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For the first time in what seems like forever, Cassia and I were on the same continent at the same time. And conveniently in Adelaide, not smalltown W.A., so only a quick cheap flight away from Melbourne. (Scott went to Sydney at the same time.)

First I met up with Cris, (my maid of honour!!!) for dinner. We had 5 years to catch up on! He is one of those great friends where you’re right back where you left off, even when you don’t see each other very often. We had a great tapas meal with lots of reminiscing of the old days at the Vic Market.

Then Cassia picked me up and I spent the rest of the visit with her and Pablo, Pablo’s mum Annukka (who was visiting Adelaide for a month), and Cassia’s mum Jill (Joe was still in Africa). It was GREAT. We did so much fun stuff, ate and drank lots of good stuff, and did lots and lots and lots of chatting.

Annukka actually took most of the pictures in this post. She took so many pictures of her trip it was like having a professional photographer around all the time, so I barely took any of my own the whole time, heh. Thank you Annukka for letting me use them in my post!

The first day we all drove up to the Barossa for some touring, vineyard visiting, and good eating. It was a beautiful day out and we had a good drive. We stopped at a couple small wineries (more special than the giant ones) and at an old estate that Cassia’s great grandparents used to work at.

We had lunch at Maggie Beer’s Farm House. The property was beautiful, and the food was yummy. I guess since Maggie is one of the most famous cooks in Australia and they get tons of visitors every day they have to figure out a way to serve everyone quickly. So you order these picnic baskets where you just pick the type of paté and the side and they chuck it into the basket. I chose a mushroom paté with fresh cheese. It was nice but Pablo’s duck paté (I forget exactly which one though) was the winner of the day. Yum.

We also had amazing ice cream. Burnt fig, honeycomb and caramel, to be precise. The little crunchy fig bits were delicious.

Maggie Beer's Farm Shop Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

Another day Cassia, Pablo, Annukka and I went on a long walk. We walked from their house (which is just to the left of the above picture) to Semaphore, out the jetty, and then looped around a slightly different way back. That was pretty much the only exercise I did all holiday, haha.

This garden shop had weird pet chickens that were dyed (??) funky colours.

So I have shown this picture to 5 different Aussies and no one has been able to tell me what those coloured blobs are. Weeeeeird. I should have bought some and just tried it.

I bought this rosé on our Barossa trip. It was delicious and I’ll probably never get to have it again. :'( I took this picture on the 30 second walk from Cassia’s house to Jill’s house. Although C & P have moved now.

Jill prepared this amazing raclette meal for us at her house. What a great view from the living area, eh??!! There are even dolphins swimming by on the regular. Also raclette is great… melting cheese on everything?? Perfection.

The day I was leaving Pablo made a big paella in their new pan. We ate it out on Cassia’s patio with boats, dolphins, and tourists going by. And they fed me lots of wine so my hour-long flight back to Melbs felt like 2 seconds since I fell asleep instantly.

I know we did a lot more stuff than this but since I procrastinated blogging for so long I’m blanking on some of the details. Oops. Anyway THANK YOU Cassia and Pablo for having me over, I had an awesome trip and I’m so glad we got to spend time together.

I think I have one more travel post to go and then I’ll be back to more foodie things I think.

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PREPARE FOR CUTENESS!!

Scott took Noah and Beau to the zoo when they were each around 4 years old, so this visit was good timing for Seth’s turn. We took him to the Healesville Sanctuary for the day, which was also a treat for me since I hadn’t been there before.

We watched a really cool platypus show. Platypuses (platypi?) are way smaller than I expected. That girl picked Seth out of the whole crowd to come up and feed an eel but he was too shy and passed (while hiding behind Scott). Aww.

Then we went to a birds of prey show where birds swooped right over our heads. Very exciting. A wild wedge tail eagle kind of ruined the end of the show by scaring away all the demo birds though. Seth is showing off his feather we found earlier.

