New Country, New Look

The babies and I bid adieu to the Sunburned Country last week. We left Nate behind to finish up some things.

We started this blog originally as a way for our family and friends in the US to keep up with us in Australia. Now it will serve as a way for our Australian friends to keep informed of our life in America! Hence the new look. I'll add more relevant gadgets once Nate gets here and we get settled.

Other favorite pictures from the California trip (and then it's back to our life in Australia)

Playing with El Pres.

From the Shh! Daddy's Sleeping series. Under P&P's warm blanket.

Bananas!

Brooke's amazing arms!

Terry and Roxy have matchy hair.

Oscar Dog makes peace with Nate.

Rox's first meeting with G.

Show kitty!

First cuddle with Aunt Rebecca.

My mom's Peaceable Kingdom. Feline, Prairie dog and infant.

What a good lookin' crew, hey!?

Standing outside during a bizarre lightning storm. The neighbor across the road peeked her head out to tell us that we were crazy for standing out in the middle of the sidewalk during the lightning storm.

California: Week 2

We picked up Nate's family from the airport on Monday and began an epic drive to our cabin at Shaver Lake. The cabin we stayed in belongs to my sister-in-law's boss. He generously let us stay there for the week. The cabin was gorgeous with an amazing view.

The view on our last morning. It rained and snowed on us!

There was plenty of room for all of us to spread out and lay on our bellies just like the baby. We went for walks around the lake and many hours were spent playing foozeball/air hockey/pool.

The Game Room.

The living room from the second floor landing.

Mena teaching Rox that tummy time is fun!

Eliza giving walking lessons. Next up: dancing!

Andrew and Eliza watching Will Ferrell on that Bear Grylls show under the heat lamp on the deck. It was awesome!

On a walk around Shaver. El Presidente got to work on his funny faces.

Pooped after a long hike. How cute are those booties?!

My family came up for dinner mid-week. Nate made delicious pulled pork sandwiches and we had pie for dessert to celebrate our 3rd anniversary. Our niece Caitlin decided Eliza is the perfect playmate - probably because Eliza didn't have some dumb ol' baby she had to take care of. (Caitlin is working through some sibling rivalry issues.)

Rox with cousins Ethan and Caitlin. Ethan is twice as heavy as Rox and half as heavy as Caitlin.

The night before we flew home, my parents hosted Nate's family for a Mexican feast. The weather was unseasonably cool, but it was still quite pleasant.

Yes, that's a bottle of vodka on the table. Zing!

Rox and her grandparents.

Hardys!

Buster fresh from the groomers. He's such a funny kitty cat and he loves his summer haircuts.

Snapped on our last morning in Kingsburg. This is my favorite picture.

Roxy seemed to grow and change immensely during our time in California. I don't know if was the California sunshine, room to stretch her legs, the California produce or being handed off from family member to friend to family member and showered with love and attention. It was probably a combination of all three. She ate her first solid food (banana mashy), sat up pretty well on her own and decided to give rolling over another try. After the trip, she became much more talkative and babbles much more than she did before. Probably she learned she needs to speak up if she wants to get a word in edge-wise with her family - just wait until she meets the extended Hardy-McCullochs!!

On the plane headed back for Australia! Plane rides make her hair flat. She's so much bigger now - that outfit (a gift from Vaughn C.) doesn't even fit her anymore!

California: Week 1 (Updated)

We flew into San Francisco via Aukland. The #1 question we were asked was, "How did Roxy do on the flight?" She did just fine, thanks to the bassinet on the plane. After we reached cruising altitude, we put her in her jammies, filled up her tummy and placed her in her own little sleep zone. She slept longer than she had ever slept before. We should make a "Sounds of a Jet Plane" lullaby CD - we'll be millionaires!

Hanging out in her sky boat.

My sister picked us up and that night we enjoyed a Mexican meal (our first of many) for dinner with my family. We met our nephew Ethan and introduced Roxanne to a lot of her extended family.

With Daddy, Uncle Mark and cousin Ethan (just a month older than Rox, but about twice her weight). Stripes are in for babies this year.

The next day, Becky graduated from law school!

Taken in her bedroom before the ceremony. Nate and I didn't attend the commencement because we had a jet-lagged baby who wasn't too chipper the morning after her first trans-Pacific flight.

Becky organized a picnic in the park and we all enjoyed a lot of delicious food and games.

Delicious food.

Games.

