Day 2

4/7/07 Saturday
Today was a long and eventful day! We woke up early and left our hotel at 7:30am for a bus tour. We drove around Cairns picking up people and then went on to Port Douglas which is a beach area about an hour away where lots of famous people like to come for vacation. After that, we continued in the bus on lots of long and windy roads!! It’s a little scary being on the wrong side of the road going really fast on curvy mountainous roads! Can’t say I enjoyed that part completely!

Our first stop was the Daintree River where we had morning tea and “biscuts” and went on a boat cruise. Supposedly there are tons of crocodiles in the river, but they stay pretty hidden during the day. We did see one through some trees on the side of the river. It was a peaceful boat ride with lots of beautiful scenery. After that, we went to the Daintree Village for a few minutes of shopping and then on to the Daintree Tea House for lunch. We had a grilled Barrumundi fish which was really good and we also had an assortment of fresh tropical fruits. While we were eating, there was a man who was telling us what the fruits were and the history of them which was very interesting.

Next, we drove on to Mossman’s Gorge which is a beautiful rainforest area. The scenery was just unbelievably amazing there!! We went for a walk on a couple of pathways and saw some gorgeous water areas. Our fist experience in the rainforest was incredible!!

The next stop was a Crocodile Farm where we got to watch a Crocodile feeing show. We also went on a boat ride there and saw plenty of crocodiles this time! The sound of their jaws snapping closed when being fed was a little unnerving! We went on to see our first Koala bears – the girls absolutely loved them! Allie decided that she is now going to collect Koala bear stuff and we need to buy her everything we see with Koala Bears on it. That could be a LOT of stuff around here!!

After that was the bus ride home. We almost experienced a wreck on the bus when a car cut in front of us causing the bus driver to slam on his breaks and all of us to slide into the seats in front of us. As there were no seatbelts on the bus, this was a very nervewracking experience for sure! When we dropped off the people that we met on the tour, we were kind of sad – we became friends with them throughout the day! There were a group of 4 sisters and their mom who were all on a 2 week vacation going throughout Australia and we had fun getting to know them.

It was a long day filled with lots of fun memories that I am sure we will never forget!

Australia Trip Day 1

I am keeping a log online of our trip, so I thought I'd post it to the blog with a few pictures. It may get long, so feel free to skip over if you get bored! :)
4/6/07 Friday
We left Guam on Thursday evening at 6:30 and arrived in Australia at 11:00pm. The flight was good until the last when Adysen and Allie both experienced ear problems. We are considering Benedryl for the flight home!  We took a taxi to the hotel which was only about a 15 minute drive and were happy to find that our accommodations were very nice. We have a 2 bedroom apartment type setting with plenty of room and plenty of beds. We were tired and slept good, but early bird Allie woke up at her usual time in spite of going to bed late.

We went out to explore Cairns and ate at “La Pizza” for breakfast. It was tasty, but super expensive which seems to be the case with most everything here! We spent about $50 on breakfast and that was with some of us sharing food! We learned that they charge an extra 15% service charge on top of the already expensive prices because it is a holiday weekend. The worst thing is that coffee doesn't appear to be that popular here. The "coffee maker" in our room only warms up water for instant coffee - ick! There is coffee around that you can buy, but it comes in tiny cups for $3.00- 4.00 per cup!! Eek!! I found out what a “flat white” coffee is that is on most coffee menus here. It’s basically regular coffee with steamed milk. It is so interesting how they speak English here, but use their words very differently! We definitely felt like we were in a foreign country at times today!

There is a really neat "lagoon" area about a block from our hotel where we spent several hours today. It is free to play and hang out there. It's amazing to find something here that is free!!

We found that if you eat dinner early, before 6:30, lots of places offer a discount, so we took advantage of that for dinner and we had a great dinner - the seafood is wonderful here! Kelsey and I split a macadamia crusted trout that was SOOOOOOOOOO good and Jason had some good tuna!!! The grocery store was closed today, but we hope to go tomorrow and get some groceries to save a little money on food!

After dinner, we visited the “Night Market” which was fun. The girls enjoyed shopping and Allie got a new little koala bear that she named “Cubby”. After that, we enjoyed some Yummy Gelato on the Esplanade. The Esplanade is an area that is runs along side the bay and is filled with shops and restaurants. Our hotel is right off this area which makes everything very convenient and close.

Tomorrow we are going to take a tour to the Daintree Rainforest and to a crocodile Farm, so we look forward to more adventures!!

Not much going on

Well, things have been pretty quiet around here lately. We like it that way, but it doesn't make for a very exciting blog! :) We are trying to get through the next 2 weeks of school and looking forward to a spring break trip to Australia!!! We are SO excited about that!! It seems like it is way past time for spring break, but we get out of school later here (June 14 - UGH!) thus the later break. I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures to post after that trip!

A Surprise for Kelsey...

Kelsey has been desperately needing some more storage space in her bedroom recently and had a few peices of furniture that were literally falling apart. This weekend, she went to a retreat with a friend from church and I had the idea on Friday night to buy a new piece of furniture for her room and surprise her when she got back. One thing just kept leading to another until we ended up with a complete makeover of her room!!!! She was SO surprised and excited as you can see! She said she feels like a "grown up" in her new room! :)
Here is her room before:


And after.....

