Laziness and Christmas

There seem to be about five stages that I go through on school breaks. This first stage is where I am just so excited that I don't have any assignments and want to do all the things I couldn't do before. The second stage is actually attempting to do those things I wanted to do but didn't have the time like practice the guitar, play the piano, organising the house, researching things, etc. The third stage is where doing productive things dies and your time is somehow completely filled up with TV, movies, and games. During this stage I am just happy I don't HAVE to do anything. The fourth stage is where I realise I am super lazy and have no desire to do anything productive. At this point it seems like there just isn't time enough during the day to do useful things. Finally, on stage five I am fed up with being lazy and the usual TV, movies, and games don't hold the same appeal. It is at this stage that I actually miss school and having a regular schedule of some sort to plan productive time and fun time. After a month break I'm already at stage five.

Despite my perpetual laziness, there have still been some interesting occurrences in the past month and a half. First of all Matt and I were able to host a large Thanksgiving dinner with four other couples on a Saturday. It was quite a busy day with a baptism in the morning, Thanksgiving meal in the afternoon, and a youth activity in the evening. Matt gave a talk at the baptism while I stayed at home figuring out how to cook a perfect turkey. Luckily the meal turned out well including my turkey  and surprisingly 10 people at one large extended square table allows for many good conversations. It was actually hard to get people out so Matt could get to his youth roadshow that evening on time. s

Our cat Shade is also getting a lot bigger! He is now over 4 months old and we have been finding plenty of new tricks for him to perform. We are still working on toilet training which has led to a very messy toilet seat and a couple of accidents, but he is doing well. 

 

We went to a fancy ball for the stake one night and discovered that although we were an hour late since we fed the missionaries beforehand, they hadn't started yet! We waited around and chatted with the few people from our ward that was their and eventually they got started. My friend Erika from the ward and I tried to grab some food and were politely told it hadn't been blessed yet. So we danced a little and finally they blessed the food. We learned that night that maybe balls aren't our thing, and that our stake is comprised of mostly polynesians. At least Erika and Mike Barnett were there so we had fun chatting with them. 

Closer to Christmas we went to two ward parties. One was for our ward, and the other was for my old ward that I went to before Matt was here in Australia. The Greenwich ward had a lady with two small donkeys for everyone to pet and they had a spectacular Christmas tree. 

Both parties were a lot of fun, but I learned there is one Christmas tradition here I don't like - pavlova. It is a meringue type dessert with fruit and I did not like it. Also fruit cake and fruit pudding is common here and I don't like those either. 

Early in the month I was told to arrange a Christmas program for sacrament and I had been practicing O Holy Night on the piano nearly every day to perform on the 22nd. It was difficult to arrange it all and get people for musical numbers, but all went well on the day of...except for my part. I was so nervous that I played the wrong notes frequently, I didn't project my voice very well, and my right legging was shaking so bad that it was hard to keep it on the piano pedal. It was easily worse than any time I had ever practiced it and I was the last performance! I was mortified, and I was so grateful for my honest husband that was willing to tell me it was bad when everyone else just commented how it is so hard to play and sing at the same time. There were also the few that somehow heard something other than me and stated I had the voice of angel..haha. Anyway I was just grateful that it was over and that at least the other musical performances by the YSA and the sister missionaries were wonderful and brought the spirit. 

On the bright side....that day was when they announced my new additional calling in the Young Women's! I'm so excited and so was one of the youth Amelia who later people commented about her huge reaction upon the announcement. This next year is going to be awesome!

The whole month we have been watching various Christmas movies, but it still didn't feel like Christmas so we decorated our cat tree with tinsel and put lights around our living room. It helped a lot and when it came closer to Christmas we had a blast! 

The day before Christmas Eve we went to the Sydney temple to see the fantastic lights and the Life of Christ display. They had many giant prints of various paintings depicting the life of Christ. Outside they had different sets showing the story of the birth of Christ, as well as a large image of the statue of Christ. 

