Happy Anniversary to US!

Its hard to believe we've been married for 7 years until I think about everything we've done in those 7 years! We have had 2 kids, moved 13 times, lived in 5 different states, graduated from 2 universities (working on the third), vacationed in Scotland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, bought a house and sold a house. There is never a dull moment in this family. I am so grateful for Nate and how hard he works for our family. I would happily follow him around the world...oh wait, done that too! I love you Nate!!

I wish I had pictures from our first 3 years of marriage but that was before everyone had digital cameras (and we left all of our real pictures back in the states). You'll just have to imagine how great we looked back then! This is where all of the real fun started anyways...

Liam joins the family, July 24, 2004 (SLC, UT)

Family picture, December 2004 (Dublin, CA)

Family Picture, November 2005 (Springfield, MO)

Jonas arrives August 26, 2006 (Springfield, MO)

Trip to Nauvoo and Carthage Jail, July 2007

Our lovely house, January 2008 (Cortland, IL)

Trip to Virginia, January 2008

Family Reunion, May 2008, Pennsylvania

Beach, November 2008, (Australia)

Did Santa Come?

There were times we really wondered if he would come but we woke up on Christmas morning to find that he finished all of the cookies and milk and most of the carrots. Here are a few pictures of the kids enjoying their morning.

New Pajamas

Chocolate for breakfast

Jonas the Builder

An Australian Christmas

I am used to big Christmas dinners with a lot of family around. I like it this way. This year it was pretty obvious that it was going to be a quiet Christmas since it was just the four of us. So when we were invited to Christmas dinner by a family from church we decided to accept (when we might normally politely decline so we wouldn't intrude on someone's family celebrations).

It was definitely a Christmas of firsts. Obviously our first Christmas in Australia and our first summer Christmas, but the whole day was a completely new experience for me. It was fun to be able to take on someone else's traditions for the day and get to experience what I think was a pretty authentic Australian Christmas.

We started off the meal (sitting together at the table, there were only 9 of us total) with a "Christmas Cracker".


A person holds each ends, pulls and it cracks when it opens. Inside you will find a little toy, a joke and a paper hat (looks a little like a king's crown). We all wore our hats while eating dinner (definitely a first). Dinner was roast duck (a first for me), turkey, carrots, potatoes, green beans, snow peas and peas. Then for dessert we had plum pudding with custard (both firsts for me).



As much as I missed being surrounded by family eating ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls and heaps of side dishes and desserts it was fun to do something different and I am happy that we are able to try new things and make the best of this Australian experience. I'm hoping one of these years we will spend Christmas on the beach eating BBQ!! I hear that is a popular tradition as well!

Thinking about my family's traditional holiday meals made me wonder what your holiday meals are usually like. What do you usually have for Christmas dinner?

Christmas Lights

Some of our friends from church took us out driving to look at Christmas lights. It was so funny because there would be whole streets where everyone had some kind of lights display, which really isn't that abnormal. The thing that I thought was different is that the owners would be out in front of their houses with snacks to share, chairs to sit in and sometimes even singing carols. When I mentioned to Nate how different this was from the US he reminded me that it is summer here. Nobody wants to hang out in front of their house singing Christmas Carols in the middle of winter.

There was one house that was by far the coolest house I have ever seen. This picture really doesn't do it justice but its the only one we have. You could walk up onto their porch and in each window they had some kind of display. One was all angels, one all Santas, another a scene of a woman sitting next to her fireplace complete with mini stockings, etc. The amount of lights on the house was amazing. Especially when you consider that each strand is around $20. We were wondering if they had round the clock security to make sure their decorations were safe!


This is a picture of us standing outside of the house. Where else can you wear your Hawaiian shirt on Christmas?!

Its just a background!!

Why am I so obsessed with the background of my blog? I just spent the last hour looking through sites with really cute blog backgrounds and I can't seem to find any that I like enough to add it to mine. I think there might be something wrong with me!

