Prawns for Dinner

Unfortunately we haven't been able to get out too much this week since Todd has been pretty busy with school work. He has several big assignments due on Thursday and then a week break which should be pretty fun. He is still trying to get a job but we are enjoying the extra time we have together in the meantime. This last little while I have been amazed by how big Jett is getting. He is no longer a little baby. He is a solid little boy!

I have loved watching his little personality come out as he has gotten older. He is always on the go and he lives up to his name because he is a fast little tyke. His favorite things are eating food (anything mommy and daddy are eating), dancing to music, trying to grab the computer, playing in the sand, standing up, smiling at strangers, and exploring. He likes to skip nap times because he does not want to miss anything. I can't believe he is going to turn 1 next month!

I see you! We have to get creative with toys around here...

We finally cooked up some prawns! We had to shell them which was kinda weird and gross since we had to take off the heads and legs but they were really fresh which made it worth it.

Todd got a little too excited I think...

The garlic/butter sauce Todd prepared was heavenly! I'm not even that big of a shrimp fan and I loved it. Don't mind that baked potato there with all the fixings...Todd and I need all the help we can get to fatten up!

We did manage to get out to Balmoral Beach for a picnic and it was a gorgeous day! We've had a lot of rain here lately so it was nice to enjoy the sunshine.

I also managed to get a few headbands shipped off to a couple friends that are photographers. It will be nice to have pictures of them on girl babies instead of having Jett model them :-)


Hopefully we will have more exciting pictures next time! :-)

Palm Beach

Last week Robbie and Beth called us up and asked if we wanted to go to Palm Beach with them. We were happy to spring at any opportunity to go see something new, so we told them yes and we got our swimming costumes on.

On the way there, they told us they had never actually been to the beach themselves, but that it was the location for a popular Aussie television series called" Home and Away." It was radical, dude!

The beach actually kinda has two sides. One side facing the ocean, the other the inner-part of a bay. The day was great and there were heaps of surfers and beach-goers there.

Here is an ad for "Home and Away." Apparently, the show has been running since the 70's! We've seen a few episodes (actually, Christianne is starting to make sure we watch it!) and sure enough, it was the same beach we got to go visit. The show is a drama about young love.

Jett is loving the beach. Up until this moment, he was doing pretty good about not putting things into his mouth. Why he decided on trying a twig for his first taste, I don't know. But know we have to keep an even closer eye on him. He's also got a new hat.

Christianne insisted and I agreed that we get Jett a matching shirt as me. Do we look very touristy? Yes. But do we look awesome? Yes.

Jett's strong enough to hold himself up now, so long as he can use my hair as handlebars.

The newest lifegaurds surveying the area.

Jett kinda looks like he wants to get into he water here, but he really doesn't. There aren't many things he is scared of just yet, but crashing waves is definitely one of them. After he was done playing in the sand, we stripped him down to dip him in the water and clean off the sand. He hated it, but after he got dry he was just dandy.

Hmmmm... there seem to be a lot of pictures of me. Jett and I kinda had a photoshoot this day because Christianne liked how they were coming out.

That's Robbie and Beth. Robbie is training to be a navy clearance diver. When he graduates, and if his knee recovers, he will have to dismantle underwater mines. (Crazy, right?) Beth works at a daycare center right now. Both of them are very cool and take the time to help my with my Aussie accent.

The whole family at Palm Beach. Christianne was looking great. She went out into the water this day with Beth to tackle the waves. We really had a good beach day.

All hail Jett, King of the Beach!

After our day out, we stopped for some meat pies at a little shop. They were delish. The rest of this last week has been full of school, homework, and going to Church for General Conference. Things are going well, and we are happy to report that no one has been attacked by any deadly creeping things.

Zoo, kangaroo steaks, haircut, and Oceanworld

These last few days have been pretty eventful. We decided to give the zoo another go since we live so close and last time Jett was a cranky pants from all the traveling we did. This time we hopped on the Mosman Rider (A free bus that you just wave down and it just drives in a loop around Mosman) and 15 minutes later we were at the zoo. Needless to say, Jett was in a much happier mood this time around! After 2 visits to the zoo we still haven't gotten around to all the animals. Good thing we are Zoo Friends so we get to go whenever we want!

I love Taronga Zoo. It is in such a beautiful place and you get amazing views of the city including the bridge and opera house.

Jett and a peacock that was wandering around.

Pygmy hippopotamus

Jett loved watching all the animals! I don't know why this is the only one we really took pictures of! Haha. We also liked the snow leopard and we thought the gorillas were really funny. We even saw a baby gorrilla being cuddled by his mum. We also saw the dad go to the bathroom and one of the kids eat the poo which made the crowd go "ewwwww." I guess you had to be there but it seriously was one of the funniest things I've seen.

Todd has been talking about eating Kangaroo for ages. Well we did it! Todd made some steaks and we got our first taste. It was pretty good but after a few bites I was done. I just couldn't get the image of a cute little kangaroo out of my head. Does that sound stupid? It should since I love all other kinds of meat!

