Quick Update from Down Under

After a very long flight my mom, 2 sisters, my brother and his wife all arrived in Sydney Friday morning. Noah and I had rented cars to get to our aunt's house from the airport. The Sydney airport isn't like any of those nice American airports that just spit you out onto a nice freeway. No the Sydney airport is several kilometers from a "motorway" and the signage is poor so the directions we had printed out were less than helpful. The book of maps from the rental car place were helpful but the 2 riding in my car are the type that get sick reading in a car. So after losing Noah who was following us and having no way to contact him we hoped we'd all meet up at our aunts. We drove all over Sydney getting more and more lost but for the most part I think I adjusted well to driving on the wrong side of the road and the car. Although I kept hitting the windshield wipers instead of the blinker...could be why I lost Noah. After making no progress and being totally lost we spotted a K-Mart and I decided to buy a GPS. Only after I bought it it started pouring and I had to run through it. I was soaked by the time I got back to the car. With the help of my new Navman we made it to my aunt's just 3o minutes after my brother.

My aunt and uncle have been great. They are a cute old couple with a whole herd of grand kids and we've had fun meeting so much family. It's especially fun to hear them talk and imitate it. Some of our favorite miscommunications have been a "wipper snipper" a weed eater, "sook" one who cries a lot (me), "rat bag" an idiot, "thick as 2 bricks" some one who doesn't quite get it, "chook" a chicken, etc. And there's more to come.

We've had the chance to tour a bit and have seen all kinds of animals. We fed kangaroos, pet koalas, ran from emus, stared wide-eyed at a HUGE crocodile, saw a dingo and claimed it ate our babies, and watched the most colourful birds eat from my aunt's bird feeder. It's been great! We walked past the opera house yesterday while touring the beautiful botanical gardens and today we'll take a tour of it. There's a lot to see and do and we're gonna do as much as we can...

Big Sky Country

My friends, the Little Truckers, and I met up last week in Seattle (Hayley's neck of the woods) to enjoy a mountain retreat in Montana for our annual trip this year. We'd read A River Runs Thought It and were excited to enjoy the beautiful scenery Montana has to offer. While it did rain for much of the weekend we were not disappointed. Carren found us a great room at a fabulous spa/lodge/lake resort on Whitefish Lake. It had a super heated outdoor pool and hot tub right on the lake which we took full advantage of. We also took advantage of the spa and got massages and pedicures.
Glacier National Park was just down the road so we enjoyed driving through to see the beauty of God's creations. As it was pretty wet out we opted for the short hike to Avalanche Gorge. It was beautiful!
Cruising through the park we really hoped to see some wild life and we were not disappointed. Although we did create a slight "bear jam" just as we'd been warned not to. Oops! But it was a bear. Actually 3 bears. It appeared to be a momma and 2 older cubs. It was so fun to watch them. Carren may have freaked out a bit and Tristan swore the bear was looking at her. I just tried to get as much of it on video as I could.
After the bears we continued to enjoy the rest of the beauty of the park and hoped it would stop raining. Carren was MIA for this picture but there was still plenty of Little Trucker togetherness. I'm so glad I have these great friends and we do this every year.
Now I have to repack my suitcase 'cause I'm flying to Australia tomorrow!