So Far Behind....

wow wow wow.  WOW.  How did I get so far behind on this?  I have no idea.  I can't even come up with an excuse!  Since its been son long since i've written, I don't remember anything that has happened specifically since we've been back.  So I'm just going to put up a bunch of pictures with captions and maybe throw in a comment or two here and there!  I'm lazy like that...  Oh and the pictures are all out of order, and the stupid blog won't let me change them around!  Sorry...

We got Charlie i bag of mega blocks off of gumtree, so of course we had to wash them thoroughly!!

Baked goods for Elder Low!

Dallin is serving close by, so we crashed their zone p-day and took him some treats!

On a walk

Puppet show at Riverlink - Charlie wasn't sure what to think of it all!  But he got a cool free slinky!

This kid is trouble!  Getting in the still wet shower in his clothes and then dragging the towel in too...!

Our stake had a Polynesian Ball, so we got to go on a little date!

Steam train!  Right by the craft market - we couldn't go on it because we had to make it to the craft fair before it closed, but maybe someday?  It looked really neat!

Roti at the markets - not quite as good as in Thailand, but still pretty good.

Andrew's authentic British fish 'n chips at the market

We went with the Stewarts to Southbank - where Charlie discovered sand!  He loved it.  (The Stewarts are living in New Zealand right now, but are from Canada.  They were coming over to Australia and paid us a little visit! I'm going to do another blog post of all the things we did once I get the pictures from Stephane... she was so good at taking lots of pictures that I hardly took any! oops)

11 months old, I can't believe we're this close to one year!

He is such a funny kid!

Snuggles with dad

Charlie and Kooper - Kooper was pretending to be asleep when he realized his parents weren't in the van anymore!  Funny kid.

 Charlie and Kooper at the mall - this was Charlie's first ride!

 After 8 months of HARD and ANNOYING work Andrew finally got his Australian citizenship!  Yay for him!

Charlie is turning into a climbing monkey!  He climbed up me, onto the chair and then down onto his table!  This kid needs a lot of supervision...!

 We went with Charlie and his friend Jakob to the wind tubes at the local art gallery.  They have all this craft stuff for you to make your own flying machine and then you can test them out in the different wind tubes!  It was actually really neat, I wish Charlie was a little bit older so he could have appreciated it more!

 Ping pong balls are Charlies choice of snack!

 He quite liked the blowing ribbons

Standing on a wind tube!

Look at that long flowing hair!

Coconut curry soup - I love winter for the soups!

So quite obviously I like food - tangled Thai salad

we bought charlie a little play table - $5 - thanks gumtree!  He loves it.

10 months old!  Where has the time gone?

Charlies pooping face!

He's not a fan of the pooping

Andrews cup of bacon at the Brisbane Farmers Market

He looks so cute all bundled up in his sweater!

Well there you have it!  The last (almost) two months in a nutshell of pictures!  There are lots of fun things to come - like my sister Amy coming here in 2 weeks!  woo hoo so exciting!

Catching Up - Wedding Aftermath and Back to Australia

After the wedding I thought we'd have time to relax.... but NO!  There were so many things that I wanted to do/get done while we were at home that it actually ended up being quite busy and somewhat stressful - although not wedding stressful!  Shan and Alex stopped by the day after the wedding on their way out of town to say bye, since we were going to be back in Australia by the time they got home from their honeymoon.  It was weird to spend so much time with Shan before getting everything ready and then just having her disappear!  But obviously it was for a good reason!  

It was our 10 year mark since graduating from high school, so we tried to put together a little reunion (we tried before hand on Facebook but it did not work!  So those of us who were at Shannon's wedding reception planned it last minute and it actually turned out ok!)  We had it at Andrew Gibbs parents house (where we had our after grad party - fitting right?) and got to swim in the pool and hot tub, and have a delicious BBQ along with leftovers from Shannon's wedding which I "stole".

Not many of us could make it...

Looking back on this picture even though its only been a month - Charlie looks so little!  Compared to now...

We were also around for Canada Day, which was exciting because I thought I wouldn't be in Canada for Canada Day for at least 4 years (since Andrew's breaks are in Canada's winters)  We decided to go down to the Ledge to swim in the fountains and let me tell you, we will never do it again!  Parking was a nightmare and it was ridiculously packed, you could barely move!  We were lucky enough to find a spot in the shade as a family was leaving, and splashed in the pools for a bit, but with that many people around we were seriously wondering if we were swimming in straight pee?  Hahaha.  We also got to go to the fireworks over at Millwoods and they were really good!  My favourites are the ones that are silver and really sparkle.

In our last few days there were a ton of errands to be run (we were bringing back a suitcase full of "Canadian" stuff - like salad dressing - the salad dressing in Australia takes super sweet and is very nasty...) We also had a day where we went tubing down the Pembina River, which was SUPER fun.  It was an absolutely gorgeous day and we weren't going to because we thought we had too much to do, but then as we were walking outside to go run more errands, Amy and I looked at each other and said "lets just go!" So we did spur of the moment and it was great.  I'm glad we made time for a fun activity!  I am sad that I couldn't find my waterproof camera to take pictures with on the way though...!

Also Andrew and I were supposed to go on a date while we were home because we would have someone to babysit.... well that was surprisingly hard to squeeze in (when it should have been a priority - sorry babe!) Andrew and I were able to go to a movie (although right now I'm blanking on what it was we saw...) then headed out to Sherwood Park to meet up with his family for dinner at Famoso - I LOVE FAMOSO!  We couldn't stick around long though because that was our last night and we had to get packing! 

I used to love flying back in the day, but now I hate it!  Having a baby complicates things so much and just makes travelling harder.  On the way back it wasn't as bad as on the way over because I had Andrew with me!  But flying to Australia via Minneapolis (which is way out of the way) and via Los Angeles (with a 9 hour layover no less!) was brutal.  For coming back at Christmas I am totally going to book the legs separately (BNE-LAX then LAX-YEG) rather than just booking the whole trip together, because then you are stuck with the airlines partners (which is why we ended up having to go though MNE)  Although then we'll have to pay for our bags for the north american part... oh well I think it will be worth it!  Do any of you remember when you never had to pay for your bags?  Those were the good old days...

Bye Grandma!

Charlie thought the air tasted good?

He liked Andrews feet too!

It was July 4 when we left so we got to watch several fireworks shows from the airport!

Maybe one of these days I'll get fully caught up?