Our Farewell to Layla and Welcome to Sydney...

Unfortunately, we had to find a new home for Layla.  It was difficult to make the decision but it will be the best for her.  Right now we are living in an apartment with no where to let her run off her leash.  Boxers have so much energy and need to be able to run around to get rid of some of that energy.  We knew that we would eventually have to find a new home for her as we are unsure of where we will be in a few months.  It is very difficult to find an place that will allow a dog of her size.  We were able to find a good family here in Minneapolis to take her.  They have a little dog that got along well with her.  They also have two kids, a young boy and a 3 year old girl.  The boy absolutely loved her.  You can tell that he will give her the love and attention that she needs.  They said that we can visit her whenever we like.  They also watch dogs on the side.  So we will probably take Noelle there to be watched when we are both out of town.  She would love to see Layla again.  As we were driving home without Layla, Noelle looked as if she had tears in her eyes. :(  She will miss her sister Layla for sure.  When we get settled we might get her another playmate...

On a happier note, we also recently got a kitten.  Her name is Sydney.  She is a Bangle cat and looks like a snow leopard.  She loves to play with everything, especially our feet under the blanket.  She is so cute and so much fun.  She loves Noelle and follows her around trying to catch Noelle's tail.  Bangles are said to be the 'dog' of cats.  She will come to me when I call her.  Many people's bangles love the water and will jump in the tub with them.  You can also train them to be walked on a leash.  We have taken her out on a leash a few times.  She was hesitant at first to this new experience but she quickly warms up to it.  On the last outing she would follow Noelle every where.  She is so cute when she comes up on the bed in the morning to sleep by me.

4th of July in MN 2010

The 4th of July is one of our favorite holidays, especially for Nathan.  He loves it, even more than Christmas and his birthday :)  It is also the anniversary of our first date one year ago.  This year we went to a Twins baseball game at the Target stadium in Minneapolis on July 3rd.  We received free tickets for Military Appreciation Day.  It was fun to sit by Nathan's co-workers and get to know them a little bit more.  It was a great game, we saw the Twins hit 3 home runs.  2 of them was from the same guy - Thome.  But it wasn't enough, we still ended up loosing to the Tampa Bay Rays.  Then we ended the night playing Greenday Rockband :)

The next morning Nathan brought me flowers.  They were beautiful in red, white, and blue.  That afternoon we met our new ward here in Eagan.  Everyone was very nice and we are excited to get to know the ward members more.  Then that night we went to the Eagan Central Park to watch the fireworks.  The fireworks were good, but it wasn't the same as in Utah.  Every fireworks display I have ever seen has always been done to music.  But here they didn't have any music playing.  They just shot off fireworks.  It was a little strange.  Nathan even said, Why is it so quiet, it seems like something is missing.  There weren't even any Ooos and Ahhhs.  So we started making our Oooos and Ahhhs :)  We definitely missed being in Utah for the 4th of July though.  It just isn't the same any where else and without family.

Honeymoon In Australia

After the wedding we stayed in Park City at the Marriott.  It was really nice.  We went to dinner at this fancy restaurant on Main st.  They had just re-opened after remodeling the restaurant so they had a 2 for 1 special.  The food was really good and the service was excellent.  It was called 'Grappa.'  The next day Nathan took me to see Midway and the Zermatt, which is a resort that is German styled.

We left for Sydney from Salt Lake City on May 30th.  The flight was 18 hours long.  Luckily, we had the row to ourselves so we were able to take turns sleeping on each others lap.  It wasn't too bad since we slept almost the entire time and were able to watch movies, tv shows, or play games on the monitors on the seat in front of us.  They did a good job on keeping people entertained for that many hours.  We arrived in Sydney on June 1st.  We skipped a whole day.  As soon as we exchanged our money and rented a car we went straight to Port Macquarie which was an other 5 hours to drive there.  I let Nathan drive the entire time we were there.  I was nervous about driving on the 'wrong' side of the road and all those roundabouts. :)  We stopped by a gas station and to my delight I found all my favorite candy, chocolate, and soda from Ireland!  My favorite is the Kinder Bueno and the Lemonade soda.  It is so much better than the lemonade here.  To say the least we were exhausted by the time we got to the condo.  We feel asleep at 5 pm and didn't get up until early the next morning.

