Yummy???

They definitely don't have seafood pizza at the Costco in Orem, Utah. I stare at this every time we go in and cringe. I always see people getting this when we are there and it makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Of course, I don't like seafood AT ALL... so maybe this actually looks good to some of you. Looks like it has oysters and prawns (we say shrimp) ....and mushrooms and olives? Now, I don't know a lot about seafood, but mushrooms and olives? That just doesn't seem to go in the mix.

1 Month Supply

This is what our one month supply of diapers and wipes looks like from Costco.

1 box: Size 3
1 box: Size 4
1 box: Size 6
2 boxes of wipes

Cost in Australian Dollars: $216

What should we do today?

Today I asked Teagan, “What do you want to do today?” and with his hand motions and very seriously he said, “Chips with ham in it and turkey with chocolate and butter… and I help to put sugar in it with no nuts in it.” He finished up with asking, “Does that sound like a good idea?”

Uhhh, Sure.

Our Vehicles

2008 Black Kia Rio Hatchback
*My mom drove for the first time in this picture on the 'other side'. It was only around the block, but she DID IT!

2009 Hyundai IMAX

Here is what we will be driving around in here. A shuttle bus and an economy car. :) Our Hyundai IMax will seat up to 8 people. It's HUGE! I NEVER thought I'd be excited to purchase or drive a van... but I guess I'm getting old or something. It just fits our lifestyle and I can't think of anything better. I love that it fits all three car seats across and still can fit 3 more people behind it. Jeremy's car is great on gas and is perfect to drive back and forth to work in. We are all ready for people to come visit us. We have enough room for all of us to go somewhere and a car for you to borrow if you want to go out on your own. (hint: hint)

AND--- My sister in-law just landed a job with an airline as a flight attendant. So... we should be getting some of the Green's here shortly! ;)

About Teagan

Teagan loves this book we got at the zoo in Sydney. He is so intrigued with spiders right now. That's why there's all the spider posts.

Teagan-
Favorite Food: Chicken Nuggets, Pancakes, and now Hot Cereal on toast
Favorite Treat: Ice Cream and anything candy
Favorite Friend: Mackenzie (his cousin in Arizona) a.k.a. his girlfriend as he says
Favorite Color: Orange
Favorite TV Show: Right now it's "Peppa Pig" & "Gaspard and Lisa"
Favorite thing to do: Playing with play-dough, playing with his racing cars, getting stickers and playing with daddy, he loves having bedtime stories that you make up with him too.
Favorite Animal: When I asked him he told me "Spiders". He has been very fascinated with them. (eww)
Favorite Toy: Anything Monster Trucks, Helicopters and/or Airplanes
Favorite Book: He doesn't have a favorite book. But he will spend hours looking at things like the ISpy books, or books with lots of pictures of "things". He also really loves looking at toy catalogs. lol
Nicknames: Tee-Tee, T-man
*I also call all three of the boys, "Little Bubba", "Little Gug", "Buggy Nut". I have no idea where those names came from. They just sort of came out one day.

Teagan is very particular, literal and analytical. You can't tell him he is going to take a shower if you meant he needs to get in the bath. He wants things done in a certain way and in a certain order. Example: if you make pancakes he wants syrup on it first and THEN you can cut it. He likes to know what the plan is for each day so that he knows what to expect. If we do something out of order or didn't tell him about something we are doing, then it makes him very upset. We really had to prepare him a lot for this big move and talk about what to expect for months before. I learned that we have to do that before going to the doctor to get shots too. If I surprise him with shots, then it's a big nightmare at the doctor, but if he knows they are coming, then he will be very brave and let them give the shots to him.

He is a problem solver and likes to have a 'handle' on things around him. Rules are black and white to him and sometimes we need to remind him that WE are the parents and that it's not his job to parent his little brother Tate. Teagan's "love language" is by giving him quality time. He loves having one on one time with his mommy and daddy or his Honey's & Papa's (grandparents).

Teagan is very thoughtful. He will open up doors and hold them for us or rock Steffan in his car seat when he's crying to calm him down. He remembers everything you say and talk about and is always applying the logic he hears to his surroundings. He is a rough and tumble little boy that likes to growl. And I think he is going to be a neat and tidy kid as he gets older. Teagan is really smart, but gets bored easily, so we will see how that works out when school starts.

