FOUR!!!

Naomi tagged me to do the 'four' thing, so here it is ->

1. Four places you have lived :

1. Bogan Gate (I know, how embarressing!)
2. Parkes
3. Bathurst
4. Parkes again!


2. Four tv shows you like to watch:

1. CSI & CSI: Miami (NOT NY!)

2. NCIS

3. Numb3rs

4. Spicks and Specks

3. four places I have been on vacation:

1. Frazer Island - QLD

2. Gold Coast - QLD (plus the Sunshine Coast almost every year to visit family)

3. Great Ocean Road - Vic

4. Barossa Valley and Adelaide Hills - S.A

(How sad - I've never been out of the country!)

4. four of my favourite foods:

1. Chicken Parmigana

2. Mum's baked lamb dinners

3. Pizza

4. Almost anything chocolate - EVERYTHING Cadbury!

5. four places you would rather be right now:

1. Disneyland would be fun!

2. Sitting in a forest somewhere, listening to nature (and not the dog next door that keeps barking!)

3. In a giant shopping plaza with an unlimited amount of money (I can dream!)

4. And right at this particular moment, I want to be ice-skating! Don't ask me why! But I love it.

6. four people to tag:

1. Zarna, because I don't think she's done it yet

2. Kimi - come on, I know you haunt my blog sometimes! Where's your's?! :)

3. Katie - whenever she gets back on the net and happens to see this post!

4. Everyone else I know has done it (I think!), So I'll tag Liv for when (if ever!) she gets a blog! :)

Tori and Sam

A couple of weekends ago, I got to travel up to Newcastle to visit Ruth and Tim, some mates of mine from uni. I'd never been to Newcastle before so it was cool to be able to go there and get shown around for a couple of days.

It was also cool because I got to see Victoria again. Tori is Ruth and Tim's baby girl and she is soo cute (as you may be able to tell from the pic on the left!). She's almost 8 months old now. I last saw her when she was about 5-6 months old. While it wasn't that long ago, babies sure grow up fast! Tori's now crawling around and giggling away to herself! She's also learnt to growl, which was most amusing for the rest of us! She's a people-baby too, so it was nice for me to be able to pick up a baby and not have them cry at me!

The trip was also good because I was able to catch up with Tanya too (She's in the photo on the right, with Tori). Tanya is also a mate from uni and helped keep me company while I was in Bathurst last year! Tanya drove which ment I didn't have to negotiate the Sydney traffic or try to keep up with Ruth in Newcastle! Plus her car is much more comfortable and roomy then mine, which ment lots of room for shopping (of which we did plenty of)!

We did quite a bit of sight seeing in Newcastle. It's not a bad place really. It kinda feels like an overgrown country town (traffic wise) and because we were staying pretty much in town, everything was easy to get to. Our hotel was right next to the beach, so there were lots of cool evening walks and much eating of fish and chips!

The tankers in the bays of Newcastle also amused Tanya and I. At any given time there were at least 40 of the monsterous things just dawdling along the coast, and at night when they lit up, it looked like hundreds of tiny little cities just floating off the coast.

On the way back from Newcastle, I got to drop in on Amanda and Matt, some more uni friends in Bathurst. They are also new parents, and it was great to catch up with them for a little while and see how much their bub has grown.

Samuel Christopher is about 10 weeks old and he's a big boy! Very placid though and let's his parents sleep for more of the night. He is also very personable, and didn't cry when I held him! He was born with that thick, black mop of hair too! He's the most awake baby I've ever come across too! He doesn't like to miss out on much!

I get to see Amanda and Matt again next weekend, as they're having a naming ceremony or something for Sam on Saturday.

Both bubs were suprises, but both families are doing well and couldn't imagine their lives without them!

More slide night...

Ok, now because I can, I have put on a few more photos of our holiday away! Not that they're that interesting, but simply because I can! :) ........

This is a pic of the cool adventure playground in Ballarat I mentioned in my other post. It was awesome! It had stuff to climb up and over and through and everything! Of course, I had to test it out!

This is a sign that simply amused me on our way down the Great Ocean Road! They had them stuck everywhere! It's not that amusing now, but it kind of surprised us at the time when we first saw the signs!

This formation is called 'The Arch' (funnily enough!) and is part of the 12 Apostles scenic route. Not very exciting, but I liked the picture! One of the small moments that the sun decided to shine that day too.

This is 'The Grotto'. Another moment when the sun decided to shine. It was really nice down there and they had a little cave you could wander into, etc. This is also on here purely because I like the picture!

This is 'The Blue Lake' in Mount Gambier, South Australia. This is where we spent our 6th night. Not a bad little city actually. I think the lake is the town's water source and is, as you could probably guess, perched inside a rather large creater. It looks blue in the photo, but in reality it was much bluer than that! The depth of colour was amazing. Apparently, it goes a dull grey during the winter months, and then turns the brillant blue during the warner months. Something to do with the algae and tiny microbes circulating in the water (eww!).