The day after that I spent all day cooking for Christmas. I made two batches of cinnamon rolls, banana oat muffins, and two batches of oreo truffles. It was a LOT of cooking. For the rest of Christmas Eve we went over to Brock and Kaytlin's for games on the Xbox and Wii. It was a great night although I guess it wasn't very centered on Christmas. 

Christmas morning Matt and I got up early and opened up the presents we got each other. Normally we don't do presents, but since my family wasn't doing presents this year it wouldn't feel like Christmas without something to give to someone you care about.

After that we went straight to making the ebleskivers, french toast, eggs, and sausages for our large breakfast with all seven of the sister missionaries. They all helped set everything up and it was a wonderful morning. It was the first every Christmas for the two Chinese sisters and I hope it was a memorable one. We got them all gifts of coloured pencils and a small notebook so they would have something to open as well. 

Many of the missionaries needed to use Skype including the two elders that came over later. So up until nearly 3 pm we had missionaries rotating on our two laptops calling home. Luckily with my Skype account the US missionaries could call home for free to make sure their family was available and online. Our only Aussie sister couldn't get Skype to work but luckily should could still use FaceTime on my phone! Yeah for technology! 

While some were talking with their families upstairs, we played games with the rest downstairs. We played a game called Martian Fluxx and surprisingly I won most of the time! 

After we said goodbye to all the missionaries we went over to the Bishop's house to have a late lunch/early dinner with them and play more games. We were so exhausted that we left by 6pm and went home to watch our favourite Christmas movies - The Grinch, and The Muppet Christmas Carol. 

The day after Christmas is called Boxing Day here and is kind of like the Black Friday in the US where there are massive sales at many stores. We had no plans for shopping however, and had previously planned on going to the beach that day. Reports of rain and electrical storms hindered our plans with friends so instead we decided to go to the zoo. Surprisingly by the time we finished talking to our family it was a beautiful sunny day outside and our zoo trip didn't require an umbrella. 

So that's about it! Here are some recent photos we took of our little family. Happy New Year!

A little bit of everything - Part 2

Over the last month there have been some good things and some bad things happening. I'll start with the bad first.

School always has it's disadvantages and after the break when I started my lizard project I thought things were going pretty well. Although I had to change my project to study tigers everything seemed fine until in the last few weeks all of my assignments were due  and the stress was rising with the deadlines. After spending hours on a huge assignment I finished for the day and had just a few more assignments to try and finish the next day (Saturday). The next morning I opened my computer to find that it would not open windows at all! I did everything from dismantling my computer to reading forums on Matt's computer only to decide it had completely crashed. Luckily the assignment I had finished the previous day I had e-mailed to the tutor and was able to retrieve it to turn in and all of my other assignments I hadn't started and just needed my articles which were on an online server. A friend tried to retrieve my files only to discover the hard drive had a damaged partition and he didn't have the time to do it. I'm currently still working on retrieving my years worth of photos, movies, documents, and music from that hard drive. So I used Matt's computer for the rest of my assignments which did not have powerpoint on it. In order to get powerpoint I somehow erased all of his office products and we ended up using a free trial of Office 365 so I could complete my presentation. Whew!!

We did see this once at least!

If that wasn't enough...I went on a mandatory boat trip for one of my classes that ended up making me very sick. I was so excited we were going to see so many cool wildlife, but the weather was so windy that we stayed in the harbour forever spotting birds, then when we got out the waves were so massive that even though we spotted a whale or two you wouldn't see much before another wave hit. To add to this I was VERY tired and FREEZING! My friend next to me was a little sea sick and threw up a few times, and after a while I just wanted to sleep. The teacher came to chat for a minute and all of a sudden I had to vomit bad! I rushed to the edge and blew out everything I had eaten for the day. It was awful and messy unfortunately. After six hours of sitting in the freezing cold I finally sat in the warm cabin, cleaned myself up, and took a nap until the end. Not a pleasant trip and it took days before I felt normal - it wasn't sea sickness, I actually think I got a cold from it all.