I wonder if there are rules in the blogger world about how long you are allowed to keep your Christmas backgrounds...kind of like lights on your house.

Tis the Season

If I could send you all a Christmas card it might look something like this:


I might include a family picture like this one:



Or maybe this one:



Inside I might say something like this (except in a MUCH cooler font!):

Merry Christmas and G'day from down under! We wish we could be with you all these holidays but alas flight prices are high and the star trek transporter is still in the developmental stages. We do however have the guest room all made up in anticipation of your eminent arrival! We are happy, well and feeling blessed in our new life here in Australia. We are making friends and feeling more settled each day. Australia is a beautiful country with friendly people and amazing scenery. Its now officially summer here and we are excited to experience a hot Christmas! Liam and Jonas are extremely popular with the kids at church because of their "cute American accents" and have even adopted several Australian expressions! Vanessa has been spending her time working, making trips to the library, parks and shops and meeting other mothers for playgroup. Nate is busy with his preliminary dissertation research and he is now on the green bandwagon, riding his bike to and from campus every day (10 miles round trip).

We wish you a Merry Christmas and happy new year! We love you and miss you.

Love Nate, Vanessa, Liam and Jonas

The New Me

I FINALLY got a hair cut after over a year (thats right. I haven't had a haircut since right before we moved to Illinois in July of 2007!). I know you are probably looking at my picture thinking it looks exactly the same as it did before but I can assure you it doesn't! This is what it looked like before the cut:


Pretty different, right? Totally out of control! I think shorter hair makes me look younger. At the salon they asked my friend who went with me if I was in school (as in HIGH SCHOOL)!!

I am pretty sure I like it. Of course this is the first day and I haven't tried to do it myself yet. That's always the test for me. But I can still pull it back and I can still tuck it behind my ear (as seen above) so that is always good in case of an emergency (or laziness).

House Guests

We finally had our first house guest! We were so excited to have a visitor. We had a lot of fun with this possum.

You can come visit too and we promise we wont make you sleep in car park beams!

Parliament

On days when I don't start work until after noon we try to do something as a family. A couple weeks ago we went to the Parliament House.

wait mom, I have something in my teeth! - Liam

This is the view to the War Memorial (where we went a few posts ago)

The Australian Government symbol or logo I guess you would call it. Anything that has to do with the government has this on it.

Even the chairs had the symbol! I felt like I was important sitting in one.

We were hoping that the Senate would be in session. It wasn't. But this meant we got to take pictures inside. There were a lot of kids on field trips though. Don't you just love it when you go somewhere and there are 10 school buses parked outside? Yeah, awesome!

Cheese! Liam was really happy to be there.

The view of the the city from the top of the parliament building.

Sleepy heads

We have been thinking for a couple months now that we might need to put Liam and Jonas in separate bedrooms. Sometimes when we put them to bed at night they get really rowdy. We can hear them playing around all the way in the living room (its pretty far away). Sometimes we have to go in multiple times to get them to be quiet, fix their blankets and put them back in bed. We always check on them before we got to bed and more and more this is how we find them.








As frustrating as it is sometimes to calm them down and get them to sleep, it is so sweet how much these brothers love each other. Part of me would be sad to separate them but the other part of me just wants to be able to relax after we put them to bed. We'll see which part of me wins!!

(By the way, they do have their own beds. Jonas just climbs into Liam's all the time.)

Deep Conversations

Liam and I had a very deep conversation at about 8 this morning. It started out something like this:

Liam: Mom, I don't want to die.

Me: Uhhh... You don't have to worry about that, Bud.

Liam: But I'm scared to die. What will happen to me?

HE IS 4 YEARS OLD!!

The next 20 minutes were spent with me explaining The Plan to him while tears ran down his face. Eventually I figured out that he had a bad dream the night before. I can't imagine what kind of conversations we have in store for us in the near future!