This cute little cottage was perched on the hill behind our hotel in the Barossa Valley, S.A. It was so cute and the photo captured the arfternoon sun brillantly. The whole area was very pretty and 'old-worldly'. We stayed in a small town called Anguston. Very pretty drives and only a stones throw away from the Adelaide Hills. And, of course, the place was full of Vineyards and all the big name wineries.

Handorf, in the Adelaide Hills, is very cute! Everything has a German feel and there are about 5 Lutheran churches to each little town! Very much a tourist town, it is all things German, so we fitted in very well with our last name! There was even a little man dressed in lederhosen playing polka on an accordian in front of the little stone pub! There's heaps of tours that run around the place is old-fashioned cars like this. We happened to go on a sunday so everyone was out and about!

After our two day stay in the Barossa, we headed home. It was an awesome holiday - relaxing with just the right amount of stuff to do. Plus we got to see a fair chunk of this great land of ours. And there were quite a few amusing things to be viewed along the way too!

Speaking of amusing, we found a town that uses plastic grass instead of real grass in their town's beautification!!

This, believe it or not, is plastic turf! When we drove into Murray Bridge, S.A, it was night time. I was looking out the window and said, 'Wow, dispite the drought and the dryness all around, this place has managed to keep their grass so green!' When we stopped to get dinner, I got out and just had to have a feel of the lush grass, but then discovered that it was so green because it was plastic! It's a great idea really - from a distance you'd never know it was plastic, and it certainly gives the place a healthy feel about it! Plus, the council doesn't have to worry about mowing it!

In contrast to the green grass, this is what the rest of the place looked like naturally................!

So plastic grass is a good idea to me!! :)

SoMe HoLiDaY sNaPs.....

Hi all!

Well, I finally won - with a lot of patience and a couple of hours to spare (!), I managed to get some photos uploaded onto my blog! *CHEERS*!!

As most of you have observed by now, we have returned from a cool, relaxing holiday. We were only away for about 10 days but did a lot of travelling in that time (The last quarter of the trip alone clocked up over 2000k's on the the trip metre!). It was cool though - saw a lot of the country and managed to visit places in three states!

We obviously saw some places in New South Wales, and then we headed down to Victoria before heading across to South Australia before coming back home.

Here are a few snaps that I managed to upload to make the story telling slightly less boring!!....

• This is the paddlesteamer Emmylou. We spent our first night on the road in Echuca, which is just on the Victorian side of the Murray river. It's a gorgeous little town - very touristy. Has a very nice looking hospital if I ever decide to move down there...!! As nice as all the other places we visited were, Liv and I were probably most taken by Echuca - just because I had no expectations of it and it was really cute - old worldy because of all the paddle steamers. Plus, I love rivers! We had a hour and a half river cruise on this little baby - it was fantastic. It was just nice to relax and watch the world float by. Beautiful day too.
  
  

• This is a pretty boring pic but it was taken in Ballarat, where we spent our second night. The picture ordinarily would be of a lake, except it is all dried up because of the drought! All the way back, to the line of trees, used to be water! They have boating ramps and everything! It was used for the rowing in the olympics when it was held in Melboure - I cant remember the name of the lake now though! The drought is bad in Victoria - everything is so dry and this pic just proves it. the park around it was pretty though, and it had an awesome adventure playground that I couldn't resist running around!
  
  

• (Liv and mum are gonna love me for putting this one up!) This is beautiful forest walk on the other side of Apollo Bay, on the Great Ocean Road. It's called Mait's Rest, and it's so peaceful and quiet. I love foresty areas, with all the birds and insect sounds and the earthen smells. There are enormous trees in there that have been growing for centuries. I always feel really close to God in areas like this because they are so peaceful and full of God's beauty. The walk is supposed to take about 30 minutes but I think I spent just under an hour in there - just meandering around and taking it all in.
  

• This is a pic of Port Campbell, where we spent our 4th and 5th days. It's right on the Great Ocean Road and in between all the popular lookouts, like the 12 Apostles, etc. It was a cute little coastal town that basically survives on tourists. The town population is only about 500. It's got the perfect little sheltered beach and everything. This is taken from a lookout high above the town in the hills behind it.

• This is from the beach of Gibson's Steps. Although it wasn't a beautiful day (in fact, it was blowing a gale and freezing!), I like this picture because it picked up the colours of the stormy sky pretty well. The ocean was so wild - it was so cool! The coast down there is just huge cliffs that break away into the sea. This is my fave photo for some reason!
  

• And of course, here's a pic of the 12 Apostles. This was taken on the same day as the photo above, so it was still blowing a gale and freezing! When we had past it the day before, it had been a beautiful afternoon but I couldn't take any photos of them because the sun was just in the wrong place and the it was all glazy and shone right in the lens! But this is still a pretty cool pic anyway.

Well, that just about covers the first half of our holiday. When I get the patience and a couple of hours free again, I will post some other photos and wrap up the rest of the holiday! :)