Teagan started up in soccer practice for toddlers last week. We are not sure if he likes it, because all of the other soccer practices keep getting rained out right now. But hopefully it will be something he likes to do. I'm looking forward to starting him in something that he can expend his energy. :) We are thinking of putting him in pre-school when he turns four for at least 1 day a week to prepare him for kindergarten.


Teagan wanted a picture in front of this car because he loves cars and he loves orange!

Some of my favorite pics...

These were taken at a nearby park that we went to with our ward on Australia Day (Jan 26). Good job on the pics mom!

Australian Holidays

These are the holiday's that Jeremy gets off for from work through out the year. (Don't ask me why the weekend days are listed. I'm just copying it from his work sheet.)

Jan 1 - New Year's Day
Jan 2 - New Year's Day Public Holiday
Jan 26 - Australia Day
Mar 12 - Canberra Day
Apr 6 - Good Friday
Apr 7 - Easter Saturday
Apr 9 - Easter Monday
Apr 25 - Anzac Day
Jun 11 - Queen's Birthday
Oct 1 - Labour Day
Oct 8 - Family & Community Day
Dec 25 - Christmas Day
Dec 26 - Boxing Day

It will make me a little sad when we are here in the middle of winter and won't be there to celebrate the 4th of July and no Thanksgiving. We will have to celebrate it on our own.

Sugar is a drug

Last night we were watching the news and they were talking about how sugar is a drug and that it's as addicting as cocaine and other heavy drugs. They talked about how it slowly kills you by causing people to put on weight faster, it can contribute to you getting cancer and many other diseases that it contributes to such as diabetes. This is of course a common known thing (I think). The commentary on this news story that got me thinking was that someone said they thought kids shouldn't be able to drink soda until age 18. I thought it was interesting because if sugar is in fact this dangerous to our health, and if they actually passed some sort of law in that regard, then do you think people might take it more seriously as to how bad sugar is for your body? They were putting it in the category of alcohol or cigarettes in which a person has to be of mature age to make the decision to take such an addictive substance. Now, this is somewhat unrealistic of course because there is pretty much sugar in everything... from multi-grain bread to "no sugar" drinks. It is said that sugar actually blocks the receptors in your brain that tell you to stop eating and instead, you eat more. On top of this, many sugary things are targeted to our young children which gets them hooked early on in their lives.

We really want to make some major changes in our lifestyle while we are here. We have the perfect opportunity to focus on everything with 'our' family. We have discussed trying it out for a month, but have to really get in the mindset before doing it. But, I really think it would help us and help our kids. Do any of you have thoughts on this?

The desire to be healthy, and not just be 'skinny' became a lot more important now that our children are growing up and are following our bad examples. It is more of a punch in the face when you see the reality of it. In "The Family: A Proclamation to The World" it says, "Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs...". It hit me how the physical needs are not just feeding them and giving them something to do, but to do what is taught in primary and teach them to take care of their bodies.

As a side note... I am proud to report that I've lost 10 kilos (a.k.a. almost 25 lbs) since we have been here. Woo hoo! I'm sure that nursing and the fact that I just had a baby 3 months ago (and that we hardly ever eat out and that I don't like the red meat here) makes it a little easier for me, but I'm not complaining. :)

Deadliest Spider in the World

The Funnel Web Spider is the deadliest spider in the world. And where do they live? You guessed it... They live here in Australia. In fact, we found one in the place we are staying. AND, it wasn't OUTside - - it was INSIDE! Luckily it was small and it looks like it was a male, which means it has a smaller body and is less poisonous. However, it doesn't make it any less freaky-deaky.

The reason they are called Funnel Web Spiders is because of the way they weave their webs. They weave their webs like a funnel hole and then hide in the center of it for things to crawl in. We saw a lot of funnel webs at the Canberra Zoo. Here is a picture of what the web looks like. You can kind of see the spider lurking in the background. When I took this picture, I pressed the button to take it and the light popped up on the camera first instead of taking the picture and I screamed and just about peed my pants thinking that it was jumping out at me.



Here is the before and after shots of the one running on our wall one night. Sorry it's not very good. I posted another one from online so you can see what it looks like. This one was only about 2 1/2 inches long from leg to leg span. Not like the Golden Orb Weaver I posted about previously, which is about 12 inches when you include leg span.


This is a spider that lives on the ground and has to fight for it's food, therefore making it more deadly than a spider that catches all it's prey with a web.

