More Australia Pictures

I took an insane amount of pictures on our trip (not as many as Marvelous Mom did though!) and looking through them I'm so glad I did. Even though the big camera is kind of a pain in the ass to carry around everywhere. These are just a few of my favorites.

Here is SGB's Best Beloved and I on the beach. She asked me to be a bridesmaid in their wedding - I was completely gobsmacked! She is a lovely person inside and out and I am thrilled that I get to be a part of her and SGB's special day. A sister! I get a sister!!!

Twelve Apostles - the pictures don't even begin to do justice to the beauty and power of the ocean beaches.

Rainbows were a constant theme of the trip. I saw more rainbows in the three weeks we were there than I have seen in the entire rest of my life. I'm choosing to believe that Nannie was watching over us and that the rainbows were messages from her. This picture was taken off the deck of Best Beloved's family holiday house in Rye. Gorgeous!

Another rainbow over the ocean beach.

And finally the two reasons we went so far away, Scientist Genius Brother and his Best Beloved. It was so awesome to spend time with them and see how happy they both are. Her family welcomed him and us with open arms and I can't wait to go back for the wedding. Sightseeing was fun but the real treat was spending time with the best brother in the world, his Best Beloved, and her family. I am so proud of him I could burst!

Port Macquarie

The weather was hideous but the company was wonderful.

Totally insane crazy lunatics surfing. It *might* have been 50 degrees and was definitely pouring with rain and super windy.

Me and the very best brother in the world.

SGB and his Best Beloved in front of a very cute church in town. They were having services as it was Sunday so we had to sneak around very quietly taking pictures.

KOALAS!!!

These were all taken at the Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie - a small seaside town about an hour's flight North of Sydney. I wasn't allowed to pet any, they are all being nursed back to health, but they were so cute.

This little guy was getting his twice daily formula feed. He almost knocked the can out of the volunteer's hand trying to get it faster than she was giving it to him.

The cuteness!

This poor little girl lost both her eyes to a chlamydia infection so she is now a permanent resident of the hospital. It doesn't seem to slow her down any though, she was very curious and got around her little home just fine!

And here is a little guy trying to take a nap.

Koala's get attacked by dogs, hit by cars, burned in bush fires, and suffer from several nasty illnesses - all of which are treated by hundreds of volunteers at this unique hospital. There website is here and if so inclined, you can adopt one or make a donation to help them continue their work. Like animals everywhere their habitat has been greatly reduced due to human activity, can you imagine Australia without koalas? Me neither.

Huge

I have several spider pics but this is the biggest one yet. SGB can palm a basketball, that's how big his hand is. And the spider is almost as big as his palm. Approximately the size of Connecticut. Ish.

Melbourne Day One

Having a spectacular time!!!

Marvelous Mom, SGB, and I in downtown Melbourne along the banks of the Yarra River.

These alleys turned shopping areas are called Arcades and are the coolest little places to explore.

Scientist Genius Brother and his Best Beloved in front of the stadium where we saw my first Australian Football "footy" game.

SGB and I at the game.

The 'thighlights' were spectacular. Heh.

Australia Here I Come

Marvelous Mom and I begin our Big Australian Adventure tomorrow. We get to fly for 3 hours from Seattle to LA, breathe smog for two hours, and then sit on a plane for another 14-15 hours from LA to Melbourne. It doesn't look so bad on the map, hardly even a few inches.

What I wouldn't give for Star Trek transporter technology right about now.

Our first weekend in Melbourne we will be going to an Australian rules Football game. From what I can tell it is a cross between rugby, quidditch, and fight club...I can't wait! And by 'we' I mean Scientist Genius Brother, Best Beloved's Brother, Dad, and I. Marvelous Mom would rather have a root canal than attend a sporting event. Party pooper.

We will also be talking about wedding plans, getting to know Scientist Genius Brother's Best Beloved and her family, and stalking koalas. (I am gonna pet/hold/get bitten by a koala if it is the last thing I do.)

For our second weekend we will fly to Port Macquarie (see map below) where almost all of our Aussie rellies will join us for a reunion of sorts. I have only met two of Grandmother's nephews and none of their extended families so it will be absolutely lovely to get to spend time with people who were so important to her and who I have been hearing stories about all of my life.

Then we will be accompanying one nephew (is my Grandmother's nephew my first cousin once removed or my second cousin?) and his wife on a train trip to Sydney. This will be my third train ride ever and a great way to see a tiny bit of the country. After five days in Sydney, some of which we will spend with Stepdan's niece and her Hottie Husband, we will fly back to Melbourne and enjoy the rest of our time with SGB, his Best Beloved, and her lovely family.

