The Fool(s) on the Hill

Andy's written today's blog, hooray. Alexi's comments are in italics.
   The girls are on winter break for the next two weeks.  I know that must sound strange to you northerners who are enjoying a nice warm summer. We're quite envious of you and your sunshine, but there’s no sense hoping that you get stuck with a summer of June gloom.  Instead, we broke out the winter gear and decided to celebrate with a trip to the snow for a bit of sledding and snowman building.

   The planning began last week as I rearranged my schedule to free up one day this week. We pulled out the winter clothes to see what made it to Australia and what still fit.  Thankfully, Alexi was smart enough to get some nice winter jackets for the girls before we left, but their new winter boots were nowhere to be seen (probably in storage in California).  And Alanna has reached 5 feet tall, which means that her snow pants were now perfect for wading in a shallow creek.  So Monday was a shopping day. (Because nothing says 4th of July like shopping for winter gear! For good measure, we threw in a trip to Costco where we enjoyed pizza slices and smoothies, and bought 400 digital prints and organic salsa. Now that's American! But I digress...) And Alexi came through again, with a good deal on boots and ski pants.  (Good deals being extremely relative here. Snow pants under $90 that actually fit Alanna? That aren't pink? Score! And try not to sob thinking that my mom could have gotten me a pair for $5 at Goodwill. Still, we got some good advice on a used gear sale for next year, as well as information about the local resorts and snow conditions. The friendly saleslady even pointed out our best option, a place less than two hours away that had snow. Perfect!)

Martian? Or goggle-wearing Alanna?

   The gear was all set out and ready to go on Monday night. All we'd have to do the next morning is stuff it in a few duffel bags and hit the road, by 9 am was the plan.  The final packing was slowed down as we kept thinking of things to bring (iPods, more books, pillows, extra extra clothes, snacks, etc).  Classic Sherpa parenting for a drive of less than 2 hours.  In the end, we were on the road by 10:30 am.  For me, not too bad, although nothing but stress for Alexi--who as you know hates to be late for ANYTHING, even snow that is not going anywhere :-).  Nonetheless, we were all kitted up and ready for snow.  Chains in the boot (trunk), kids fed and pit stopped, mom caffeinated, and dad on the phone with clients who desperately needed his expertise. Don't worry, I (Alexi) was driving. Or wait, maybe you should worry, if you live in Victoria...Anyway, I should mention that part of the delay involved a last-minute search for chains. While double-checking the resort website for snow conditions, I saw that for today, chains were required to get to the resort. Yikes! Andy called around and located a set for purcha$e, but we decided to go back to the shop I bought the snow pants to hire (aka rent) a set of chains. So that added to the delay. Still, better than getting all the way there and not being able to get up the mountain, right? 'Cause that would be awful to go all that way and not be able to play in the snow! Right? 

   The drive out of the city was uneventful, unless you count my inattention to navigating while using my Crackberry to great effect, texting/emailing/GoogleMapping continuously for the first hour.  Which means that I had to tell Alexi to pull off the road at one point so the GPS could find us again, and we could verify our route.

   But once back on track, the roads became magnificent twisties through a beautiful rainforest akin to Kauai: 

as we ascended the mountains in rain and watched the thermometer drop from over 10C (50F) to 3C (37F), at which point the car’s digital thermometer started blinking to let us know that it was, you know, cold outside.

   Passing through Lillydale and Healesville, we finally reached Marysville, where we saw this:

   Not believing the sign, I insisted we drive the specified 22 km (14 miles) to the resort to confirm this:

   Yep, the resort was closed because the rain was not turning to snow.  And the girls broke into tears, which quickly turned to sobs about how unfair it all was, and how we’d driven so far for nothing, yada yada yada.

   So we shifted to salvage mode.  At least we’d seen a bit of snow on the side of the road a kilometer back, and decided to make lemonade out of lemons.       We built our (itty-bitty) snowmen, had a snowball fight, got cold and wet, and were smiling throughout. (Never fails to amaze me how well Andy can turn tears into smiles, crying into laughter. Reminds me yet again that parenting is mostly marketing and distraction.)

Itty-bitty snowbaby

   It was all good until Aliya demonstrated her amazing throwing arm by launching a snowball right into the (barely) open window from which Alexi was taking pictures and videos of us from the comfortable warmth of the car. Gotta love the zoom lens! Notice the excellent foreshadowing at the beginning of the video:

Not wanting our day to end quite yet, we headed back down the mountain to find this:

 Healesvilleum, yeah, of course it was uncrowded, it was a freezing-cold rainy day!) with plenty of fun things to see, including a barn owl that flew RIGHT OVER our heads during the bird show: 

a duckbill platypus (did you know they’re only about a foot long? I’d assumed they were about the size of a manatee), an inland taipan (the deadliest snake in the world, found right here in Australia, which Aliya refused to hold for some reason), plus emus, koalas and kangaroos.  But no Huntsman spiders which I wanted to see but which probably would have caused Alexi to faint if they’d actually had any (I’d include a picture here, but I think Alexi might refuse to post it, so you’ll just have to Google it yourself to see how big these babies can get). I know for a fact Andy seriously considered this since he left up the Google page full of images of Huntsman spiders. Thanks Andy!

   As we departed, we grabbed a few hot chocolates, purchased our smashed penny souvenirs, and hit the road back to Melbourne. Oh, we also stopped at the toilets where I was greeted with this sign on the stall door:

In case you're wondering, they want you to buy recycled TP

   So not a complete success, but not a complete failure either. Before the girls fell asleep on the drive home, they were begging me to take another “snow day” to make up for today, and Alexi was checking the weather to see when the rain would finally end.  I’m thinking Thursday, but we’ll see.

PS One final note from Alexi. I changed the comment settings, so you should be able to leave one even if you aren't registered. I think that was causing problems for some of you if you didn't have a gmail address. Anyway, give it a go.