My handsome boys. Jett was in desperate need of a hair cut...

So Todd held him and I started cutting! Usually my sister takes care of all of our hair but we are kinda roughing it while here in Sydney. Definitely not the greatest cut but it looks okay! Just don't look too close.
We also went to Manly beach for the second time since we've been here. Only a 20 minute bus ride! Things are good here in Mosman :-) This time we went to Oceanworld (if you watched Amazing Race that is where they went to dive with the sharks). It was pretty small and we didn't see anyone swimming with the sharks so I wasn't too impressed. I thought the aquarium was way better. We still had fun though!

Todd made me take this picture.

My favorite part was seeing the big turtles swimming in the tanks. So awesome.

Jett liked the mermaid...maybe a little too much??!

After Oceanworld we just walked around the shops and got some burgers at Hungry Jacks (AKA: Burger King). We finally got Jett a hat and a shirt that matches Daddy's Manly Beach shirt which you will see in the next post.
And to top it off we splurged and got some ice cream! The perfect ending to a perfect day!

Take up thy bed and walk

Its Wednesday again. We are getting our laundry done little by little and our little apartment is becoming functional! We deflated our air mattress that we have been sleeping on for the past 2.5 weeks yesterday and slept in a real bed...even though it wasn't the most comfortable nights sleep.

On Friday we went and picked up the remainder of the stuff we bought from that English couple including the mattress that went to the bed. They only lived about a few hundred meters away so Todd got to carry the mattress by himself down the sidewalk and all the way up to the apartment. We got some funny looks on the way (I couldn't really help since I had Jett) and one older woman said "Take up they bed and walk" as she passed by. We got a kick out of that. The joys of not having a car! We also scored a new hair dryer, several sets of shampoo and conditioner, towels, bed linens not including sheets, and some other random things for free from the same couple. We had to sneak in some laundry loads in order to wash their blankets, pillow cases, and mattress cover in order to use them so we didn't officially get to sleep in our bed until everything was clean. But the mattress is pretty old and hard and small (Its a double) and my mom mentioned something about watching for bedbugs (I didn't know those were real) so I didn't sleep too well. I guess we will just have to wait and see if we end up getting bites or not.

Jett loved helping Daddy set up the bed. Todd had to get underneath and tighten some screws so Jett crawled under there with him and had a blast, except for when he got a little stuck and then he freaked out a little.


Jett is my little shadow these days. He loves to be involved in whatever I am doing and gets frustrated if he is not included. Its pretty darn cute how he follows us around.


On Saturday night Robby and Beth took us to an awesome Mexican restaurant which we really enjoyed. We are used to eating Mexican food at least twice a week so we've been missing it here in Sydney where there is not a big selection of authentic Mexican restaurants. Rob and Beth got their first taste of alcohol (by accident) when Todd told them that he thought a drink being served was horchata (he didn't have his glasses on!) but it was really a margarita. Robby got it since he likes to try new things and they started sipping it and then saying that it tasted nasty. I got a closer look and realized it was a margarita and told them and they immediately dumped it out! Oops! We all had a good laugh about it.

The view from our living room window. I love being able to see the sky all the time!

Jett can now stand up in his cot. He sleeps great through the night but struggles with naptime. He would definitely rather stay up and play. He also doesn't like the flash of my camera. As you can see in the picture our room actually looks like a bedroom now as opposed to the mess it was before. We also got pots and pans yesterday so we can cook! We are so happy to expand our dinner menus to more than just pizza hut, meat pies, and frozen lasagna. We still need a vacuum though. Yesterday Todd and I served as the vacuums and now the floors look a lot better. Todd even found a little diamond that had fallen out of my wedding ring a couple days ago while we were picking stuff off the floor. I couldn't believe that he found it. It will be awhile before I can get it fixed though.

Last but not least I sold my first two headbands in Australia! My friend Heather took this photo of her adorable little girl with my headband and I'm so happy I can use it for advertising. I'm in love with this picture!

Dirty clothes, three fridges, and meat pies

Has it been a week already since I last posted? Where do I even start? I guess I should update more often so I don't get so behind. I guess I will just start where I left off last week.

Laundry Wednesday
The week we moved in was absolutely crazy and we were exhausted by the end of it (I think you got that from my last post). Okay so we share the washer and dryer on our floor with 3 other apartments and we have assigned times to do our laundry. For some reason our apartment has the least amount of time to do the wash- Sunday morning and Wednesday morning while the other apartments have at least a full day and a half if not more. Obviously we can't do laundry on Sunday morning since we go to church so that leaves Wednesday from 7 -12 in the morning.

