We just got back from Kirst and Ant's wedding in Adelaide. We were there for 10 days and had glorious weather at the start of the holiday with some cooler nights and rain near the end. Their wedding was in a little seaside community called Carrickalinga, where we had also rented a bach/cottage with Pam, Andrew, and Quintin. So we got to spend most of the holiday in this little village, walking on the beach every morning, swimming, seeing dolphins swim by - it was excellent. Especially one night, when we were all down at the beach, sipping on a local micro-brewery beer, and watching Ant swim, when Bryce said, "the only thing that could make this more perfect would be if some dolphins swam by", and on cue, three dolphins appeared in the water and gave us a bit of a show.
This picture shows the dolphins that come on command, in Carrickalinga. A beautiful beach.
Here is the sunset that night.
Emily continued to be a good traveller, not letting jetlag affect her too much. She was pretty wriggly from Wellington to Sydney, but was tired out for the next flight (after lots and lots of walking and waving at strangers in the Sydney airport) and slept on Mommy the entire way.
Emily's sticker says "SECURITY SCREENED". Customs was pleased that she was not smuggling anything in through the border, except maybe in the diaper....
Kirstin and Ant had a beautiful wedding. They got married just below the steps to the beach, where Ant proposed to her, and where they spend every other weekend. After the ceremony, they had miniature orders of fish and chips for all the guests to nibble on, before everyone jumped onto the "party bus" to sing songs along with Andrew's guitar on the way to the reception at a winery. Bryce and I had to skip the party bus, so that if Emily couldn't handle the reception, we had an escape route. She was pretty good though, and fell asleep in her stroller beside the head table so Bryce and I were able to enjoy the reception.
The next day we went to Ant's parents house for a brunch, and caught this photo of a spider, that had spun his web above the archway we all walked under (but did not notice until later). This fella is a 'golden orb' (aka 'massive creepy spider').
Pleasingly, we saw no other big spiders on the rest of our trip. We did however, watch snakes get fed, fed kangaroos from our hands and Bryce got a fright from a Tasmanian Devil. However, all those animal encounters were at a wildlife sanctuary and not in the wild. These photos are of the wildlife sanctuary, with our friend April, Nick and Zoe, who is the same age as Emily.
We did go camping though, which allayed our fears about camping with a toddler. She was awesome and slept really well, waking up only once at 4am, but easily appeased with a bottle. It probably helped that Kirst and Ant set us up in camping style with mattresses and duvets ("dooners") in the tent.
(SIDE NOTE: Everything in Adelaide, and maybe Australia is shortened or nicknamed. I figure it must be like people trying to get used to a cockney friend. Kirst said something like "don't worry, we have some dooners for you to camp with, and we will have some snags tonight or maybe a sanga". I was lost. Snags=Sausages, sanga=sandwich. Ah, right. Gotcha.)
This is the view we had in the morning, at our campsite, with the smoke from the fire moving through the stringy bark gum trees.
This is a shot of breakfast that day. We fed like royalty during the whole trip and camping was no exception. I especially liked the wasabi cheese, thick natural yogurt, and alcoholic root beer from the local brewery and the local red wines. Not all together, mind you - oh, and they have dill pickles in Australia, which I missed OH SO MUCH! What a treat. Only went through 3 jars in 10 days. I thought it was best to hold back a bit.
Emily enjoyed living with flatmates. By the end of the week, she was able to look at people when we said their name, and give her toys to the right person when we asked her to walk them over to someone. She is saying more words now, like "Lala - for Pam, "na-na-na" for banana, "ooh" for kangaroo. She is a very friendly little girl, often overly so, where she will go up to strange children and just bend over to kiss them, but it looks more like she is worshiping them. They often don't know what to do, and by the time she is finished her demonstration of love, she has lost interest and is walking off again, leaving the poor boy or girl a bit confused. But nicely so, I'm sure.
Emily really enjoyed having the guitar around and even had a chance to play with it a little with Quintin. She enjoyed watching him play and let her touch the strings.
Here is a photo of Emily, the guitar groupie with Andrew on the front deck of our rented cottage.
Here she is in her new puddle jumpers that Pam and Andrew bought for her birthday. Perfect for camping and getting dirty in.
Great holiday. Loved it. Loved our first true holiday as a family, with a child who could explore, not just sit on your lap and look cute. Although, she still did lots of that too. What I learned? Always take extra food with you, sand does taste good to eat (at least Emily thinks so), children are more adaptable than you think, and if your child won't sleep in the plane - have a glass of wine and patience will blissfully wash over you.