We stayed in Port Macquarie for 3 days.  While we were there we went to the Billabong Koala Refuge.  It was the highlight of our trip.  We got to feed the kangaroos, wallaroos, and wallabies.  They were so cute and soft.  We have video of a baby wallaroo that was out of its mommy's tummy and was jumping around.  We also got to pet a koala and a dingo.  The koalas are so cute.  But they are not very active.  They said that because they eat the eucalyptus leaves that doesn't give them very much energy.  They sleep all the time and are only active between 5pm and midnight.  A dingo is the Australian wild dog.  Interesting fact, they can not bark.  Due to this, many people cross breed dogs with them to produce dogs that won't bark.  We saw many different animals and birds there, including Kookaburras.  I couldn't get that song out of my head for a week!  "Kookaburra sits in the 'ol gum tree, marry marry king of the bush is he, laugh kookaburra, laugh kookaburra, guy your life must be." Every morning we woke up to the laugh of the Kookaburra too. It was a really neat place to see.

Later that day we took a hike along the coast.  It went through the rain forest and down onto the beaches.  It was so pretty.  Half way along the hike it started to rain.  We didn't mind though.  It was a warm rain.  And it was kind of romantic to kiss on the beach in the rain ;)  By the time we got back to the condo we were soaked!  Some other things we did, was we went to pick our own strawberries.  Unfortunately, there weren't very many rip ones.  But we did get to see a kangaroo out in the wild.  It rained the whole time we were there.  So we decided to leave a day earlier and go to Advancetown near Surfers Paradise. 

It was another 4-5 hours to get to Advancetown from Port Macquarie.  Our condo was so beautiful up in the mountains.  There was a lake and lots of birds and turtles.  It was very picturesque.  Since it is there winter it was pitch dark by 6 pm every night.  So we didn't really go out after that.  So we rented "Australia" and watched that one night. :)  It was actually pretty good.  We spent most of our time in the Surfers Paradise area.  At one of the restaurants Nathan tried Oysters (Yuck!) and Kangaroo.  I tried it.  It tastes like beef.  It was pretty good I hate to admit.  I think they are too cute to kill and eat.  But they are very prevalent there, like deer.  And their meat is supposed to be better for you than beef.  It has hardly any fat and has more iron.  After lunch we went to the Q-deck.  It is one of the tallest buildings in the world.  It was a great view of the beach and the city.  We also went to an amusement park called "Dreamworld."  It was a lot of fun, and since it is their winter there was virtually no lines.  We got to go on every ride with hardly any wait.  They also had kangaroo that you could feed and pet, but they had been feed by so many people that they weren't interested in the food you offered them.  It was a lot more fun at Billabong with the kangaroo.  But we did get to hold a koala and take a picture with it.  It was like holding a warm teddy bear.  We came back to the park another day to go on all the water rides and the water park.  There was no one there.  We went on every water ride in less than an hour.  It was perfect.

After Advancetown we were on our way to Sydney.  We broke the trip up.  So the first day we drove 4 hours and stayed in Coffs Harbour.  Then the next day we drove 7 hours to Sydney.  On our way to Sydney we ate lunch at this little pie shop.  Nathan ate a crocodile pie and a camel pie.  He will try anything!  We stayed in the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in.  It was a Marriott a block away from the Opera House.  You could see the Sydney Bridge from our window.  We also got to go to the Executive Lounge complementary.  They had breakfast every morning and hor d'oeuvres and dessert every night.  While in Sydney we saw an Art Film Festival.  The films were just strange.  But the island that the festival was on had a lot of history.  It was called Canary Island.  It was used for prisoners, than for orphan girls, than orphan boys that they trained to be sailors, then they used it as a shipping dock where they made ships for WWII.  While in Sydney we also got all dressed up and saw a play at the Sydney Opera House.  It was called "Glow."  It was hilarious.  I would definitely recommend anyone to see it.  We also ate a lot of Gelato and got a lot of souvenirs.  Nathan even got a Crocodile Dundee hate ;)

When we came home it was the longest day ever!  We left Australia at 9:15am on June 11th and arrived in L.A. at 6:05am on June 11th.  We landed before it we took off. lol  We had a 36 hour day on June 11th even though 13 hours of it was spent in the air.  I watched 7 movies in a row on that flight.  Then it took over 2 hours to get through customs in L.A. so then we missed our flight to Salt Lake and was given a later flight.  We didn't get to Salt Lake until after 4 pm.  We were so tired! 


Then the next day we opened all our presents, packed up all my stuff, put most of my stuff in Nathan's storage unit, and then left for Minnesota.  We left at 9 pm Saturday night and drove straight through to arrive in MN around 4 pm Sunday.  Whew!  A lot of traveling in only a few days.  Once we arrived in MN we had to unpack all my stuff from the car and then we had to pack up all Nathan's stuff and move it from the hotel to the apartment.  :)