Our Trip

We are finally home from our trip and I have been trying hard to figure out how to describe a trip of a lifetime. I just don't even know where to start. I feel blessed that the army gave back to us, after I feel like it's taken so much time from our family. I thank God for that bonus and my wonderful friend Shannon for mothering my children for me while I was gone. No one could have done a better job. Bella is still talking about all the wonderful things they did together. It warms my heart to know that they were so happy. Our favorite place in Australia was Cairns - that's the city that the Great Barrier Reef is off of. It's really the whole area around it that was amazing. There were rain forests and parks and waterfalls galore. We just couldn't get enough. My favorite day of the whole trip was snorkeling in the reef. I felt a little bad that Aaron couldn't go scuba diving, since he is licensed and it would have been the best place in the world for it, but he stuck with me and did not have a pleasant time. For some reason he got stung by five jelly fish, and bit by not only a parrot fish, but a barracuda as well -it was a small one. He was miserable, but I was in awe! The neon fish and reef were just amazing. I don't even know how to describe it. I wanted to stay there forever. It was like another world. I got to hold Koalas at the zoo in Cairns too, which was my second favorite thing about the trip. They are so sweet and they smell like eucalyptus - go figure:) That was always a dream of mine from as long as I can remember. We thought that the outback was amazing as well, but it was just so different. It was so hot and dry. The red rock formations there were very interesting and the life of the Aboriginal people was fascinating. Sydney was just beautiful. It felt like they took England and plonked it right down in the middle of the Caribbean. The buildings were cool and the foliage was tropical. The weather was perfect there - spring time with flowers blooming every where. We visited the big aquarium and took a tour of the town. We went to the famous markets and had a lot of fish and chips. We didn't enjoy Melbourne as much, but we spent most of our time on the Great Ocean Road tour that showed us all these cool rock formations in the ocean. We stopped at lots of parks along the way and saw the beach where they filmed that surf movie with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze - Point Break. I got some cool shells from that beach shhhhhh;) It was the most beautiful part of the ocean I've ever seen besides the reef that is. We saw wild Koalas sleeping and trees. Wow! I feel so blessed to have gotten to experience that! Our next stop was New Zealand and that was a trip with-in itself. It was only a three hour flight and a couple more time changes. We started in Christchurch, but we weren't there that long. It was a cute little town with a lot of galleries and artists. It felt a little like Ireland did. We took a boat ride down the river like in Italy. When we got to Queenstown, it had just stopped raining and we were greeted by the most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen - it was enormous! We went on lots of tours there and got to see the places where they filmed much of the Lord of The Rings films. We got to take lots of trips up the mountains by way of the gondola. The view from that, was extraordinary. We could see across the lake to the mountains. Wow again! We ended the trip by paragliding off the top of Bob's peak. Aaron just had to do it and I'm usually up for anything, but the idea of crashing and orphaning my girls didn't sound appealing. OK, so who was the one that crashed on their first attempt off the cliff? Oh yeah - that would be me! APPARENTLY our chute only half-way filled with wind when we went running off the edge of the mountain. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmm.I couldn't understand my Aussi tandem jump coach. Their accents are so thick:0 "Negative, negative". Iyiyiyi I hurt my arm, but it was OK. I saw my life flash before my eyes as I was sliding down and clinging to every last pebble and blade of grass. (Sigh) My legs were shaking when we did our final run off the other side. Can you imagine? All of our 13 flights connected great and we only had one long delay, which ended up allowing us to feed wild wallabies in Alice Springs, so all worked out in the end and I came home feeling so relaxed. Happy healthy kids and we survived jet-lag. Thank you God!