Marvelous Mom is a wee bit nervous about the flight but never fear, I have Xanax to slip in her drinks so she will be just fine. Heh. Just kidding.

I can't wait to post a picture of a spider the size of a dinner plate for y'all to see. Muhahahaha....

Travel Preparation

Now that school is over and Nannie's Big Ass Party is past, it is time for me to prepare things for my month-long absence in July. Just to make things interesting for myself, I'm heading to Vegas on July 2nd to visit Dad and Stepmonster, get home at 1:45pm on July 6th, and leave for Australia with Marvelous Mom at 6:30pm on July 7th. Thank God for drugs, I'm hoping my doc will give me Xanax or Valium or something for the plane trip so I can sleep.

Luckily the wardrobe for both trips will be completely different so I can be packed for down under before I leave for sin city.

The final complication in all of these plans is that Daughter leaves for a 3 week tour of Europe with her Art class on July 13th so I need to make sure she has everything she needs before I leave. Husband will make sure she has everything on her list packed and take her to the airport to meet her group at o'dark thirty but other than that he will be working (someone's gotta pay for all this globe-trotting) so I am going to do everything I can to make sure she is ready to go too. I have to order her a *shiver* debit card so she can get cash while on her trip, make sure she has enough of her medications, all the clothes on the list, etc. etc. etc.

I'm not sure I'm ready for the shopping princess of Puget Sound to have a debit card yet.

So from now until July 2nd I will be in full on Travel Preparation mode. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for checklists!!!

What A Year

If someone had told me what a roller coaster the past nine months would be I don't know that I would have gone ahead with grad school on top of it all. This cake that a classmates wife made for our end of the year grad school cohort party made (representing a sick inside joke :) is pretty much how I feel right now...

Roadkill baby.

But I survived the twins first year of high school, my first year of grad school, daughter driving, losing Nannie, sending my babies to the other side of the planet, and having a bloody obnoxious puppy. Phew.

Grade report - 4.0 in all three of my classes for spring quarter. Even though I know that grades don't matter in grad school, it is impossible for me to not work my ass off in search of a perfect grade. It may not matter to anyone else but it matters to me. And, I'm guessing, my parents. They're always really happy to hear that I did well in school. It makes up for all the slacking I did in high school. Heh.

My summer is going to be busy but FUN! Next year will be even crazier than this year has been so I intend to make the most out of the next three months. Saturday our friends and family are gathering to celebrate Nannie's life...I'm both looking forward to it and dreading it. I still burst into tears at weird times and haven't begun to work thru all my feelings about losing her but it will be nice to hear everyone's memories and stories about her. Family is coming from all over, including her Canadian nephews who we don't see very often and it will be a wonderful party to say goodbye to an amazing woman.

July is my travel month. I get six days of doing NOTHING while visiting Dad and Stepmonster in Vegas with BFF Cousin and then three and a half weeks dodging Sharks With Frickin' Lasers in Australia with Marvelous Mom.

August will be a blur of drivers ed classes for Thing 2, band camp for daughter and the dance team, parades, 2 days of student teaching seminars, sunshine (I hope) and training the damn puppy so I don't have to kill him.

Life marches on.

Iran Trip Part I: by Thing 2

Hey folks, Thing 2 here. We just got back from Iran! And by "just" I do not mean "just," as it was just a few weeks ago, so saying "just" would just be unjust, and saying so would do me no justice and be just plain unjustified. I'm just sayin'.

You know what's a really stupid name for a movement? Antidisestablishmentarianism. Why not just call yourselves the "Double Negativists," or "The We Failed English Classists?" Cut out the middle man! Stop foolin' around and admit who you really are!

*ahem*

Anyway, Iran. It was an enlightening experience. I can't type out all of my thoughts on Iran in one go, because my brain is faster than my tongue, and my tongue is faster than my fingers. Hey-o!

Here you can see a really old bathroom of a really old castle from the 1700s. The echo was absolutely unbelievable; I couldn't understand what I or anyone was saying! I tried to say,

"These pillars have really intricate patterns on them."

but what I ended up saying was,

"THROOMWORKRWXPPLLGARMNOOBBODMPADMPTRAKLZPNTTRAAGFSMDRM!"

"Buddy, are those your kids over there?"

"Yeah."

"Are they speaking English?"

"Yeah."

"Are they American?"

"They're Iranian-American kids."

