Sunday, January 3, 2010

Australia!!

Back in the first week of November, we were lucky enough to get to go to Australia! We went with all of the regionals at Platinum. I know you think all we ever do is travel and play, and you are right, but at least we feel very grateful for it!
It was a long plane ride, but not as bad as I thought. Maybe I am only saying that because it has been a little while though. We went to Cairns, which is the northeast area of Australia. We choose that area because we wanted to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef. It is more of a rain forest than how you typically picture Australia to be. It was beautiful! I have waited to post because we had other people take most of our pictures for us, but I still haven't got them from them, so I will just show a few we took with our own camera, and maybe post the better ones later.The view from the apartment we stayed in.




We spent a day learning about the Aboriginal culture. They did some amazing dances and songs on the didgeridoo. It was a lot of fun!

Matt spent the majority of his time there harassing the wildlife! You wouldn't believe how good he is at catching animals. This is a tree frog that kept hanging out by one of our windows. Matt couldn't reach him because it was up so high. He put together a little contraption that involves a broom, some part of the vacuum, one of my hair ties, and a cup from the kitchen.

Don't ask. I'm not sure why, but I guess it is some way of proving what a man you are by letting crabs hang from your ears.

And more frogs...these pictures are only a few of the animals he chased around. Really, I wasn't kidding when I said the majority of the trip. He was in heaven!

Feeding a kangaroo! There were wallaby's all over where we stayed. The boys were convinced they could catch one, but they were dreaming! Those things are fast!
Like I said, these are the only pictures we have right now, but it was an incredible trip. Scuba diving was amazing other than the fact that I spent the whole day puking. The boat ride out to the reef made me really sick, but of course I still had to dive...we were at the Great Barrier Reef! You would be surprised, puking under water isn't as hard as you would think. It really was beautiful even if I did feel miserable!
We also took a canopy tour over the jungle, I got to hold a koala bear, Ate a lot of weird fruit and yummy chocolate, hiked up to some waterfalls and swam in big pools of water (probably my favorite part), and built some pretty cool sand sculptures. Anyway, more pictures later.

Thanks to Platinum for the trip, and to Matt's sister, Britney and her husband, Jeff. They watched our kids for us the whole time we were gone, which was not an easy task I'm sure!




8 comments:

stef j. said...

holy cow that's AWESOME!!

Kelli @ The Loss Cause said...

Fantastic skinny pic with the kangaroo. You look great. Australia (I can never spell that right the first time) looks super fun.

Susanna said...

I was thinking the same about the skinny pic as Kelli. What a fun trip, it sounds so awesome!! My fav pic is the one of Matt with the crabs hanging from his ears, he's crazy :)

The Knudsen Family said...

What a fun trip. That is so neat that you get to go on those trips with the company. I am glad you had a fun time and can't wait to see more pics.

Nellie said...

I have all those pics all ready for you...they are all together on an external hard drive so Bubba just needs to bring it to work and transfer everything to everyone's laptops so that you all have them...I'll remind him AGAIN! Tell Matt to bug him!

brit said...

we loved having your kids, no it wasn't easy....but it was worth it. my kids LOVED having their cousins here. i would totally do it again....at least for a couple of days:) glad to see some pictures up, and you do look skinny!

carrie said...

You look great Miriam! I wish I were there, looks like an amazing place!

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