Happy Mother's Day, Part 2

My first Mother's Day in Australia was a bit different: I woke up to the sounds of four little girls instead of two! We babysat our friends' daughters so they could have a night away to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. It was a lovely day though.

   

Alanna spent a lot of time creating this menu for me, as well as
rhyming riddles to help me guess what my presents were.

No, that's not a huge steak, just French Toast made with Challah bread

Lovely pressies bought at the Mother's Day Stall at school.

Homemade card from Aliya

Happy Mother's Day, Part 1

We want to wish our moms, Nana and Gram, a very happy Mother's Day. We miss you and love you very much. And now, a song from the girls:

Please Mr. Postman

   The postal workers here do not pick up mail from your mailbox. Nope, you have to take it to a drop-off box or a post office! How hard is it to just take an envelope or two?  On the flip side, you only have to post a "No Junk Mail" and for the most part, you won't get any. We actually removed our "No junk mail" sign, since we're so desperate for mail and advertisements are interesting to me. Always curious what shops and restaurants are out there, not that we frequent them very often.
   Another difference is a small thing, but still annoying. I think I've already posted about the shopping trolleys. You need a gold coin ($1 or $2) to remove one from the line-up. You get the money back when you return the cart and attach it to the previous cart. I can deal with that. What I struggle with are the fully rotating wheels on the trolley. It's bad enough that you have to fight to keep the thing going in a straight line down the aisle. Imagine you're pushing a cart full of groceries between two cars to get to your car. But the car park is sloped. So you now have to try to prevent the heavily loaded trolley from sliding down into the lower car. Rather awkward.
   Finally, no paying at the pump for petrol. You actually have to walk into the station and interface with a live human being if you want to buy your gas. At least you can pump it before paying.
   Now for some news. Andy finally got his motorcycle on Thursday. Great timing now that the weather has turned quite cold (not.) Unfortunately, he still can't legally drive it and he has two more hoops to jump through before he can go back to VicRoads and register it. I'll save that whole saga for Andy to blog about once he completes everything.
   Andy also got his Hudson rowing shell delivered. The bad news it has several cracks in the fiberglass, most likely from being tied down too tightly. The good news is we have insurance. The bad news is it $0.60/lb. That gives us about $18. Not exactly going to cover the repairs, unfortunately. We're quite lucky that the whole container wasn't lost. Apparently around 10,000 containers are lost at sea each year. Had ours been one of them, we would have gotten a very small sum of money to replace most of our worldly possessions. You can be sure we'll insist on better insurance on the trip back. 
   Meanwhile, we're still unpacking boxes, and we've got a nice stash of things to give away or sell. Haven't figured out the best method for doing that yet. Yesterday we went to a swap meet held monthly at a nearby primary school. Lots of people selling, didn't see too many people buying. Still, we'll probably do it if we can get a stall space for next month. It only costs $20, and a few vendors we talked to thought it was worth it. We've got a lot of books to part with, and given the high cost of books, I think we should be able to sell enough to get some extra traveling money.
   

Splish Splash

Good morning, Andy writing in here.  After church on Sunday, it was raining and a bit cool, and we were struggling to decide what to do for entertainment.  Then it came to us.  Swimming!  At the nearby indoor wave pool!  Sweet!  So I packed up Alanna, Aliya and a few towels, and off we went.  The facility is a community centre, pretty much like most you’ve probably seen.  Except this one has an outdoor archery range, and an outdoor trapeze school.  You know, just like all those other community centres around.  But rather than go for the trapeze lessons, we stuck to our plan and headed indoors to the heated pools.

First up was the wave pool, which thunders to life every 30 minutes.  We got there just in time to catch a set of waves, and get bounced around like corks in the ocean.  Only it was way warmer than the ocean.  After that, we headed to the adjacent kids pool, which was even warmer, but there wasn’t too much action here, so we headed over to the giant lap pool.  About a third of the pool was set aside for recreation, as opposed to actual laps.  And they had set out these very cool floating foam mats, about 6 feet by 6 feet (2 metres by 2 metres for you metrically inclined folk).  We then spent the next half hour trying to stand, surf, balance, pose and walk across the mats.  Tremendous fun, especially when we stacked up all six mats and had a wonderfully stable raft.

After a while, we decided to change pools again, and as soon as I was out of the water, the girls started begging for chips (French fries).  I put them off as long as I could, and finally caved in and bought a plate of fries for (gasp!) $7.50.  That’s how they get you.  $13 for the three of us to play in the pools all day, but $7.50 for fries.  Smart business.  After the chips break, we headed back into the wave pool.  While the girls thrilled to the rising and falling of each wave, my goal this time was to stand as still as possible to try to resist the waves surge.  Mostly I was just feeling lazy and didn’t want to have to swim around.  But it turned out to be more work standing still.

In the end, my ultimate goal was achieved.  The girls were exhausted and ready for an early bedtime.  This was proven at dinner time with a very grumpy and bleary-eyed Aliya.  She ate her three chicken nuggets and called it a night.  And the rest of us followed soon after.  Sleep tight.

P.S. From Alexi: Did you know you can leave a comment? Yes you! It's easy, it's fun, and it's free! Just click on the link at the bottom of any post that says 0 Comments (or 1 Comment, or some other number if we're luck.) Show us some love and let us know you're out there.

The Long and Winding Road, Part 3

Can you guess what kind of store we're in here?

Pointing to their favorite thread color

Did you guess Post Office? Didn't think so! We went in to buy some stamps and were amazed at the shopping selection. Apparently that's what they do in the small towns.

Enjoying some OJ on our last morning in Apollo Bay

View from a turnout. Much of the landscape on
the way home reminded me of rural Pennsylvania

   The next major sightseeing stop was Gibson Steps. 

100 plus steps. We counted, but now I don't remember how many!

   The girls were a bit grumpy at first, but Andy distracted them in a fun game of follow-the-leader in the sand, and they cheered up.

Next stop was the Twelve Apostles. The "apostles" are actually limestone stacks of rock, and there were never even twelve of them. Good marketing though, as it's hard to imagine anyone bragging about going to see the Nine Stacks of Limestone. One of the stacks fell, so they're actually down to eight, but no matter. 

Entrance to the park. Shockingly, no parking or entrance fees!

Thoroughly drenched, we headed to our lodgings in Port Campbell to spend the night. A cozy little town.

The Long and Winding Road, Part 2

   Monday was a relaxing day, since we spent the whole day in Apollo Bay. 

Alanna vogue-ing on our balcony

   Andy reserved surf lessons, complete with wet suits, for him and the girls. I wasn't going anywhere near the freezing water. 

Hoping gravity will help get Aliya's wet suit on

Happy 13th Anniversary!

Great walk, with rabbits and chickens at the trailhead

   As Alanna told you in her previous post, she unfortunately slammed her car door on her finger, so that put an end to our plans for a nice anniversary dinner. No worries though, we picked up some pizzas and took them back to our balcony to eat. Probably just as well we had a quiet evening, as poor Andy had a 2 am, 5 am, and 10 am conference calls.

The Long and Winding Road, Part 1

We took advantage of the school holiday to head out on the Great Ocean Road. I'll let the pictures do the talking. 

Split Point Lighthouse

Lovely view

Leaning against the lighthouse. Photo credit: Alanna

Just in case you forgot....

The official starting point

Not something you want to see in your side view mirror

Friendly guy though...

   By late afternoon we'd made it to Apollo Bay and checked into our room. We walked into town to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner. To be continued...