"Wow! As a tour guide, I think that I'll drop everything I'm doing in my busy schedule and whatnot and give them a personal tour, free of charge!"

"Gee, thank you, sir!"

"Do they speak Farsi?"

"No, they never bothered t-"

"You must be a terrible father. Shame on you! Here, be my translator."

We climbed a whole mountain, and got a beautiful view of the Tehran smogscape!

Come, my children! Have you your jackets and water bottles and ovaloid chunks of flatbread? We shall take the fight to the mountains!

Whoever heard about the Western tradition of throwing coins into fountains must have translated it as throwing money into fountains. We saw in fountains golden coins, silvery coins, and...paper bills. Yes. Actual, real people decided that it was a good idea to

Throw.

Paper.

Money.

Into a fountain.

Wait, that's not the best part! Here's the kicker: At the end of one fountain, we saw resting at the bottom of the pool, rendered almost invisible by the obscuring effect of the wind blowing across the water...

A CREDIT CARD.

Pardon my Sanskrit, but WHO THE HECK DOES THAT?!? Did some obscenely wealthy international fatcat stop by and say, "Gosh, I really need good luck on the next shareholder's meeting. I know! Here, have a freshly-picked Visa from my personal money tree!"

I mean, that's just silly.

Travel Travel Travel

So y'all remember this?

Well I am taking the plunge and risking life and limb to visit the land of SHARKS WITH FRICKIN' LASERS!!! Marvelous Mom and I have decided to just do it...take the plunge and spend 2-3 weeks in between CONVICTS and GIANT SPIDERS with Scientist Genius Brother, his fabulous girlfriend and her family. It will be winter there...damn backwards/upside-down weather...but it will also be Australian Rules Football season. Think hockey, with no pads, no ice, and hot Aussie guys. I am TOTALLY gonna go to as many games as I can. Awesome Girlfriend's family are Carlton Blues fans - all except for her brother who is a Bombers fan. I don't know which team is the bombers but their scarves are red and they are the arch enemies of the Carlton Blues. I'm gonna go for the Blues because I want to stay in good standing with Awesome Girlfriend's father...do NOT get in between an Australian and his football club!

My other goal, besides getting to know Awesome Girlfriend's family, is to pet a kangaroo. Daughter has been lording it over me for two years that she got to pet kangaroos and I didn't, finally I will get to even it out. I'd really like to hold a Koala baby too but that might be too much to ask. (Daughter's favorite fact is that Koalas have butt-plates. She's not really my kid.)

Now I just have to break the news to Husband that I'm fleeing the continent in July. Oh. Wait. He OWES ME. Heh.

Not Good

The following amateur videos are from the Euro News website. If this continues, the boys will not be going to Iran with husband after all. I'd love to see the Iranian government overthrown by the people but I don't want my children in the middle of it. Praying for peace...

The Things Turn Has Come

So remember when I put my 15 year old daughter on a plane to the other side of the world where there are SHARKS with FRICKIN' LASERS? Well now it is the boys turn to get as far away from their Mother as they can. (They'll still be stuck with their father however, Husband is going too.) On March 24th all three of my guys will be leaving for a three week trip to Iran!

In honor of their first trip abroad, and just to entertain myself, I made my own version of the Sharks with Frickin' Lasers map but Iran instead of Australia. It's not as funny but it makes me giggle.

As you can see from the map (heh), Husband's immediate family is in Tehran. But they will be traveling to other cities - probably Esfahan, Shiraz, and maybe Hamadan. The Things are excited beyond belief and so is Husband's family! Their youngest cousin there is a boy exactly their age and we're hoping they'll be able to go to school with him for a day so they can see what school is like there. There are four other first cousins, all about high school/early college age, as well as tons of extended family who will all be anxious to finally meet them.

I'm excited for them and not nearly as nervous as I was when Daughter went to the land down under. But the Persians better not decide to join their Egyptian neighbors in mass protests and revolution while they're there!

Murphy's Law Part 2

When I woke up on Thursday morning I was so freaking thankful that the day before was over and surely today will be better. A homework assignment for my 8:45am class is due and I didn't finish it because of the shitstorm the day before but partial credit is better than no credit. (See, I'm an optimist at heart.) After getting the kids to their schools, I head to mine, sit through class and then go to the school library to work on the pile of homework I have to do.

At 1:15 I head out to the parking garage - I have to pick Thing 2 up from school at 2:30 - get to my car and the front drivers side tire is totally flat.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME UNIVERSE?!?!?!

