NEXT!!!

I don't know if I've been bitten by some travel bug, but I came home from Austalia and went right to work planning the next big trip....LONDON and PARIS!!! Jill and I are going together this summer and meeting up with Dot and Melissa and Dot's friend Shelley for two glorious weeks in London with a two day trip to Paris. Jill will only spend the first week with me and then in Paris we'll rendez-vous with her friends and they'll fly off to Ireland and Scotland. I've already got tickets to Billy Elliott the Musical and The Lion King. We may even go see Wicked again!!! I'd love that! All this to celebrate the big "50" with my very best friends.

Our Final Days in Australia

It's only taken me 2 months to finish blogging our trip to Australia, forgive me.

I've skipped the Inverell and Sapphire digging part of our trip because I did the smilebox about it.

So...after we left Inverell we drove in the rain all day back to Brisbane and straight to their zoo. We got close to a koala and I got to feed the kangaroos in the steady rain. It was wet, but wonderful. That night we went to the Brisbane Temple and out to eat at a wonderful little French restaurant afterwards. C'est magnifique!!! It was still raining by the way!

Early the next morning we flew to Sydney and went straight to the Sydney Temple and then checked into our gorgeous hotel in downtown Sydney. We were upgraded to a two room suite and our view was spectacular! While in Sydney we took a harbor dinner cruise, a ferry over to Manly Harbour, a tour of the Sydney Opera House and even took in a show our last night inside the Opera House. We loved it all, but probably won't ever feel the need to go back to Sydney. It's just another big city and we much prefer the open road and the countryside.

This was an incredible trip and we're so happy we went with great friends, made new ones along the way and look forward to returning to Inverell and Tasmania one day real soon.

The Sydney Bridge

The Sydney Temple

The Brisbane Temple

Feeding the Kangaroos

Up close and personal with a Koala at the Brisbane Zoo.

Hobart and Port Arthur

Our final stop on Tasmania was Hobart. The capitol city of Tasmania. We stayed right downtown. Ate at an incredible Italian Restaurant (thanks Alan for being an Italian at heart) and met our little waitress who wants to come and tour America during her gap year. The next day we drove south to Port Arthur, which was once a British Penal Colony. Now just ruins and stories of discipline and punishment, religious and moral instruction, and training and education. The English Prison Reformer Jeremy Bentham described his Penitenriary as "a machine for grinding rogues honest" You can't go to Hobart without going to Port Arthur. It is so much of it's history. Unfortunately, we didn't leave enough time in this part of Tasmania and we missed out on many other sights. But in addition to the picture above of a ruin in Port Arthur, you also see Dot and I seated on "tesselted pavement" a natural formation due to water and sand irrosion. It was fascinating to see. The pic above that is a natural bridge formation, they call Devil's Arch and the top is a beautiful picture of the coast of Tasmania. When can we go back and who'd like to join us!!! It was an awesome trip with Dot and Alan. But don't go away, stay tuned for our second week in Australia or our Australian Sapphire Adventure!

The Delicious Side of Tassie

OK, I got a little distracted from my travelog with the Smilebox entries, but back to the tour. As I said our little flat tire detour ended up being a delicious side trip. On our way again, we stopped at a chocolate factory, a cheese factory and a raspberry farm, which unfortunately ended up only being a raspberry restaurant with a small gift shop and a walk around the grounds where you could see the raspberry patch about a half a mile away, but that was as close as you could get. A bit dissappointing. Anyway...I'll take this time to say the food on Tasmania was exquisite. I don't think we ate a bad meal anywhere and found several places we'll probably dream about.
Joel and Dot oogling the fondant lady behind the glass. These were melt in your mouth truffles.
I will also mention the day before we stopped at a delightful honey farm and by this time were already packing a few bottles of delicious honey varieties.

Cheers to Good Friends

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Tasty side of Tasmania

As I said, our flat tire detour ended up being a delicous treat. We had to detour to Devonport for a new tire and on our way to Hobart from Devonport we stopped at a chocolate factory, a cheese farm and a raspberry farm. It ended up being the highlight of our day! that would have been an otherwise long drive to Hobart.

Our night visitor

Before I take you to Hobart, I have to tell you about our little visitor we had on our balcony of our cabin in Cradle Mt. We're still not sure what it was, but we think it was a tree possum. He loved our grapes and allowed us to hand feed him.

Cradle Mountain

Our next stop on Tasmania was on the midwest side of the island to a mountain called Cradle Mountain. On our way we went through Mole Creek and stopped at two caves called King Solomon's and Marakoopa. They were much smaller, but just as impressive as Carlsbad Caverns.

Cradle Mountain was spectacular, but rainy. They say they see about 360 days of rain a year. We hiked up to a look-out rock and enjoyed the sunset. We experienced a flat tire here that sent us a little out of way the next day, on our way to Hobart, but it ended up being a delicious detour.

Launceston, Tasmania

After only one night in Melbourne, we flew to Tasmania. First 3 nights were in Launceston, a town on the north end of Tasmania. While in this area we...hiked up to the Catarack Gorge, went to the Tasmania Zoo and saw the infamous Tasmania Devil, we went to farms for Platypus and Sea Horses, we drove to the north coast and walked the beach, and we walked the pier after enjoying a dinner of fish and chips. We went on a Ghost tour through the city after dark and because the town shuts down by 5:30, we went to the movies one night. Without a doubt we all fell in love with this charming town of Launceston.