We saw koalas, emus, dingos, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, and lots more too.

Seth really really wanted to get a bird on his arm. I was impressed by how quietly and carefully he would go towards the birds. Much patience!

Having a plate of food helped, but he really wanted it on his actual arm.

So close.

Then we drove back to his house and we all drew pictures of each other and jumped on the trampoline (I taught Seth popcorn) until Michelle and the other boys came home. A fun day!!

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1. FAMJAM/#jornapalooza2015

April helping Uncle Scotty use the computer.


An extremely cute Easter bunny.

I love that the whole family likes games. Simultaneous Wits & Wagers and My First Carcassonne.


Cutest dinosaur ever (Seth).

Jemma and April.

The entire Jorna family together! This hasn’t happened in a long time. It made Pat (Scott’s dad) so happy. :’)

2. SPORTS

We went to a rugby union game. I learned all about weird things like BORING IN THE SCRUM.

Scott’s cousin hooked us up with ultra cheap tickets to the footy. The Hawks demolished the Cats. It’s one of my life goals to go to a full house AFL game at the MCG (100,000 people) (happens about a dozen times a season according to Scott), and this was close, but not quite. There were 72,000 people there, for a FIRST ROUND GAME! Melbournites love their sports.

Hawthorne cheer squad.

We even caught a Canada vs. Fiji Rugby Sevens game on TV, which made me laugh, and made Scott run to his room to put his jersey on. Canada was even winning for most of the game! But then Fiji smashed us. They seemed like they could run twice as fast as the Canadians.

3. AUSSIE FOODS

I ate 5 meat pies in 2 weeks. :D

We went out for dumplings, but they weren’t great. Should have researched a bit more about where is good these days.

At one of the spots on our impromptu pub crawl. We also went to a bar that was a little house right in the middle of the CBD, and Transport, and possibly somewhere else. Hmm.

Really expensive fancy margarita and really expensive piece of pork something. Too tipsy to remember the name of the restaurant. The pork was mega delicious though.

– we also ate lots of lamb, vanilla slices, parmas, flathead, Freddo Frogs, etc etc. And brought back an entire suitcase filled with Savoys, Tim Tams and BBQ Shapes.

 

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After more than 24 hours of travel we finally arrived in Melbourne. Brett and Beau picked us up with packages of Tim Tams, Savoys and BBQ Shapes in hand. They dropped us off in Boronia, and then we headed off with Vicky (Scott’s mum!) to Shannon Bennett’s Piggery Café for lunch in the hills. We had barramundi burgers, pork belly BLT, and lots of salad. It was lovely.

We had a night to adjust and then the next day we drove to Phillip Island to join the rest of the family at the holiday house they rented. Brett, Michelle, Noah, Beau, and Seth were all there, along with Jemma, Damien, and April, and then Scott and I and Vicky. FAMJAM!

Scott and I meet April for the first time! She was pretty aloof with us at the beginning. Lots of side-eye, haha. It was also my first time meeting Seth, who seemed pretty excited to see me, especially since I was carrying a big bag of presents.

It was hot the first day so we spent the day at the beach. Scott played a lot of beach cricket with Noah.


We played a lot of games while we were there. Scott and I got the boys kids Carcassonne, kids Wits & Wagers, and Forbidden Island. Kids Carcassonne is fun, even for adults, although it’s best when you play with people around the same strategy level because I had to sort of restrain myself from SMASHING 4 year olds. Kids Wits & Wagers is pretty much the same as the adult version, except slightly easier questions, and an easier betting system. Everyone liked it, we even played it after the kids went to bed. And Forbidden Island is a cooperative game, similar to Pandemic.

We all went out for dinner at the Cowes RSL.

I think Scott took this picture when he was waking April up from her nap? Pretty dang adorable.

