Sweets and Jellyfish

Last week I posted on my birthday, but now I can officially report how I celebrated it! Matt and I originally planned to have a nice dinner at TGIF's but as funds are low for the time I knew that wasn't going to work out. Conveniently, my supervisor Jennifer Clarke and the others in her lab offered to take me out to lunch on my birthday. We went to a nice Italian restaurant near uni and the food was amazing!! Italian food is my favourite! I had homemade spinach and ricotta ravioli, garlic bread, and a beautiful flan for dessert. I learned that flan is called cream caramel here and this actually led to a large debate because the Aussie's claimed cream caramel is not the same as flan. Having tasted it I would say there is no difference, but the only French girl in the lab later confirmed via the web it is definitely the same thing.

In the evening Matt and I went rock-climbing at a really small local place called the Bloc. We learned it's not a big rope-climbing place but focuses more on building skill and strength with bouldering. I've never been as big in bouldering because I burn out fast. Also, I love climbing not necessarily for the challenge but to get the top which is not really the purpose of bouldering. The rating system is different too and I felt so weak when I could only complete a route on the lowest level - number 1. My hands hurt a lot at the end, but I'm looking forward to future visits to improve my skills.

To top off the night we watched the movie Red 2. Sometime during the movie our cat shade suddenly perked up and headed toward the door. Not too long after we had a knock on the door and found a surprise birthday cake on our front doorstep! I was sad I didn't get up with the cat and catch the mysterious cake givers in the act, but I later had confirmed suspicions it was Brock and Kaytlin! It was a great day!

I originally figured I wouldn't get a cake for my birthday so I had already made plans to make cinnamon rolls. I have officially decided I am getting a lot better at making homemade cinnamon rolls! Not quite Cinnabon style but each time the dough is getting better.

The day after my birthday I went to meet with the Young Women presidency to make gratitude jars as examples for the young women the next week. It later turned into more of a fun chat between girls. To my surprise Cate had also gotten me a cake! Normally I don't really like cake but the two chocolate cakes I had for my birthday were really good!

Matt surprised me Friday night by bringing home huge rolls of carpet from work. It's brand new carpet that was going to be tossed! So we spent Saturday morning cleaning and cutting the carpet to fit our dining room. It feels so weird to walk on nice normal carpet where I'm used to walking on our pink disgusting carpet! Matt is also planning on using some large tubes from work and leftover carpet to build something really fun for the cat so stay tuned for updates on that!

We also were able to enjoy the weekend with some Super Smash Bros Brawl and movies. We've now unlocked all the characters in the game! Matt's now discovered even more fun things to do in the game. I am thinking that we will eventually have to buy our own game since this is the Butler's game with their Wii. As for movies we have watched The Lovely Bones which we both hated in the end (long story) and Kon Tiki. A long time ago my mom advised I read Kon Tiki and I loved the story of how just a handful of guys sailed across the ocean on a handmade raft! I definitely would recommend the book and the movie!

Australia day was this last Sunday which is basically the Australia equivalent of Independence Day in the US. For the first time ever I participated in singing the national anthem here titled Advance Australia Fair! As for any other traditions I don't really know, but I am told that it is a popular day for some serious drinking.

Since the Monday after Australia day is still a public holiday, Matt didn't have to work and I had plans to do an early morning hike with the Young Women. Unfortunately, the hike was cancelled but instead Cate, Racheal and I decided to organise the YW cupboard. It was crazy some of the stuff we found in there such as picture frames that looked from the 70's and tons of posters where most were duplicates. It was fun just to talk and make things look better.

Cate said she was going to Manly beach later with her friend Mariella. I asked Matt if he wanted to go but he wasn't too interested in join anywhere and he would be the only boy. In the end it became just a girl's day out at the beach with Cate, Mariella, Kaytlin and I.

The weather was beautiful and the water was great. My only issue was that the water was really dirty from all the storms we've had recently. Kaytlin was saying how she was glad there weren't any blue bottle jellyfish around. Surprisingly my biggest fear of getting in the ocean in Australia is not sharks, but jellyfish.

As Kaytlin and I went back to the water for a second dip in the water they announced over the speaker that some people had been stung by blue bottles and were advising if you get stung there is no immediate cure so to just remove the tentacles and wash with fresh water. I wasn't too worried since we were going into the main swimming area with loads of people. As Kaytlin and I got  about hip length in the water I felt something really itchy on my leg that began to sting. I eventually pulled my leg out and saw blue stringy things around my left leg! Naturally, swimming time was over and I walked out of the water and the rest of the strings had come off in the process. While walking back to our stuff we saw three blue bottles just lying on the beach. After washing it off it was still stinging pretty bad and eventually I got little puffy dots where the strings had been wrapped around. About an hour later the stinging had subsided and overall I decided it wasn't so bad. They made several announcements that there were at least 50-70 blue bottles just on the beach and if you didn't want to get stung you shouldn't be in the water. My favourite was when they said if you didn't want your kid screaming for the rest of the day from the pain then you shouldn't let them in the water! In the end it wasn't quite as bad as a bee sting or even a mosquito bite because those throb and itch whereas stinging pain you can just wait it out.

Cate, Katelyn and I

Mariella, Cate, and Katelyn

The puffy spots from the jellyfish sting on my leg

Other pain soon showed up from the beach trip. All of the girls had gotten burned even though they regularly reapplied sunscreen. I didn't feel burned at all but after I got home and had taken a shower the truth came out. My back was badly burned along with parts of my legs and my face. Katelyn and Brock came over for FHE later and I was lathered in Aloe Vera and I let her borrow my solarcaine for the very severe and painful burns.

Matt and I finished off the Australia day weekend with a classic Australia movie called The Castle. It has a lot of swearing unfortunately, but it's just a fun David and Goliath kind of movie that I saw years ago when I first came to Australia. It's been a wonderful week!

