Mogo Zoo

While in Batemans Bay we went to Mogo Zoo. Lots of cool animals and we got to watch them feed a few of them. Maybe you don't really care what animals we saw but we thought they were cool. A few of my favorites-

Pygmy Marmosets

Emporer Tamarin

Red Panda

posing otters

By far the strangest animals of all...


and some unknown monkey species:

Luxury Camping

In August we went camping at a beach town called Batemans Bay (I mentioned it briefly in another post). The place we camped at was great. We both felt like we were so spoiled. They had nice showers, the bathrooms were right across a small road, electricity (for movie watching after dark), bbq area, fridges, freezers, playground, jumping pillow (see pictures below), swimming pool and the ocean was so close we could hear the waves crashing from our tent. It was nothing like the camping I remember from growing up - where if you wanted a bath you took your bar of Ivory soap and a wash cloth down to the freezing cold river/lake. Either way camping is fun. Here are a few pictures from our weekend. My favorite part was the beach. I could sit at the beach all day and play in the sand, play tag with the water, explore the rocks or just sit and do nothing. I had a hard time deciding on just a few beach pictures so I'm posting a bunch! :)

Jonas fell in the water (3rd change of clothes that day)

The jumping pillow was so cool. I wish we had one in our backyard. It is just a huge air filled pillow that is surrounded by sand. Nate got on it too but right as he was getting on Jonas wet his pants for the 2nd time that day. So I had to run off and get him changed. By the time we made it back Liam and Nate were finished.

Tidbinbilla

I am such a slacker lately with the blogging. Here is my attempt to catch up a little bit. We have been doing things, I just haven't gotten around to posting them. I didn't realize how many things I haven't posted until we were sending around Picasa albums to our families.

April 12th (I can't believe its been a month!!) we went to Tidbinbilla again - we went for Liam's birthday last year. It is a nature reserve with some nice walks and if you are lucky, you might see some native Australian animals. Last time we only saw kangaroos, emu and some other birds.

This time we saw a wallaby...

Kangaroos...

a huge bird...

and a KOALA!!

This was a huge deal for us! We knew they had them at the reserve but they are hard to find. You are basically just walking on a path through bush land. The first time we went it seemed like it would be impossible to find one. There is a man at church who has lived in Australia all his life but has never seen a koala in the wild. We did have a little help though. Someone had spotted it earlier in the day so the workers at the reserve put a marker along the path to tell you where to look.


Nate, Liam and Jonas climbing on rocks.

Mom picked a smaller one :)

Liam and Jonas looking towards the platypus pond. We haven't seen any but our friends who went the next day saw a few. That is my goal for our next visit (not that I have much control over it).

The Name Game

The other day Nate and I were looking up girl names (don't worry, this is not an announcement! It takes us a while to agree on names so we figured we should get a (very) early start.) Nate found this site Behind the Name that randomly generates names based on what category you pick. Here are some it came up with for us.

Norwegian: Ester Andrea

English: Angela Tilly

Irish: Naome Ide

Finnish: Iima Riina

German: Wilhelmina Petronella

Danish: Magdalene Agnethe

Spanish: Juliana Maite

Russian: Klava Feodora

Italian: Calogera Lora

French: Mirabelle Francette

Literature: Araminta Vivien

Transformer: Eject Sixshot

Fairy: Jellygaze Glitterberry

Hillbilly: Dolly-Sue Molly-Sue

Missing: Stamp

I took Liam and Jonas to the library today for story time. While we were there they each got a stamp on their hand. Jonas was especially proud of his and made sure to show Nate when he got home from school. Tonight after their bath Jonas realized his stamp was gone. He got really upset and could hardly tell me what was wrong (Liam had to translate for me). I tried to comfort him and explain that it washed off in his bath. So a little while later when we were in the bathroom brushing teeth Jonas started looking in the bathtub and asked where the stamp was!

who needs sleep?

Ugh...ME!!

THURSDAY: The possums who decided to make our house theirs had a party on our roof. They were running back and forth, into the backyard, back up on the roof, fighting (or maybe mating?) and making way too much noise for us to get a good night sleep. You might be wondering why we haven't gotten rid of them yet but we have learned that it is very hard to buy weapons in this country. Even something like a sling shot or a pellet gun. Even if we managed to smuggle a sling shot into the country there are heavy fines for harming them. I think possums have more rights than humans.

FRIDAY: We went camping in a beach town called Batemans Bay. We were excited to get a powered camp site so we could watch movies on the laptop after dark. Turns out the powered sites are in a VERY well lit area. We had at least 6 street lights surrounding our tent. I woke up at about 1 am thinking it was almost time to wake up because the sun was coming up and couldn't fall back asleep. Great if you need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night but not so great for sleeping.

SATURDAY: Still camping in Batemans Bay it got really windy that night. The rain flap being blow around was really loud which made it hard to fall asleep. Just when we would get to sleep the wind would pick up and wake us up. When the stakes started coming up and the walls started collapsing from the wind at around 1:30 am we decided we would have to move into the car if we were going to get any sleep. First we had to move everything from inside of the car into the tent so we could fit in the back of the station wagon. (we found the street lights very handy that night!) But let me just say that the back of a station wagon is not exactly a comfy fit for a family of 4.

Luckily we were home Sunday night. I don't think our bed has ever felt so comfortable! I got around 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Happy Easter!

Did you have chocolate for breakfast too?