First Stop, Melbourne

We landed in Melbourne, Saturday, March 21, a day I will never forget. We met up with Dot and Alan, our friends from Vietnam, and drove downtown to our hotel, only a block away from The Regent Theatre, where we were thrilled that night by an Australian cast performing the musical, "Wicked". I have wanted to see this show since my brother John introduced me to the CD several years ago and I'm still spinning from the incredible performance. I wanted to see it again as soon as it was over. What a way to start our trip!!!

New pics of Spencer - one month old

Death Becomes Her

Due to a recent two week world-wind trip home which included early mornings, late nights, moving, taxes and babies...
I returned home to Jakarta exhausted. I must have breathed in someone's bad air on one of my flights, because almost immediately after I landed I started coughing and spent the past 2 weeks fighting an upper respiratory infection. It took three trips to our medical clinic, several blood tests and an ultrasound of my liver (and every other vital organ) to diagnose, but I was finally put on an antibiotic, spectrate and cough medicine with codeine (the good stuff) to settle the war going on in my chest and I feel much better. And not any too soon as we're off to AUSTRALIA tonight. Watch the blog as we journey our way around Melbourne, Tasmania, Brisbane, Sapphire Mines, and Sydney. Good'day Mate!!!

Early Morning with Gramma

Here's my only reason for getting up before the butt-crack of dawn!!! I cherish the memory of these early morning hours with Ethan and Spencer.

Ethan Turns One

Ethan had a wonderful birthday with lots of friends and family to help him celebrate. He wore a t-shirt that said "My first Birthday" and Chiree gave him a smashing mohawk hairdo. He loved opening presents and there were plenty!!!
They served little mini pizzas everyone could make themselves and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Spongebob came too, in the form of a cake. He was delicious. Happy 1st Birthday Ethan, we all love you very much!!!

V Day

So as you can all see Jack and I had a wonderful Love fest this weekend. He and I got all cleaned up on Saturday, put on our best clothes and had our portraits taken. As you can all see I've changed my hair. Jim did a wonderful job with the cut and color and I absolutely love it. I figured dressing Jack up in silly things and having my roomate take our picture was a good way to show off my new 'do'. After the photo shoot, me and the roomies made and frosted inappropriately shaped sugar cookies in lieu of having quintessential V-day dates. I've been busy with research and illness. It seems that my body is not equipped to handle the Colorado germs and every cold or flu that passes through town plagues me terribly. I did make it up to the Colorado slopes last weekend for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised, it appears Utah has not spoiled me too terribly much.
So, well I guess that's it. I hope everyone is well and Happy Valentine's Day from Jack and Jill.
Cheers!

How to Post a Blog

Jacob and the rest of you, to write something on this blog so everyone can see it, you just go up to the right hand corner and click on "new post". Type, add photos, etc and then hit "publish post" at the bottom. If you add a comment under someone else's post (like you did Jacob), it comes up as a comment under a post. Clear as mud...good. So...Everyone make sure you see Jacob's post disguised as a comment under Chiree's last post.

Australia!!!

In lieu of our trip to Tanzania, which is now off indefinitely, we're going to Australia with Dot and Alan in March during Dot's school Spring Break. Not only are we going to Australia, BUT...best of all we've got tickets to go see "Wicked the Musical" in Melbourne. I'm so excited!!! I just can't hide! I'm about to lose control and I think I like it!!!... I should write music! Hehehe!
I'm on my way home tomorrow. Well, on my way to Josh and Chiree's tomorrow. I'll be there for about 10 days or so and then home to Logan for a week and back to Jakarta to pack for Aussie Land! See you all in a few days. I love you all....Ethan and Spencer, gramma's coming!!!
mom/judi

How we spent our Saturday

After two solids weeks of heavy rain almost every day, our church decided to help a handicapped school clear a large plot of ground for more garden space. It was a dirty, hard job. The dirt was thick, wet, red clay and stuck to everything. but there were a lot of volunteers and they got the job done. Quoting our new Branch President from Australia, "Good on ya, Mate!" Way to go guys!

Finished! You can see how wet it is now that all the weeds are pulled and hauled away.

WOW!! This is so nice Judi! Josh just sent me the invite to post. I hope that is cool. Ethan started giving his brother kisses yesterday! Open mouth of course (that's what we all get). I can't believe that he's already going to be a YEAR young! He's teething now & real cranky! What can ya do? One that's needing to eat every two hours & the other that doesn't want you to put him down. When one cries it usually sets off the other! This is FUN!! I just can't wait to get more sleep! Josh's job is going great! He loves it, unfortunately it's not ideal for income. I am thinking about getting an afternoon job for when he gets home, for more money. We'll see how that goes. Otherwise, everything is great here! I have to jet, they are both screaming now! Love to all!!

Rocky Mountain Hi

Gee Mom, this is like super high tech scrapbook journaling. Just wanted to say Hi to everyone. Colorado was almost 70 degrees today! Yeah, Colorado winters are way better than Logan, suck on that Utahns. I can't wait to break my bike out again. Research is going well, Jack is on a diet and getting regular exercise, Jim gave me a whole new 'sassy' look last weekend and the roomies and I are going skiing this weekend. So yeah, that's it for the update. Good idea on the blogspot Mom.
Love you all,
Jill

Welcome to the G Family Gems

Here it is! Our own family blog! I'm really hoping this will be a fun way to keep in touch with each other and you'll each try to post something atleast once a week. This will be a great way to be involved with each other even though we're separated by miles. I've invited all the grandparents and aunts and uncles to post as well and we need to include Jenn and Kelsey's emails, but I didn't have them. I love you. MOM/Judi