Well from all the moving around we had acquired quite a bit of dirty laundry and I was SO excited for Wednesday morning to come so I could get our clothes washed and dried (we had been going for over a month without a dryer remember). I was pretty discouraged around this time because I didn't feel quite at home yet and our fridge wasn't working. I seriously set my alarm for 7 Wednesday morning and woke up extremely happy to clean our clothes. Well each apartment has a power point (outlet) to plug in the washer and they are all locked. So we got the key for ours and it turned out the lock was totally busted but Todd worked on it and about 20 minutes later he got the lock off. Phew! So we put in all our dirty underwear and waited for the washer to finish the cycle. When it did, we put our clothes in the dryer but we could not figure out how to turn it on! There was no "on" button and we tried everything we could think of but it did not start. We asked a neighbor but apparently she has her own washer and dryer in her apartment (maybe we can use her days in the future??) and she couldn't figure it out but she gave us the number of an older lady who is like the secretary of the apartment building.

We called her and sure enough she said the dryer was broken! Just our luck. Nothing seemed to be coming easy to us at this point. I hope we weren't the ones that broke it. However she was the sweetest lady ever and she offered to dry our clothes in her dryer. She did and she even folded all of our clothes before she happily returned them to us. We had all of our underwear/garments in the load and we wondered what she thought of that?! Sadly, we were not able to do all the laundry I had hoped for so I am looking forward once again to Laundry Wednesday (tomorrow). Hopefully all goes well so we can smell better this week.

Three Fridges
Well at the end of last week we had one fridge that wasn't working. We have now had three different fridges in our kitchen in the last week. Todd was able to call the guy we got the fridge from and he came and exchanged it with another older fridge he had and it works great now. Thank goodness the man was honest and made things right. We don't care that it is old and makes a really loud creaking noise when you open it...it works! We also found a queen bed online for free but we needed a truck to move it and after calling around to some ward members we realized nobody really had trucks so we had to scratch that plan. So I got back on gumtree (Sydney's craigslist) and found this guy who was selling a bunch of stuff because he was moving. He lived very close to us so he and Todd were able to move everything without a car. We ended up getting a bed, a couch with no legs, two tvs, a tv stand, dishes, silverware, toaster, and a brand new bar fridge that we are going to resell. The guy is actually moving back to England and along with his dishes he had teacups so we now have teacups. So, things are gradually coming together, and we are very happy about that.

Food
Since we're talking about food now, I think I'll take over, so this is Todd writing now. We've discovered a lot of new places in Mosman, our new suburb. Since it took so long to get a fridge, we've had to do some exploring for fresh food. Fortunately, there is a Pizza Hut less than a block away, so that has saved us a few times already! Only 5 bucks for a decently sized pizza- that's pretty good! We found the grocery store (Franklins) not too far away. The fruits and vegetables we buy at another store next door.

We have a made some good friends in the ward, Beth and Robbie. They are some awesome Aussies! We always have a good time trying to get each other's accent down. Well, one day Robbie busted out a can of tuna and ate it straight from the can. Todd was surprised and asked what on earth he was doing, and he said it made a really good snack. Soooo, next time we went out to the store, we bought some lemon-pepper flavored tuna and we loved it! We've also fallen in love with a typical Aussie meal: meat pies. Those are delicious.

Other News
As for some other things going on: Jett is crawling around and on top of everything. He has become a pro of lifting himself up and standing while holding on to things. Sometimes we will find him in his crib, sitting up and playing with a toy. Very cute.

Christianne is taking over the house and making it cozy and nice. She makes sure Jett is alright, and loves planning out adventures. She is also starting to get back to her headbands and figuring out how to sell them in Sydney.

I had my first couple of papers due this week. The hardest part is making sure words are spelled the right way: "colour" instead of "color" and "analyse" instead of "analyze." It's tricky! I also got a calling in the ward as ward executive secretary. It will be quite some work to do, but it will be fun to get a closer look at how the church works in Australia. Finally, now that we're all settled in, I'm looking for a good part-time job.

Balmoral Beach
The best part of where we live is that we are just a few minutes of a walk down to a nice beach. It is great! I have a feeling we will spend quite a few of our free afternoons there. Balmoral Beach is within Sydney Harbour, so the waves are quite small, which makes it great for kids and families to play in the water.

Here, Jett had his first experience with sand. He was a little worried about it at first, but now he loves it! We just let him go for it and get all dirty. You won't hear a peep from him and he could play for hours and hours. We douse him in sunscreen and keep him in the shade.

Mommy and Jett at Balmoral. The area around the beach is scenic and I'd love to go out and explore it a bit.

If you call Christianne's phone, you might get Jett instead. He is growing up fast.

One downside to going to the beach is just that- you have to go down! Awaba Street is a steep road down to get to the beach, which means it steep going up, too. It makes for a good, quick workout.

One thing about having not a lot of furniture right now is that Jett is free to crawl around and check out anything he wants. In this pic, he heard some birds, so he headed over to the window with his stuffed dugong to see what was going on.

At the beach again with the family. If you have food, be prepared to share it with Jett!

"The beach? Let's go!!"

Now that's one cute couple.

Having fun in the sand!

Mom and Jett watching TV. We just plugged it in the wall and turns out the TV picks up a few channels.

Something tells me we're supposed to be here. : )