Happy Thanksgiving!

We wish we were home to celebrate with you all, but we hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving! When we stop to think about our lives, we realize how much we have to be thankful for! Anthony and I have talked lately about how lucky we are to have each other and our family and our friends! God has blessed us more than we deserve and we are so grateful!

We both have to work Thursday and Friday (since they obviously don't have Thanksgiving here) so we're going to do a small Thanksgiving dinner together on Saturday. We lucked out and found a frozen turkey, a box of stuffing (although it looks a little questionable), and sweet potatoes. The only thing they don't have here is canned pumpkin. Thanksgiving just isn't the same without pumpkin pie! When I asked some co-workers about it, they said, "Couldn't you just use 'real' pumpkin?". Ha! I guess I could, but I don't really want to, so we're going to have to settle for apple pie (my Aunt Sandy's amazing recipe!). Apple pie is Anthony's absolute favorite anyway, so he's okay with that :)

My cousin, Ronda, posted this verse on her blog. I'm going to copy her because it's one of my favorites and a great one for this time of the year:

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with THANKSGIVING, present your requests to God, and the PEACE of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Phil. 4:6-7

Sydney

Kristi and I went to Sydney a couple of weekends ago. It was our first trip together outside of Victoria. Thank you, Dad & Joyce, for letting us use Worldmark - the condo worked out very well and we had a great time!


Since being in Australia we've learned that Melbourne has a funny relationship with Sydney. The two cities have enjoyed a complex rivalry through most of the history of Australia - going back and forth over which is the more significant city. They take it pretty seriously here. And so, when we told others we were going to Sydney for the weekend, we would often get responses like "I'm sorry" or "Why?". Even at the airport when we asked a fellow traveller if they come to Sydney often, his response was "Not by choice." It's quite odd.

Luckily, we were not deterred by the cynics. We thought Sydney was awesome. Sydney must have more waterfront property per capita than any other large city in the world. It seemed there was an endless supply of hidden tree-lined coves, many with picture-perfect white sand beaches.

An integral part of the Sydney transportation system is the ferries, which carry only people - no cars. They take you to all over the Sydney harbour, and it was one of our favorite ways to get around. We spent the first half of the first day seeing the opera house, harbour bridge, botanical gardens, etc, and we then spent the next three days out exploring the harbour. It was beautiful. You can see some of our pictures below, but they don't really capture all the beauty.




















Oh, and we found our first clothing-optional beach. We did not venture down to the beach itself, but we could see from the distance that some people were on the beach... and exercising the "option."



We spent one full day on Bondi beach, which was amazing. It reminded us of a nice beach in Hawaii. Australians claim it is the "most famous beach in the world," but we are not so sure. Have you even heard of it? In any case, the day we went it was 28 degrees (~82 degrees F) and it was perfect for relaxing after a couple days of walking around the harbour.







Here's a little video...we could have sat there forever and watched the waves roll in.


On Sunday, we went to Hillsong church, which has two "main" campuses and a dozen or more "extension" campuses. We went to one of the main campuses, but it was apparently not the main "main" campus because Brian Houston and Darlene Zschech weren't there. Still, it was pretty cool. We determined that Hillsong does Hillsong better than any other church. And then we lucked out because the church was celebrating 25 years and they had a big celebration down at Darling Harbour later that night. We went and got to see Darlene Zschech singing Shout to Lord, which was pretty cool.

So in summary, we had a great time in Sydney. It was nice to have a little vacation. I already want another one!


PS. Here's some more pictures from our trip that didn't fit in this blog.

Sydney

Quick update on the Prom post below...

Just letting you know that we have now edited the "Prom" post below so you can click on the collages to see larger versions. That should help since the pictures look pretty tiny in the standard blog format.

The Prom

So, I know this post is a little late. Technically, Kristi and I went to the prom quite a while ago - nearly ten years ago in Kristi's case! No, I'm just kidding of course; this post doesn't relate to the high-school dance. Kristi and I went to Wilson's Promontory - known locally as "the Prom" - a couple of weekends ago.