After having a small hissy fit right there next to my car, I pull out my phone and call Husband. Of course he is about 30 miles away at a job site so I call AAA to come rescue me. I *could* have put the spare tire on myself (maybe) but we pay for triple A so they can jolly well earn some of that money. They assure me that a "service provider" will arrive within an hour so I go back into the main building of the school to call Thing 2's school and arrange for him to wait for me at the science club meeting and I wait for my knight in shining armor.

He is there and has the flat tire off (it has a nail the size of a small child in it) and puts on the spare tire in one hour. YAY TRIPLE-A!!!

I zoom to the tire place, drop off the flat tire, zoom home to switch to the new car that doesn't have a tiny spare tire on it, zoom to Thing 2's school to pick him up, zoom to the high school to pick Daughter up from dance practice, zoom home to drop off Thing 2 and zoom to the passport office where we are meeting husband. (Both parents have to be present for a minor to get a passport OR you have to have a notarized letter from the not present parent saying it's ok for their kid to have a passport.) We get in just as they're re-opening after lunch (at 4pm, weird), there is no one there so we can get done fast, YAY!

She looks at the photos and says the passport might get rejected because her head is not facing totally forward.

My maniacal laughter startles the poor passport worker but I cannot help it - at this point it is simply hysterical how many different things have gone wrong for me in just two days. None of them are life threatening to everyone - and for that I am extremely thankful - but the continuousness of one thing after another has shattered my sanity.

It felt like being pecked to death by ducks.

So we went to Costco, got new photos (for free, they're supposed to know what the hell they are doing), returned to the passport office, turned in all our paperwork plus eleventy-million dollars and Daughters passport should be here JUST in time for her trip.

That was Thursday and I am happy to report nothing else went wrong. Life is back to normal - or as normal as it gets here at the funny farm - and for that I am eternally grateful.

Murphy can go bother someone else for awhile.

Maybe I DON'T Want to Visit

I found this map of Australia on Frogdancer's blog and I'm beginning to think that letting daughter go to Australia with Scientist Genius Brother for Christmas isn't such a great idea after all.  They'll be visiting Scientist Genius Brother's super awesome girlfriend and her family at their home which is located between convicts and giant spiders according to this map.

Yup, you read that right.  On December 12, 2009 I will be putting my 15 year old on a plane to San Francisco where Scientist Genius Brother will collect her from the airport, take her home for a night and then they will trek back to the airport the next day to fly to Melbourne, Australia.  She will get back to Seattle on January 5th.  My baby will not be home for Christmas!  She'll miss playing "Santa" with me and Christmas Eve with her cousins.  I won't get to see her eyes light up as she opens up all her loot on Christmas morning and her brothers won't get to give her one of the only two hugs they are allowed to give her every year.  (She only lets them hug her on Christmas and her birthday, that's it!)

On the other hand, she will get to spend three and a half weeks with her Uncle who is one of my favorite people in the world.  They will get to start building their own relationship without me as a go-between.  Scientist Genius Brother is a very special guy and by getting to spend that time with him, daughter will learn and grow and be a better person.  She will see an example of the kind of man I want her to look for when she is ready for love and a relationship.  And he will get to know daughter better and see what a smart, funny and witty niece he has.

I also strongly believe that kids need to travel and meet people from other countries to broaden their perspective.  Contrary to what many Americans seem to believe, the United States is not the only country on the planet and seeing things from other perspectives will help my kids grow up to be empathetic and well-rounded adults.  Insularity drives me crazy and I am going to do everything possible to make sure my kids don't fall into that trap so many Americans do.

Daughter is thrilled and excited for this adventure in her life and I am thrilled and excited for her.  I can't thank Wonderful Aussie Girlfriend and her family enough for opening their home and hearts to daughter and I know that Scientist Genius Brother loves her as much as husband and I do and will take very good care of our precious baby.

But we will miss her so much.  Letting the kids grow up might end up being the hardest thing we've ever done.

Beautiful Whidbey Island

Husband and I took Grandmother, Motherinlaw and Things one and two on a ferry ride to Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. It was warm but mostly overcast (surprise surprise) but we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. The ferry ride was, as always, a big hit with the boys.

Husband and Motherinlaw enjoyed the view from the restauraunt where we had lunch.

Grandmother and I on the beach in Freeland.

Thing Two caught a tiny crab and we watched it crawling around on his hands before we put it back on the beach.

This was a very nice family day and I only wished for booze once - a very good sign. The car ride was complaint-less which is a minor miracle with two old ladies and two 12 year old boys so I am going to call it a success all the way around.