It was a good night

Week 1 with out my mom here? I think we were being tested. After Tate had gone to the hospital on Monday, Teagan got sick with a bad fever on Tuesday night. Teagan then passed it on to Tate and Jeremy. Plus Tate is also teething and getting his 2 year molars and is pretty grumpy already. Steffan and I only got sore throats and runny noses... thank goodness! Jeremy was puking on Saturday night (so you can see this lasted through the whole week) and was supposed to give a talk in sacrament on Sunday, but had to bail on it at the last second.

Sunday night everyone started feeling better. That night decided to have all the kids asleep by 8pm so that we could have a night with no kids! I said our family prayers that night and luckily it was long enough that Teagan fell asleep with his arms folded on the couch for the rest of the night. lol YES! One down! Tate when right in to bed and fell asleep right away and we rocked Steffan to sleep shortly after! Woo Hooo!

Jeremy and I got to sit and just talk for awhile. We got to watch an ENTIRE movie on TV (The Transporter). This never happens! We even got to watch some of Everybody Loves Raymond which we used to do in Utah when we'd go to bed. We didn't have to wake up today until 7am, which means we got an entire 4 hours to ourselves and 7 hours of sleep with no interruptions. Amazing! :)

Questacon * Coolest thing for kids

This is one of the coolest places for kids. We went there once and I bought a 2 year family pass. The whole building is kind of like the science stuff at Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum (where you can see things like how wind velocity is calculated or gravity pull, etc). Questacon has a spot that is called the MiniQ and has all sorts of different themed rooms.

They have the following pretend rooms for kids:

1. a Bakery- there is an oven that looks like it turns on, a show case with trays of different kinds of breads and other pastries,a cash register, a menu and magnet board of prices, an eating area for the kids to pretend like they are serving you food with plates, cups, hamburgers, french fries, etc.
2. a Construction area- they have little construction hats and overalls in this area with tubes that you can put balls in at the top of the room and watch them come down at the bottom that gets brought back up to the top with a machine, a conveyor belt to move bricks, and little construction cones
3. an under the sea room- this room is dark and has tubes with lights and bubbles with tunnels and underwater animals in crevasses that you can see with little flashlight ropes that are connected to the wall.
4. a baby area for babies to lay and play with toys
5. a reading area with lots of books and games- this area also has lots of reading material for moms to see whats going on in Canberra or if you needed help with the stage your kids are in, etc.
6. mini toddler potties- love these!
7. a play gym
8. a mini mechanic service station- this has little mechanic suits and tools with mini cars to drive and a little gas station pump
9. a vet clinic- has an xray machine and lots of pets with their own cages and vet/dr tools to check them, including a cage with lizards and other things to look at
10. a water area- this area has little water smocks to put over your kids clothes so they don't get wet. you can play with fake water animals and catch them in nets and fill up water buckets and dump them. plus it has water spouts spraying water and a little ball maze to watch the balls go up into a machine and come back down (see pic).
11. a spaceship room- this room has all these little interactive space ship features that you can do a blast off and look out into space. i didn't take a pic of this room. but it's really cool!

Plus there's a place to put dirty toys that need to be sanitized and hand sanitizer all over. This is a mother's dream! We will be going here quite often.

Australian HealthCare: Socialism

Day 1 on my own:
So, I was feeling very confident to handle all three boys after my mom left on Sunday. I had planned my meals, snacks, nap time and play time activities, etc for the day. Then while I was typing up an email I heard a big "smack" in the other room and then a scream of pain and then that silence when you know it's so bad that they are just waiting to catch their breath so the next big cry can come out. I ran in the other room and see Tate's mouth dripping full of blood. I immediately became hysterical. My first reaction is that I looked at Teagan and said, "What did you do!?", which I now feel bad about. Teagan just started yelling and saying, "Tate did it all by himself. I didn't do it." So you could see some of the blood on the side of the night stand and I could see that they were playing on the bed and Tate fell off and sliced it open right under his lip. I started panicking looking in his mouth to make sure all his teeth were still attached and then see a big gash inside his mouth that he bit down on when he fell. I immediately ran to the First Aid kit my mom left (which I was sooo grateful) and pulled out an antiseptic wipe (which was totally dry- and is even that much funnier if you know my mom) and then wet it with some water and wiped off all the blood. To my horror, it looked like he needed stitches. Ugh! My mind reverted to how I felt when Teagan had to get stitches, TWICE! It was the most awful thing for me to bare. I HATE watching my kids be hurt and feeling helpless. I did NOT want to go through that again.