The Prom is a peninsula about 3 hours east of Melbourne. It is unadulterated "bush country." We did quite a bit of hiking and got to see some really nice coastal views, rivers, eucalyptus groves, waterfalls, and the like. It was very relaxing. We stayed at a cabin located about 2 km's down a dirt road and situated just off the water.

It really squeaks!!

The highlight of the trip, however, was the wildlife. We mentioned to the visitor center at the Prom that we would like to see some wildlife if we could. The lady was very nice and told us about a spot near an abandoned air strip where lots of animals come to graze at night. She told us that we would need to pull off the road at a specific place (it is unmarked) and then make our way through the line of trees/brush to find the clearing. If we got there right at dusk, we should see animals. We were pretty excited.

We found the unmarked pullout (mostly by luck) and proceeded to make our way towards the dense tree growth along the side of the road. We found only one trail that appeared to lead through the trees and promptly took to following it. After several feet we determined that we were actually on a wombat trail. The primary evidence for this was that wombats are about two feet tall, and so was the clearance for this trail. Kristi rationally concluded that this was obviously not the trail we were meant to use and we were likely in the wrong place. I saw no other trails and irrationally determined that what was good enough for a wombat was good enough for me. I volunteered to go ahead alone to see if there even was a clearing ahead. After several yards of clumsy crawling, crouching and hobbling (and one ripped tee-shirt later), I did in fact come to a clearing. And in one of the more exciting moments of my life, I saw two wild emus standing about 50-yards in front of me.

I called for Kristi to crawl through the wombat trail, and just as she made her way to the clearing I spotted a gravel maintenance road off to the side that would have provided easy walking access. Sorry honey. In any case, we were both too excited about the emus to care.

We wandered around the clearing quietly and saw some heads poking above the grass in the distance. We slowly progressed towards them and eventually discovered dozens of kangaroos coming out to graze. We kept our distance at first, but we found that they didn't seem to be bothered by our presence in the slightest. So, we continued to inch closer in order to get a better view. At various intervals a random kangaroo would stick his/her head up, would look at us, and would then return to grazing as if he had seen nothing unusual at all. Apparently kangaroos are not too shy around humans, which was good for us because we were able to get an awesome view. As kangaroos came out of the woods we were eventually surrounded by perhaps 50 to 60 of the animals. It was one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. We had our camera and we took lots of pictures and videos. I felt like Steve Irwin.

One of the cutest things we have ever seen was a group of joeys in the middle of the mob ("mob" being the technical term for a group of roos). The joeys would stand around for a minute and then suddenly break into little boxing matches. It was hilarious. We tried to get some video, but it was a little far away.

I say the boxing joeys were one of the cutest things we've ever seen - probably the absolute cutest things were the wombats. As we were standing among the kangaroos, we saw a couple of wombats come out of the woods. These guys were definitely more shy than the kangaroos, so we didn't want to scare them by getting too close. Even so, they were incredibly cute. They look like large hamsters - only with cute, chipmunk-like faces. Too fun. See our video below.

Kristi and I agreed that we could have stayed in that clearing for pretty much the entire night. It was an amazing experience. We had to leave before it got too dark because we were basically in the middle of nowhere and they caution you to stay off the roads at night to avoid animal collisions (which are unfortunately quite common).

The next day, we enjoyed more scenery including an amazing waterfall and some cool coast-lines. Of course, we kept our eyes peeled for more wildlife - and we were not disappointed! We first saw a wallaby hopping along the side of the road, but the driver was going too fast to get a picture (sorry about that). We next spotted an echidna crawling up an embankment. Echidnas are also pretty cute. I think maybe all Australian animals are cute.

The highlight of the second day, however, was on a secluded road heading down to some coast off Cape Liptrap: We saw a wild koala sitting at the base of a tree by the road! We stopped and got out and the koala quickly raced up the tree. I feel bad about scaring it, but it was a pretty short tree, so we were able to get some good pictures while staying a safe distance back.

So I think we have now seen nearly all of the primary Australian animals in the actual wild: emus, kangaroos, wombats, wallabies, echidnas and koalas. Of course it would be fun to see a platypus, but they are nocturnal and apparently quite rare. Overall, this trip was great for the relaxed pace and amazing scenery, but the wildlife made it unforgettable. It was awesome.

Stay tuned for our Sydney post!