In the end I finished all my assignments on time, but not nearly the quality I had hoped to achieve. Also, I was fortunate that the new Macbook Pro's came out at the end of October so I now have a nice new computer for next year. I need a Mac for some of the audio software I'll be using, and the new Mac's have a lot better battery life!

In the midst of all of this homework craze...Matt and I were able to do some fun things. We had an awesome game night with some other couples in the ward where we played a fun charade type of game. That was a memorable night where I learned the names of some famous people I've never heard of. Another member from church invited us to play a new game called Dominion which Matt quickly fell in love with. I'm sure we will make many more visits in the future to play it. We played Phase 10 with Brock and Kaytlin another night and it was incredible how close it was at the end!! Kaytlin won, but just barely. Also, we took Josie and Lachie Mackie to a place called Flip Out that we had a Groupon voucher for. It was an absolute blast! Luckily I still have photos and videos of that! It's been really awesome to get out and do things with more people!

On the other hand, we have also had some pretty good date nights. We used up coupons to Outback Steakhouse. The food is still great, but Australia your restaurant service is terrible. Our second visit they forgot our onion bloom appetiser and didn't bring the bread out till the end. All I have to say is that an onion bloom is only good fresh. We also went to the newly opened TGIF's which I am happy to announce that Matt loved! Good American food, but unfortunately not American prices. Although pricey, I am hoping we will be able to go there more often because they have a menu with so many good things! Our most recent date night was to see Thor: The Dark World at the IMAX Theatre in Sydney. We had great seats right in the middle of the screen and it was a good movie to see IMAX style. I'm just glad we got groupon vouchers for that because it's so expensive I don't know if we'll do an IMAX full price ever. The night life afterwards was fun too as we watched some street shows on our way to the car park. I love Sydney!

Just some other little things that have happened....

I made the most amazing french fries, but I ate them all so fast I took a picture of the empty bowl.

I also made snicker doodles for the first time with a recipe that doesn't make up crispy! They turned out perfect!

And just for cuteness...I found a big family of duckies as I was walking to the bus stop in Uni.

That's it for now! Hopefully I can be a lot better at consistently posting now!

A little bit of everything

So for the last month I have been keeping track of things to include in my next blog. It didn't take long for the list to keep growing so unfortunately I may have to utilise multiple blogs to explain all that's been happening!

Over the last month we have had wonderful missionary experiences! We've continued to teach with the sisters and one sister called me to say they had a miracle! A spanish woman we have been teaching had agreed to read the Book of Mormon - unfortunately she is not continued with this commitment since then. However, another Chinese investigator named Bob (Qai Shun - don't know if that's spelled right) that we had helped give rides and teach made the commitment to be baptised! (see blurry pic to the right with the sisters)

He asked Matt to baptise which just happened this last Saturday! I have a pic of them all dressed up in white somewhere but I seem to have lost it. It was an awesome baptism though! That night we also went to teach another investigator with a baptismal date this month. Melvin is a soccer player from South Africa and has so much faith! The other investigator we have been helping teach is Will who is has his own holistic clinical practice (if that's what you call it). Unfortunately his dad is severely ill in the hospital and this has really hit Will hard with all the anxiety and he is now taking on everyone from his father's business and his own. That's a lot of clients! We're trying to get him to come hang out, and of course Matt has wanted to have a chat about natural remedies since they are both big into that. We have been sad to see some missionaries leave, but now we have lots of elders in the ward as well. Two of them are Spanish speaking and I'm hoping they will assist the Spanish sister I've helped teach. All is good in the ward here and our little group is slowly growing!