Now, this happened at about 2:45 in the afternoon and Jeremy was still at work. I felt panicked that I didn't really know where to go. I hadn't used our insurance here yet and didn't know how it worked, not to mention I didn't know where the hospital was. Plus, it didn't sound convenient to drag all three of my boys there by myself.

I called Jeremy and his work was nice enough to let him come home. I was trying hard not to cry cause all I could think of was doctors and nurses strapping Tate down to a board and tying him down to give him millions of shots in his lip to numb it for stitches. Jeremy got home a little after 3 and we headed off to the hospital with our unreliable GPS. Yes, I said "UNreliable" which is another story in itself. At any rate, we did actually make it to the hospital to find that the ER is a FIVE minute walk from the parking lot, which I found odd. Isn't the point of "Emergency" somewhat of an urgent matter? We then hiked it in with the three boys and walk thru the doors to see that there were literally over 100 people waiting in the ER. WHAT?! Jeremy and I looked at each other with a look of dread. I stayed for two hours until they at least saw him to see what we were there for. It was also irritating because Tate's cut was still slowly bleeding. I was missing my essential oils that I couldn't bring with me because of Australian customs. Geranium would've stopped the bleeding right away. I finally had to take the other two boys home after that since there was an unknown time of waiting ahead to see the doctor. Jeremy stayed there for another FOUR HOURS with Tate. I went home and made dinner and waited a bit before I came back to find that many of the same people were still there waiting. I asked to go back into the pediatric rooms to see them and got there in time to meet with the doctor.

As I walked through the back, I noticed that not only were the rooms packed full, but the hallways had patients laying on beds, hooked up to IVs in it. The rooms had 4-5 people in them. It looked like what Grey's Anatomy looks like when there is a natural disaster or something. I made it back to see my sweet little boy falling asleep on his daddy's shoulder and he started crying when he saw me. I picked him up and held him until the doctor and nurse came back over. Luckily it was something that could just be glued and he didn't have to get stitches. Pheeeww!

The end of day one?
Plan failed.
Will try again tomorrow.
Cost of day one?
$433.00 AUD *Hopefully our insurance will pick it up for us. We don't have medicare (which is different than the US medicare). Medicare here is basically the medical card you give them that takes off what the government will pay, if I understand that correctly. Since we aren't citizens, we don't get that.

I've now added American Healthcare to the docket of things we are grateful for.

Australian Golden Orb Weaver Spider

So... my previous post on Australian spiders is TRUE! They are HUGE! When we were at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, these spiders were everywhere. You definitely didn't want your kids traipsing around in the plants or bushes. My mom took these pictures. You can see a little spider next to the big one. The little spider reflects what a normal, large spider would look like in Utah. These spiders had bodies (not including the leg span) as big as Tate's (my 20 month old) palm. It was creeeeeeeeeeepy! We found that these types of spiders that hang up high are less venomous than the spiders found on the ground. This is because the spiders on the ground have to hunt and fight for their prey and these types of spiders just have to wait for something to fly into their web. You can see some of the little bugs that have flown into their web and have been spun up in web for eating. Eww! One of these spiders was hanging over our head as we walked under it and a girl behind us put her umbrella up before proceeding. lol

Goodbye Honey Coco

Sunday morning we took my mom to the airport and said our good-bye's. It made us a little home sick knowing that she was going back to Utah with out any of us. She has been here just about 2 months. I can't believe it's been that long already. It's going by fast! Hopefully she feels like she got to do some cool stuff while she was here and not just watching kids while we are trying to put our life together here.

It's weird not having her here. We've been living with her since mid-October. We worried if the boys would handle it OK. Teagan impressed me that night when he said, "I miss Honey. I want her back here." I told him that we will see her again and he went through asking me about each of his honey's and papa's, if he'd see them again... Papa Kerry, Papa Jason, Honey Lona and Papa Tom. I reassured him that we would see them all again and he said, "Ok. I's still happy mama." I held back my tears of relief. What a grown up boy! Did he really know that I was so worried about him? 'Cause that was the best thing he could have said to me to let me know he would be OK.

We appreciate you mom! You will be missed. Thank you for taking 2 months out of your life to come to another country and leave your life behind (and thank you Jason for that as well). I know that Franklin has missed you and am glad you are home to give him a hug for us.

PS. I need to put batteries in my camera now and start taking pics. My mom has been taking pics of everything. In fact, my mom AND my dad have been taking all the pictures for me the last 3 years that I haven't had to. So I better get better at doing it!