Merriment.

The next day, my mom's side of the family caravanned to a duck club outside of Los Banos to scatter some of my grandmother's ashes.

Duck Club. Poker table off to the right (not visible).

Following in each others' footsteps.

Just the spot.

We then drove onto Kingsburg and spent the week visiting with family and friends. My dad spent a lot of time filling Nate up with Mexican food. One memorable meal was a lengua burrito!

After a week in Kingsburg, we drove up to Davis for a stopover and to introduce Rox to our Davis amigos.

Here's Roxy getting her mind blown by Fran. Roxy never had so much fun in her entire life. Seriously! It was awesome.

Diego and Rox. Best Hair Ever.

Tara getting to meet the baby she felt kicking months ago. :)

We stayed the night at our PhD advisors' house in Pleasants Valley, just outside of Vacaville. Nate and Rox took a dip in the pool and we sat outside and enjoyed dinner on a cool summer night. The next morning I lounged in the hammock and watched the birds.

P & P's beautiful backyard on Sunday morning.

Alas, we had to leave their beautiful spot in the country and we drove over to the Bay Area to pick up Nate's family and begin the second half of our California visit.

Sunday night, we stayed at Becky's with our kitty-cats. I was hoping that they would remember us right away and curl up on our laps, just like old times. I was wrong. They have adjusted to condo living and could care less if they ever saw us again. Boo!

Adorable little traitors on Becky's bed.

Somebody's eating bananas

Roxy at 6 months old

California wrap-up is coming. I promise.

Small marsupial on the street!

This is the last update before we leave tomorrow morning. Just one sleep!

We spotted this little animal on the way home from the park on Saturday. Nate and I immediately thought it was some kind of marsupial...being in Australia and all.

We got home and whipped out the Wildlife to Greater Brisbane (Thanks again, Penny and Peter!) and tried to give a name to this little creature.

We decided that it looked most like the Yellow-footed Antechinus or maybe the Brown Antechinus. Both of these species are quite rare within city limits because of competition with mice and rats in urban areas, and because of the vicious Felis catus.

Antechinuses reproduce only once a year, and the male yellow-footed antechinuses die after mating from the stress of it all. Hard to compete with the fecund house mouse!

If you haven't figured it out from the pictures, it turns out that our 'marsupial' is the lowly Mus musculus. We were really hoping it wasn't, but it makes more sense that we would see a mouse in the gutter of a busy street than a rare and threatened marsupial. Shoot! If only her snout was just a bit longer... and she had a pouch under there...

It's amazing how similar the antechinus and mouse look considering how distantly related they are! Science!

Next stop, California! Well, technically, our next stop is Aukland, THEN California, but let's not get picky.

Tickets purchased! (Let's hope the local cat burglars don't read our blog)

We've got tickets for our trip home in May. We'll be in California from May 22-June 6. Thanks to the weak Aussie dollar, we got a great deal on our tickets with Air New Zealand. Another bonus - because we are traveling with an infant, we get to sit in the front row of the plane (big planes have bassinets that fold down like a tray table from the dividing walls), so we can be the first ones off the plane (and the last ones to get on, which I think is a bonus)! I guess that's probably the only upside to being on a 14 hour plane ride with an infant.

(On a side note - Air New Zealand boasts that their customers can choose from 20 different diet-specific meals on their flights. I was perusing the list and right there with the Kosher and Gluten-free options was Seafood. Are they serious? It's like that joke, "I'm on a seafood diet...I see food and I eat it!")

The coconut crab - part of Air New Zealand's seafood meal?

We're flying down to Sydney in a couple of week to work out Roxy's citizenship at the U.S. Consulate. There is no permanent U.S. Consulate in Brissie, only an office that opens up a couple of times a year. They were supposed to open up in January, but pushed it back to April. If we wait until April to file paperwork for Roxy's citizenship, passport and SSN, then we might not get her passport to us by the time we need to fly out of the country. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we get her SSN before April 15th so that we can claim her on our U.S. tax return without a problem.

I don't want to post without another picture or two, so here you go:

The spider that lives next to our compost pile.

The peacock that lives in the food court at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

Those black splotches are some of the thousands of flying foxes that live just up the river on Indooroopilly Island. We see them flying every night at twilight and they're starting to visit the guava tree in our backyard. Nate found remnants of half-eaten guavas!

A couple of flying foxes just starting their night (picture taken from our back steps).