One afternoon Scott and I went for a drive around the island. We ate pies and went out to the Nobbies. We didn’t see any penguins (not the right time of day) but we did see the blowhole blow. And got so blown around by the wind that we felt sick afterwards. It didn’t feel bad as we were walking around but when we got back in the car we both felt awful. So weird, it was like a wind concussion. I do love those pictures though. I look like a troll!

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I originally planned to do separate posts on all of these topics but now I’m sitting here in YVR airport about to leave for 2.5 weeks thinking I’d better just write a big post to catch up instead.

Scott and I are on our way to Melbourne for #jornapalooza via Guangzhou, China. Apparently we are allowed to leave the airport in China (thanks 72 hour transit visa) so we may explore a bit there too which I am pretty excited about. The subway goes right to the airport so it should be pretty easy. Unfortunately they speak mainly Cantonese there so I won’t be able to dazzle everyone with my sweet Mandarin skills though. But it would be fun to get some street food and look around a bit.

Australia is going to be fun too. The whole family has rented a big house on Phillip Island for the first few days, then Jessie comes to Melbourne for Easter and a baby shower, and then I go to Adelaide for a few days to visit Cassia! I am iksidid.

Anyway that’s pretty much all the updates about what’s coming up. And now to catch up on the last month…

Calgary was super good this year. We spent a week at COP training in the icehouse and on the skeleton track and then competed in an Alberta Cup race on the last day. I had a lot more success sliding there compared to last year. I have learned SO MUCH this season and understood the track and sliding so much more. My starts were very very slow compared to everyone else and I would start each run in last place, but I must be ok at driving because I ended up gaining spots every run. I ended up coming 4th in the race (out of 7 competitors). My goal was not to come in last place and I definitely succeeded in that so I was happy.

This year I stayed at Ally’s house the whole time and that was awesome. It’s always great to catch up with old friends and her and Scott are very fun. I was busy a lot of the time I was there but we still squeezed in going to a nice oyster restaurant, going out to the barn for a ride on her horse, and going to watch some of the Brier curling. BTW curling is really fun to watch live!

Sliding in Whistler was going pretty well too. Sliding from the top was getting less and less scary every day. Every session I would try and push just a tiny bit faster. We ended up having quite a big turnout for our last race of the season, BC Champs, including OTHER GIRL SKELETON SLIDERS!! I came in 4th, aka last place, but I was competing against World Cup/ICC level sliders so that was to be expected. I was still pretty happy because I got a huge PB time on the first day of the race, and then another PB on the second day.

BCBSA ended up giving out medals to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places, and then a separate medal for the #1 BC slider. Originally they gave the BC medal to Jane, because she is from North Van (although she hadn’t even been in Whistler all season). But after the awards she came over and put the medal around my neck. She said I should have it because of my two PBs. :’) It meant a lot to me, that was really nice of her. So I now have my first skeleton medal.

I took a pretty big hit on my last run of the race so I decided that was a pretty good time to end the season. It has been nice to have spare time again, tbh. It was such a good season, with our new coach and new friends and new teammates. I learned SO MUCH. And now I have 6ish months to try and get stronger and faster on land before next season and tryouts. My goal for next year: an international race… which should be possible because I should be able to at least do the Whistler NAC race. Fingers crossed.

What else?..

We’ve been going to trivia every couple of weeks. Our team is called Patty O’Lanterns and we rule. We plan on doing a lot of trivia over the summer so let me know if you want to come sometime. We also plan on doing a lot of patio time at our house too.

Once I get back from Australia I am starting weightlifting lessons two times a week (instead of once a week) so next time you see me I’m going to be ripped.

All joking aside, this was actually a really tough week. Wednesday morning at work we all found out that our boss had unexpectedly passed away the day before. It was a huge shock and a huge loss for us all. He and some of my coworkers had worked together for more than 20 years, and his partner also works in our department. So so so sad. He was such a great guy and definitely a lot more than just a boss to us. Our work family lost a good friend. I will miss him.

Well we are getting pretty close to boarding time so I’m going to post this and get ready to go. Until next time (hopefully not for so long).