We have had some changes to our home over the last month. Matt spent a holiday weekend and painted all of the doors and the stair railing in our house (see pic to the left of the original door colour and the primed stair rail). It looks so much better!! The other awesome addition has been our adorable kitten Shade! We went to go visit Shade before we could pick him up and Matt had fun with all the baby animals the breeder had including puppies, kittens, and baby chicks as well as stick bugs. He loves to cuddle and play which is perfect for our family. As I study he will play by himself or sleep on my lap. Matt's favourite is the flips and jumps he does. As a bengal Shade will be able to jump three times his length and he has easily surpassed our expectations in jumping. He is also VERY fast and sometimes when he catches the toy he tries to tug it from you like a dog. It's amazing the strength his little 4 lb body has! I've also been able to get him to fetch occasionally. I'll throw a ball and he'll grab it, play with it, and then bring it back to me. He's awesome and such a great addition to our family!

A lot has also been going on in Australia over the last month. A while ago there was the International Fleet Review where loads of naval ships and pirate looking ships called tall ships arrived in the Sydney Harbour. Prince Harry came from the UK to look over the ships from all over the world and ships were open to the public to see for about a week. Not too long after that the bush fires started where many people in the Blue Mountains and other areas had to evacuate. Although Matt and I are far from areas that were affected it was so bad that firefighters from around the country came to help. As for holidays not much has happened. Halloween is not very big here, and of course they don't have Thanksgiving or Black Friday. However, the Melbourne Cup (horse race) is quite huge and there are traditional dresses and hat worn for that day. Although the outfit is mostly for those actually going to the race, apparently some in the work place also dress up.

Well that's it for now! I'll post another soon with more details about my cooking creations, school, books, and fun with friends!

Missionary Moments!

After weeks of waiting, we finally got the fridge repair guy to come fix our fridge. The freezer was getting so frosted that it would stop working so we were using a heater to defrost it every week. It is so nice to have a fridge that works consistently! This was the beginning of an interesting week.

The next day I went outside to spray some weeds on our back patio and for some reason I shut the door behind me locking myself out! Matt wasn't going to be coming home for another four hours. After trying to get the screens off some windows I remembered all the windows are locked. I remember the one by the bathroom didn't lock easy so I had to climb a fence and try with one had to take the screen off and I nearly broke it in the process. Luckily, the window was not locked and with some effort I was able to crawl through the window to get inside! Whew! I was concerned I'd be stuck out there in the heat starving until Matt got home. 

Since I didn't have classes still I was able to spend some time reading a new book called Tiger's Curse. Ironically it is about a girl from Oregon who goes on a journey to India with a tiger. It was such a good book I finished it in two days! The only problem is that it is only the first book in the series. I went back to the library to get the second book that was supposedly available but I couldn't find it anywhere on ALL of the shelves even with help. The book is hiding somewhere in that library, but I had no choice but to abandon trying to read the second one for a while. 

On a better note I've gotten to spend a lot of time with the sister missionaries lately. One companionship asked me to go on a lesson with them for an inactive member from Peru. She's an incredibly faithful woman, but somehow lost her belief in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. I felt impressed by the Spirit to share my testimony of Joseph Smith in Spanish with her. I was so overcome with the Holy Ghost I continued to speak to her in better Spanish than I had spoken in a long time. It was a wonderful lesson and I hope to visit with that sister much more often. 

Afterwards we met up with two of the other sisters and all had dinner, which Matt had prepared for us. It was so much fun to hang out with four of the sisters and get to know them better! We were sad they had to go so quickly, but we decided to play a game of risk to end the night. I was completely obliterated as Matt quickly took over everything. I think the game would have been over very quickly if Matt hadn't been so nice. What a great day!

The next week I had to get back to Uni and classes and I got to see what my next six week project was going to be. I'm going to be spending 16 hours a week on a project with lizards! In this lab they are doing a social learning experiment to see if lizards can learn to do a task after multiple viewing of another lizard performing the same task. I will be watching the videos of the lizards and recording results in a spreadsheet. Later I will also be able to help with the actual experiment as well. I'm very grateful to not be reading about more statistics!

Monday this week I had a MAJOR change in projects! I finally was able to get a hold of my supervisor for my Master's project next year. Originally we were going to work on a project with dog personality, but we've now changed it to work on tiger communication! My supervisor is going to try and help us to get funding so we can travel to the tiger island in Dreamworld and get recordings of various tiger vocalizations. I'm super excited! However, this has put extra pressure to get my literature review for the project done on time. 