Cute Koalas

So, I LOVE going to the zoo's here. You get to see so many animals that you wouldn't normally get to see in Utah. This includes crocodiles, spiders, wallaby's, wombats, kangaroos, and of course koalas.

You even get the opportunity to touch and or feed a lot of these different animals while you're there. In the above pictures we are at Sydney's Taronga Zoo and we got to touch and get pics with these cute little koalas. They are way cuter in person. They could barely stay awake while they were eating. I guess they sleep a good portion of their life and move very slowly since they get all the water and nutrition they need from the eucalyptus. However, this plant doesn't have much energy, so that is why they conserve most of their energy by sleeping so much.

And if you're wondering why Teagan and Tate weren't in the pictures, it's because they were totally zonked out in the prams (strollers). They missed all of the cool things. I felt bad. :(

What will it be?

Cheese & Bacon Balls?
Burger Rings?
Tasty Toobs?
Peri Peri Chicken Chips? (Still trying to figure out what "peri peri" seasoning is. It's on everything here.
Honey Baked Ham Chips?
Chicken Chips?
Twisties, Cheese flavored?
French Fry chips?
Sweet Chilli & Sour Cream chips?
Honey Soy Chicken chips?



Hmmmm... Interesting, huh? This was a vending machine at the Canberra Zoo & Aquarium. We tried the Burger Rings and to no surprise, they were no bueno.

Australian War Memorial & The Birds

A couple weeks after we got here we went to the Australian War Memorial. It is really pretty and is in the center of Canberra. If you look straight ahead, you can see the Parliament building. We took the boys here to let them run around and get their energy out at the end of the day. There were cockatoo's everywhere. You can see a pic of one on top of the Australian flag at the memorial in the collage above. I will also add that the birds here are psychotic! They don't have nice little cheeps and chirps. They have the most obnoxious noises... all of them do. Some of them sound like dying children. It creeped me out when we got here. I thought it was really cool that there were exotic cockatoos and parakeet looking birds (not sure what they really are) all over just flying around at first, but now I can't stand to hear them. I'm sorry if you are a bird lover... bless you if you are. ;)

Here are some YouTube videos of two of the most common noises you hear. Think of them going all at the same time with a group of them and that's what a peaceful summers morn sounds like.

Cockatoo: (the cockatoo is the loud, obnoxious noise that you hear at the beginning but can't see)


Raven:


We don't really have any Kookaburra's on this side of Australia that I know of. I believe they are more found in Western Australia.

As a side note, the Parliament building right now has a bunch of aboriginals camping out in front of it. I find it odd. They actually attacked Julia Guillard, the Prime Minister here on their Australian Day (Jan 26th), which is like our Independence Day. They burned the Australian flag that day and caused a big riot in front of the Parliament building. It was kind of crazy. There used to be a lot more people camping out there, but now just a few tents remain. Is it me, or if people were camping out in front of the White House to protest, wouldn't they have been forced to leave? Or do people do that?

Rain, Rain Go Away!

We have been in Sydney the last few days and just arrived back in Canberra last night. I have much to update!

However, it has been raining a lot here in Australia in general which makes our internet very slow. We are at Jeremy's work right now and I wanted to post 'something' while I had a chance.

It has been raining so much this last month in Queensland, which is the state above us. Many people are having floods. The rain is moving now in our direction and it has started flooding in certain areas up in Sydney. We left Sydney at a good time. There have been flood watch warnings going up today in Sydney because their dams and resevoirs are filling up to capacity. It has been raining in Canberra since last Sunday and is supposed to continue on through next Monday. They have started to do flood watch warnings for us too. Some parts of the ACT (which is the same area we live) have even started flooding. Keep Australia in your prayers for the rain to slow down or stop. If it rains like this for the next few weeks, we might need to build an ark!

The Green Crack

So the other day we were in a store and Teagan had his hands down the back of his pants. I said, "Teagan, what's wrong?" and he said, "I'm itchy." So I said, "Show me where...and I kept pointing and saying,"here? here?". Teagan kept shaking his head. I was worried that maybe his diaper had been on too long or something. Then he stopped and yelled, "No MOM... it's itchy in my crack!" I hurried and looked around in all directions hoping no one heard that. A lady had walked by right when he yelled "CRACK" and snickered as she walked by.

By golly... like father like son, eh? (love you jer)

Steffan Smiles

Here it is. I couldn't find this cute smiling pic of this little guy the other day. Doesn't that little smile just melt your heart?