Rising and Falling

What goes up must come down right? Well this last week has had some good things and then some surprising news.


Last week we had a great FHE with Brock and Kaytlin. Brock was excited because he won the game Zigity and in the past he hasn't had too much success with the games we've played. This week they both killed Matt and I at Sequence so I think it's safe to say Brock's losing streak is over!

On Sunday I spoke to the missionaries and asked what they had planned for their p-day. I was surprised to hear they had no plans because on my mission sometimes p-day activities were all I had to look forward to. So I invited them all to come to our house for games. I made a huge list of tons of games you can play with a lot of people for free and helped give them ideas for future ideas. Then we played telephone pictionary (click here for rules) which turned out so well!

Not too long after all 9 missionaries left to get to work I had the Young Women in the ward over for a movie night! Since the girl's struggled to decide on a movie I picked my favourite - Everything You Want. It was a great and busy day!

Over the last week I had a couple of meetings for Young Women's. I'm so excited to be working with these girls and the other leaders Cate Lynch and Racheal Laugery! Our first meeting as a presidency was great and I was positive Cate is very inspired since when we went to the Stake meeting later some of the things they suggested we were already doing.

Matt and I also have enjoyed watching some movies including Warm Bodies and Red Dawn, but my recent new favourite is Cake Boss. I've watched so many episodes that even though I don't like cake, Matt and I are both interested in trying a Carlo's Bakery cake some day. I think sometime I'd like to try and make a nice professional cake too.

Some really great things that happened this last week is that Matt finished building the stand for our new air conditioner! Finally we have a nice working air conditioner to keep our bedroom cool so we can actually sleep at night.

Also, I have great school news! Firstly, my financial aid has been processed and I will be getting my loan money soon. Secondly, I met with the tiger keepers at Taronga Zoo with my supervisor yesterday and we are going to start my research project as soon as the final paperwork is done! They have a great set up to do audio and video recordings. It was so cool to be so close to them, although unfortunately one of the tigers suddenly was really anxious and started running toward the bars where we were and full on did an aggressive roar. We're not really sure what set him off, but he seemed to be targeting the one male of our group and the zoo doesn't have any male keepers. Unfortunately this made the keepers more nervous about having us in that same area again so we'll see what will happen.

Some other great stuff is I've heard from my sister on her mission and she is loving it! She just left to Dallas, Texas and I'm so excited for her!

With all good news there seems to come bad news. Unfortunately I am getting less financial aid than I was originally offered because they didn't account for my scholarship money. That same day Matt came home and let me know that his boss said that as soon as this last big job is done that he will need to find another job. I know Matt is a very high quality painter, but apparently his boss would prefer him to sacrifice more of his quality for speed. For someone who has done very fast and high quality work for over 12 years it's not so easy to start lowering standards. We hope this will be a blessing in the end, but as Matt hasn't been paid yet we are running rather thin. We're praying he will be able to find another painter than can appreciate his high quality work and pay him what he's worth.

Oh and I guess I should mention today is my birthday....happy 28th birthday to me! Money is tight at the moment so maybe I'll celebrate later. Have a great week!

Breaking in the New Year

My favourite thing about the new year is the feeling of starting anew. I make goals all the time throughout the year, but at the beginning of the year is where I really assess if I met last years goals and make new ones for this year. 

I managed to get Matt to sit down with me and we made long lists of goals for the new year. At first the list seems very long, but we started the year by picking just one item on the list to work on per week. The next step is actually working on that goal, which through the use of phone reminders and a nifty goal app called strides (click to see iTunes app) I can remind myself to do things as well as track my progress each day. I truly believe anyone can achieve their goals if they make a plan and find ones to help motivate them to keep at it! 

Besides making goals, Matt and I had a good New Years week because Matt didn't work the day before or after new years. 

New Years we went to our friend's Gideon and Clarissa's party at their family's house complete with pool and BBQ. We went together with Brock and Kaytlin and played in the pool, ate some good food,   played games, and of course watched the amazing Sydney firework show on TV. 

I learned that besides the heat in December, there are other New Year's differences from the US. Unfortunately you can't buy your own fireworks here so you don't see mini firework shows on the street. Of course there are still those daring people breaking the law and doing their own show at home. The upside of this is that the city firework shows are bigger and better!

Gideon and Clarissa Watts

Kaytlin and I

Matt and I took advantage of his day off and decided to go to Terrigal beach up north. There is nothing so relaxing as being able to do swim and body surf in the ocean and then dry off in the warm sun. It turned out to be a beautiful day for it!

Now that the new year has begun I am supposed to be working on my Master's work again! Unfortunately I do not have tigers to study yet! Dreamworld said they won't be able to participate at this time, and the other sites haven't responded. So right now I'm basically waiting and hoping this all gets sorted soon. I need to have this sorted before I can be enrolled which may effect my financial aid and scholarship. Not to mention I need to get an ethics application in by Jan. 28 but I can't do that if I don't know where I am studying the animals! 

In the meantime I have been finding time to watch recent movies like Frozen and the Hobbit! Frozen is amazing (see my favourite song below), but the Hobbit is somewhat unsatisfying because it is the middle of the movie series and there is no real end. 

Additionally I was able to find e-books for the Tiger Saga series by Colleen Houck that I started months ago. If you recall, I read the first book but the library didn't have the second. So I have now finished the series! I loved them! Although the love triangle drove me crazy for a long time. Poor Matt dealt with a lot of me ranting about the books. I was so aggravated that the last book I spent all of one day reading to finish it. Can't wait to start some new series!

Other than that, we are just going about doing our daily stuff! It's going to be an interesting and exciting new year! 

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!