Matt and I had a ton of overly ripe bananas this week so I made banana muffins which are always yummy. I was sad that our favorite recipe for them didn't make it here, but I found another one that still tastes good. Don't lose your recipes!

After two years of marriage Matt and I had to get our temple recommends renewed. We went to visit the Stake President on Tuesday to get that taken care of. The Stake President told me there is one Spanish unit in all of New South Wales in our Stake and he's looking for Spanish speaking members to attend. I'm still thinking about it. 

That night I got to assist sister missionaries with another lesson. The next day they asked Matt and I to come and teach the same guy. I've never taught a missionary lesson with Matt before and it was a lot of fun. The guy we taught is really awesome and I'm glad I had the opportunity to help share my testimony of the gospel. 

So it's been a very spiritually filled week and a half and I'm hoping I can keep it up! Matt and I have made all kinds of goals for the month and I feel we are doing well at trying to stick to them. Life is pretty good!

School Break Week 1 - A little of everything

As my first week off from school I had a lot of things I wanted to do and get done. School breaks are meant for two things: 1. get everything done you normally can't because you are too busy with classes, and 2. catch up on homework. This last week I focused on number one. 

On Monday Matt and I went to visit kittens and officially decided on an this adorable cutie. 

Matt named him Shade. We can't take him home until he's 12 weeks old which is perfect because we still have to wait for official approval to have the cat. Also, we get him the first or second week of November which is right when my classes end and I have two months to give all my devoted attention to the little guy. We're excited!  

After visiting the kittens we went straight to FHE with Brock and Kaytlin which is always fun. I did a lesson on goals and then afterwards we played a game of Skip-bo. I had a ridiculous win the first time where I had tons of Skip-bo's! It's always nice to know I can win games on occasion :)! 

Tuesday I started on a project that took me nearly two days. When we brought all our movies from the US we got rid of all the cases for the DVDs (with some exceptions) to save space. We decided we would use disc holders and use our MyMovies app to organize the movies by number instead of alphabetically. Once they are all sorted any new movies will just be assigned a number and go in the appropriate place. Naturally, I still wanted to keep all our old movies alphabetical. I took over the living room and made rows of DVD's so I could alphabetize them, assign a number, and then put them away. After completed nearly 30 DVD's Matt came home from mutual and I told him there were a bunch of movies missing. It turns out he put them with some CD's, and I had to redo more than half of the DVD's I had finished! Finally, by the next morning I had completed numbering and ordering all of our 264 movies! The good news is I'll never have to do that again. I wish I had more pics of the process, but all I have is of the completed containers.

A couple of other interesting things happened on Tuesday. I worked out (first time in weeks) while watching Jack the Giant Slayer. After over an hour of doing high intensity interval training and stretching I was pooped. After a nice shower I decided to clip my toe nails and while filing the edges I broke a nail! It didn't really hurt, but I was quite surprised! Wednesday I went to uni to meet with Martijn van de Pol who is a well accomplished statistician who has done a lot with mixed models which are often used in animal behaviour and animal personality studies. It was a fun hour to chat with him, but I wouldn't say our conversation was extremely productive. The most important information I obtained was that we would be use the R statistical program for the next day's workshop. 

Plant near the distribution center

After I left uni to go home I decided to go to the shops and get some stuff for feeding the missionaries that night. I took a different bus and on my way I realized I was near the temple and could stop and get the hymn book I wanted as well as some new garments. After walking from the stop to the Distribution Center where the church items are sold I discovered I was 30 minutes too late and they were closed. By this time I decided I better just go home and cook what I have for the sisters. My phone said the quickest way was by train so I walked all the way to the train station (about 15 min) only to discover I'd have to wait another 17 minutes for the train. According to the maps it would take me the same amount of time to just walk home. My legs were EXTREMELY sore from my workout from the day before so my 40 minute walk home was painful and exhausting, and I made it 10 minutes later than if I had taken the train but at least I saw some interesting things (see below). The good news was we had a wonderful dinner with the sister missionaries and afterwards they challenged us to make missionary goals each week. Awesome!