Dr. Suess' Birthday!!

Our school has had a weeklong celebratin of the birthday of Dr. Suess this week. Today, Thing 1 and Thing 2 went to school with me!!

Papa and Nonna's Visit

We had a great time with Carol and Royce (aka Nonna and Papa)!! They headed out for Hawaii early Sunday morning and are safely back home in Louisiana by now. We enjoyed showing them our home and patio and spending time just hanging out as well as doing some fun stuff. We enjoyed a relaxing picnic on the beach, Carol go to snorkel for the first time and afterward we were blessed with a beautiful sunset!!












We also went on a Sunset Boat Cruise which was fun - it was a little cloudy, so the sunset wasn't as pretty as we have seen on other days, but this rainbow was just amazing!!! I couldn't get it all in the picture, but it was completely full all the way across and SO bright!!









The girls LOVED having some Grandparent time and Jason and I enjoyed it as well!! :) Thanks for coming, Nonna and Papa...we love you!!!

The Islanders Soccer!

Allie and Adysen had their first soccer games with the new league off base this season. The club is called the "Islanders" and both the girls are having a great time! Allie came very close to scoring the only goal for her team - if only that goal could have moved over about 1/2 an inch, she would have had it!! She did a great job and we were so proud of her!

And... Adysen's team made 6 goals and she made 5 of them herself! She definitely impressed everyone on the field - one dad told me that he was going to watch for her in the Olympics someday! :) She is quite the soccer player! We are very proud of her also!!

Nonna and Papa arrive in Guam!

We are so excited to have our first visitors! Nonna and Papa arrived on Monday - We were SO happy to see them and have been having a great time just hanging out and showing them around Guam!

Tokyo, Japan

I had SO much fun in Tokyo! The conference was 3 days - from 8:00-4:00 every day which was a LONG time to sit, but seeing Tokyo definitely made it worth it! The first new experience we had was getting LOST on the subway on the way to the hotel. We were following a man that we work with who assured us that he knew where he was going, but apparently did not. I think we took the wrong subway at one point. Anyway, after an hour and 1/2 taxi ride, we made it to the the hotel!!
That night, Nuncia (the other Speech Pathologist that works with me) and I went shopping at the 100 Yen store - kind of like the dollar store, but WAY cooler!! There were 4 floors to it! It was very overwhelming, but really fun!





I got to see Deena, my friend from Keller who got me into this job - she is working right outside of Tokyo and it was SO fun to get to hang out with her!! She knows the Subway system, so she guided us around and we didn't get lost again!! AFter the conference the next day, we went to see the Tokyo tower. The views from there were just amazing! Tokyo is such a HUGE city!!







We had dinner at a great Japanese resturaunt in the hotel.



The next morning, we got up at 5:00am to visit the fish market. It was a really interesting experience. There were fish of all sorts EVERYwhere and the place was huge! We got to see the "tuna" auction where they auction off these huge frozen tunas!! We had to get back, so we didn't have much time, but just running through it all quickly was so interesting!!









Deena and I had a "tradition" in Keller of meeting up with 2 of our other friends at Starbucks every so often. We have missed doing that, so we made it a point to go to Starbucks while we were there. It wasn't the same without Vicki and Kim, but we did have a good time - it tasted wonderful to me since we don't have Starbucks in Guam!!Who would have ever thought that when we were sitting together in Keller at Starbucks, we'd eventually be sitting at Starbucks in Tokyo!!! :)

What's going on....

Well, I have no new pictures to post, but thought I'd post a little update on our lives. we have been busy just settling back into the routine after our Christmas holiday. I am excited that I am going to be going to a conference in Tokyo next week!! There have been tons of budget problems in our district (and across the military really) and so most of the conferences have been cancelled, so I honestly didn't think this one was going to happen. I am SO happy that it is still on! We had hoped to plan a weekend trip to Tokyo for all of us around this trip, but since we didn't find out for sure that I was going until yesterday, we couldn't pull it together on such short notice. I'm excited to get to experience some WINTER time - wahoooo! :)

Adysen will be celebrating the 100th day of school next week and then there is Valentine's Day, of course. Allie got to be the "Star of the Week" at school last week which was super exciting for her!! They are still enjoying their friends and their time at school. Adysen is the top reader in her entire class which makes us very proud - she loves reading!! Adysen and Allie have both started soccer off base. We were just not impressed with the base program and hope this "club" will be a better experience. Their first game is in 2 weeks.

Kelsey is keeping busy with tons of homework and the yearbook club. She also joined the golf team, but doesn't think it's her "thing" so she may not be coninuing that. The bus schedule was rearranged this week and her bus now comes later which is a wonderful thing - she can leave the house at 6:20 instead of 6:00 like before. Those 20 extra minutes of sleep will be much appreciated!!

Jason is busier than ever with his job which is good. We are hoping that it pays off for him soon. He enjoys it so much and is good at it.

We are looking forward to a visit from Nonna and Papa Royce in a couple of weeks. Our first visitors - yay! We are SO excited to see them and will really enjoy showing them around!!

That's about it for now. I'm sure we'll have more pictures to post soon..........