pubs. Here's a picture of us with Brett & Lisa.

If you'll remember - last year we carved pumpkins with some friends. I really wanted to do that with our Bible study group this year, but the pumpkins were $22 A PIECE! Ridiculous! We opted for a game night instead. I ended up decorating the house with some Halloween spider web. We also put Wrigley's Halloween costume on her that Josh's mom sent. She looked SO cute and she knew it. :)

The second time we went down to Airlie was to attend a going away party for the Airlie chiropractor, Jusik. He & his wife are moving to Brisbane this weekend. Jusik has been practicing in the Airlie Beach practice for about 2 years. He will still be a TLC chiro so we will get to see him at the next TLC event. Here's a pic of Brett, Jusik, and Josh.

And one of me & Lisa (I am wearing heels & she has on flats!)

I was so proud of myself for actually fixing my hair. The hot rollers cost around $150 for a set and a curling iron is about $90, so I haven't invested in either of those. Most days my hair is in some sort of pony tail. That night though I decided I'd try to braid my hair. We don't have a hand held mirror, so I couldn't view the end result. Josh had to take a picture for me so I could see the back. ha! I was pretty proud of myself:

Baby News:

- We have our first appointment with our midwife today. Yay! I will blog about that soon.

- We found a glider/rocking chair at a garage sale last weekend. I want to put a cover over the seat cushions and give it a new paint job. It's going to be perfect...and it was only $50!

- We got our first Australian children's book from a friend who's in our Bible study. It's called Possum Magic and it starts off "Once upon a time...deep in the Australian bush". So cute!

Tenpin Bowling

2010-10-19T19:23:00.008+10:00

Bianca invited us to her 22nd birthday party, which was at the bowling alley! In Australia they call bowling "tenpin bowling". If you just say you are going bowling, they think you're talking about this sport.

We had to drive an hour away to the bowling alley (oh the joys of living in a small town!), but it was worth it. We had such a great evening with great friends. There were about 30 total people that came to help Bianca celebrate. I was bragging on Josh's bowling skills the whole way there to some friends of ours. Turned out that I wasn't too bad myself! I was winning on our lane of 7 people until the 8th frame/round (whatever it's called), and then Josh decided to step it up.

How cute is he in his bowling attire?! :)

The birthday girl!

That night I had my first experience with an Aussie favorite, chips (french fries) and gravy. Why did it take me 15 months to finally try this?!!! It was too good! The lady looked at me like I was crazy when I asked for the gravy on the side. Most Aussies just have the gravy poured right on top of the chips like ketchup.

We had a blast doing something out of the ordinary that night. I'm so happy Bianca invited us!

Sunday morning the Seafood Festival was on. We started the day with a trip to the local markets for our produce. I love buying our produce directly from the farmers! After that we made our way down to the Front Beach (with Wrigley in tow) for the combined church service. These are my favorite church services of the year. All of the local churches in Bowen get together to worship right next to the beach. In my picture below it doesn't look like many people were there, but it's deceiving. There was a great turnout. I can't wait for the next one! It's rumored to be around Christmastime. I REALLY hope the Farmer's are here for it!

After church we walked around looking at the festival stalls. I ended up opting for a rainbow snowcone instead of the cooked kangaroo/crocodile. I have really been into lime popsicles lately and the snowcone did the trick.

For lunch we headed to Horseshoe Bay for a picnic on the beach. We left Wrigley at home (she's not allowed at Horseshoe Bay) to take a nap. Josh and I enjoyed the beautiful day and people watched. It was so relaxing!

We had such a wonderful weekend. We are starting to take the beach for granted since we live right next to it. I'm going to try to make it a habit to enjoy the beach more, since the weather has been so great!

On a side note....Josh and I were driving the other day and he pointed out a cow that was "running." I laughed as we gave our views on if cows could/couldn't "run." Josh then said "LOOK! He's got his mall walk on!" It made me lol for a long time. :)