March Shenanigans

We finished the Book of Mormon as a family in record time: a year and two months!  Much quicker than our last read through at 5 and a half years.  It helps that the oldest three are strong readers.  Ice cream sundaes to celebrate!

We were so lucky to have the Brisbane Science Festival come to Gladstone for a day!  And it was all free!  We got to watch a little planetarium show in an inflatable igloo, make UV bracelets, play with marbles, look at cool rocks, and my favorite... hold orb weavers!  (I'm growing out my hair so it's a little weird right now.)  These spiders are awesome!

We got to watch a cool science show with fire and chemicals and liquid nitrogen!  Everybody say "Science rocks!"  What a fun day!

Mike had a birthday last week!  A king cake for my kingly husband.

You'll notice we're missing a child.  Lydia felt bad missing Mike's birthday while she was at school camp (it's an Aussie thing).  We felt just as bad when we found out the phone call Mike ignored during dinner was her borrowing a teacher's phone to wish him happy birthday.  Oops.  She had a wonderful time hiking and doing ropes courses and bush dancing, but we're glad to have her back. We even saved her a piece of king cake.  

Alice is a serious busy body.  Here's what happens when momma's not fast enough putting the groceries away.  She found the grapes.

Speaking of groceries.  Look what just opened in Gladstone this week!  I guess we'll stick around a little longer.

5 Years in Australia

On Feb 23rd we celebrated 5 years of living in this beautiful country!  Mike picked up some coral trout at the fish market for dinner.  We figured since we swam with coral trout on the reef it was a fitting Australian dish.

We finished the meal with hokey pokey ice cream cones.  I'd always thought hokey pokey (a yummy butterscotch sort of flavor) was Australian.  Turns out it's from New Zealand.  Oh.  Eating our ice cream cones before the mozzies got us!

Earlier that week I made my first sticky date pudding (think a moist brown sugar and date cake  smothered in caramel sauce).  It's not too pretty, but is super delicious and is a very popular dessert here. They like to pour "custard" on it as well, which is like runny vanilla pudding.  Umm... Australian custard is not really our thing so we had ours with vanilla ice cream instead.  Yum!

The funny thing is when I told my Aussie friends of my recent accomplishment they said "that's not Australian, it's British."  Well it's Australian to me, so there!

We are so blessed to have gotten to live in this amazing country for 5 years, enjoying Australian and British and New Zealand and other Pacific Island cultures!