K 13 submarine memorial

Thursday I went to uni to attend the workshop with Martijn van de Pol on how to do Mixed Models. I learned a lot, but I'm sure I will forget most of it. At the end we were able to practice on our own data and I decided my honor's thesis on cheetahs would likely have been better as a mixed model than the nested ANOVA I did. I wanted to run the tests, but I had to reconfigure all my raw data into a statistical format which took me the rest of the time. Some day I'll play with that some more. Martijn says the best time to learn R and statistics is when you need it so you are working with it a lot, but this will also take quite a bit of time. Joy. 

Friday I had to leave home at 7:30 am to get to my 9 am hair appointment. It was well worth it because I had a fun chat with the hairdresser and they did a great job! I mentioned that I was going to a church game night later and next thing I know we were talking all about the church. She admitted she didn't know anything about the Mormons and I was more than happy to explain a bit about our beliefs. Somehow this led into an interesting conversation about people with the spirit and evil spirits which was pretty interesting. At the end I wished I had a pass-a-long card but I told her about mormon.org and she said she'd look it up. 

My good day got better as I went to the city to meet Kaytlin for lunch. I had a lot of time to kill so I just walked around for a bit. It was a day for good deeds as I saw someone's scarf fly to the ground. I picked it up and soon found the woman it belonged to who was very grateful. Not too long after there was a man with a dolly stacked with boxes crossing the street and half his boxes fell over. I helped him put them back and we eventually got them all to stay still. As I reflected on these two experiences I realized I was so willing to help because I had so much time and it made me wonder if I would have passed them by if I was in a hurry. After a quick trip past the Anzac Memorial in the city I finally met up with Kaytlin for a sushi train lunch. We learned that just because it looks good, doesn't mean it is. 

That night I made enchiladas for a family with a newborn and for Matt and I for the ward game night. Enchiladas were a big success and even Matt liked them! Apparently he just didn't like the enchilada sauces that I had used before. After dinner we played Monopoly Deal with the bishop and a couple of young men. The boy who won had a MASSIVE play that led him to wiping everyone but the bishop out giving him nearly 7 sets and $47 Million. Wow! I'm glad this will be a bi-weekly event as I think it is a great way to get to know more of the members. 

Saturday was our two-year anniversary! It's crazy how time flies! I made Ebelskivers for the first time for breakfast and I was pleased that they all came out perfect! Matt wasn't as thrilled as I was about them, but that's ok....the more for me to eat! As I cleaned and got some stuff done, Matt started painting the banister. It now is primed and ready for paint! 

We had an early lunch and drove to the Sutherland Entertainment Centre to watch The Phantom of the Opera starring my friend Tamasin Howard as Christine! It was their second show and I expected some technical issues or slip-ups, but I was blown away. The show was spectacular! I've never heard Tamasin sing in a show and every song she sang gave me goosebumps it was so good! It was a wonderful and professional performance and I'm very glad we went. 

Tamasin as Christine (from Facebook)

Afterwards we went to eat at Outback Steakhouse which was easily the most expensive dinner we have had yet. It was still very good, but I definitely don't think we will be eating there often. To finish off our night we rented Iron Man 3. It was a great day. 

Sunday was also quite eventful. Matt and I decided on our missionary goals and then spent some time just sitting in the sun and relaxing. At night we headed over to the Barnett's flat for a house-warming party. Erika and Mike are new to our ward and just recently got married. We had delicious burritos and rice pudding. It was also fun to see some people I already knew from either the Greenwich ward or from when I studied abroad! We played a game with pictures from everyone's childhood home and shared a childhood memory in that home. Then we had to guess who's home belonged to who. It was a really fun night and I got to know a few more people. We will definitely be doing more with them in the future. 

Now this week I have to focus on more school stuff!