by ·0 Comments

We spent most of the second week doing chores at the house during the day, and then fun stuff with friends in the evening.

I spent two days scanning old photos so that we can throw out the mouldy albums. That was kind of fun. I found all sorts of funny stuff. Then I varnished a table. Scott did lots of pressure washing, which wasn’t very fun because he got wet and it was freezing out. And he helped dad carry lots of stuff. Rosemarie did a lot of kitchen stuff sorting. We took apart some cabinets and cleaned them so they can be re-used.

Writing that out it doesn’t sound like that much stuff but we filled up all the areas where we could store stuff and dad seemed pleased with his checklist, so I guess that’s good.

Unpictured:

  • Scott did get a day off one day when he went to Montreal to go to a metal concert (Mastodon) (by himself, because none of us wanted to go with him). He took a bus and stayed in an Airbnb and had a great time! And he came back with kouign amann and bagels!
  • That evening Rosemarie and I met up with Sarah and Lauren (different Lauren) for dinner and ice cream. This is the one time I forgot to take a group picture. :(

I swear the whole trip we never had more than two hours of free time, but that is partly our fault because any time we did have free time we were like “LET’S PLAY A GAME!!!”.

Bill and Suzanne invited us all over for dinner at their house and pickleball. We had tacos and then drove to the court and they taught us how to play. We were hooked! Especially Rosemarie. We played until it was too dark to see anything. Rosemarie asked when they were going to play again and they said “Tomorrow!”.

So we drove all the way back to Constance Bay and played again the next day. :D

We went to the Nordik Spa at night with Jackie which felt fantastic after all the work at the house and pickleball. It was awesome going with Jackie because 1. she’s like a spa expert and 2. we hadn’t hung out with her in ages!! The spa was great. I was surprised that there was an area that you could bring your drink right into the water. Crazy. We stayed at the spa for a loooong time, soaking and plunging, exfoliating with salt, broiling ourselves etc. (sounds like cooking a turkey, doesn’t it). We had a nice spa dinner too. The only thing we didn’t do was try the heated hammocks!

The next day I went to the gym and Rosemarie and Scott tried indoor pickleball. (I tell you, Rosemarie was obsessed.)

The next day was crazy busy. We went and saw Helenka again (post-babbies, although sans-babbies because they were in the NICU), ate another shawarma and poutine, and then drove back out to Constance Bay again to… you guessed it…. play some more pickleball. :D Then we came home, cooked hot pot for a quick family dinner, and then went bouldering with Sarah, and then met up with Sara for a drink. Whew.

PS that poutine, with the exorbitant amount of gravy and cheese curds, made me feel sooo sick, despite Lactaid. :( I feel un-Canadian.

Our final night in Ottawa we went to a Sens game with Stephko. It was one of the last games of the season and had no consequences in regards to the play-offs, but was still exciting because there were a lot of goals and even went into overtime for maximum drama.

Again, more pictures that you probably already saw on Facebook:

Bouldering with Sarah.
Spa time with our cousin Jackie.
Drinks with Sara and Sarah.
Sens game with Stephko.
Pickleball is life.
Pickleball with the Monnon’s.
Shawarma lunch with Rosemarie.
Do you like my plaids.
Inside.
Lunch outside.

by ·0 Comments

Kind of old news at this point but for posterity…

Hoofing it to the train station.
Full flight but thumbs up we’re on our way.

I think I was still a bit dopey from the flight…

Had to wake up though because Rosemarie and Lauren picked us up from the airport in Vancouver and we went directly to Liz’s house in North Van to host a party. Rosemarie prepared lots of Canadian treats for us like perogies, Smartfood popcorn, Canada Dry, party mix and lots of our Vancouver friends showed up! Thanks Liz for letting us stay there!

The next morning we headed back to the airport (via Duffins Donuts ofc) to fly to Ottawa. This is the last picture with Lauren for a while because we had all sorts of problems.

First our flight out of Vancouver was delayed. The lovely Westjet agent tried to help fix up our flights for us but since we had booked on three different tickets he was only able to get Scott on I on a new route via Calgary before that flight filled up, and had to keep Rosemarie and Lauren on the original flight to Toronto that might not make the connection to Ottawa. He offered to switch us back so that we could at least stay together but Rosemarie told us to go ahead and we’d just cross our fingers. Amazing Race style.

The way the flights were staggered we wouldn’t find out if they made it until much later. Poor MEP and Paul had to stay up all night waiting for us and didn’t even know how many of us they would be picking up from the airport.

Scott and I got to Calgary no problemo. But then we saw messages from Rosemarie saying that they didn’t let Lauren on the plane in Vancouver because his ID was expired and that he had to go home. Team member down! And that her connection in Toronto was looking TIGHT.

Scott and I got to Ottawa late but relatively successfully. But then we found out that Rosemarie didn’t make her connection, had to stand in line for hours to get her free hotel, and had to wake up very early to get her new flight the next morning. Which also ended up being delayed because they couldn’t close the luggage compartment door. Poor Rosemarie. Her team definitely lost Amazing Race.

Anyway eventually we all (well… three of us) made it to Mary Ellen’s and dad came over and of course we played some games. Yay.

That night we went to the Haberl’s for a good old fashioned sleepover. It was great. We played lots of games and ate lots of food and laughed a lot. A very lovely time.

3/4 Ace Gang Reunion. Unfortunately Cassia didn’t make it because of Spanish bureaucracy. We got lucky even seeing Helenka… she ended up having her twins very early, a few days after this brunch!!

Scott trying to catch some maple sap to see if it tasted like maple syrup (it does!).

Things relaxed (a bit) after the first few days of the trip. We spent some time hanging out at MEP and Paul’s.

Sweaty after doing a HIIT class.

I managed to keep up my training while away. My coach made me a commercial gym friendly leg strength program that was basically max squats all the time. Sometimes Rosemarie and Scott came with me, and sometimes they did other random classes or played pickleball. I am glad they get along so well.

Jill had another memorial party for Joe that just happened to fall when we were in Ottawa. It was nice to see a lot of people I hadn’t seen in ages. And the canapes and cookie favours were delicious!

We started to go through some of the stuff at the house. I think Cassia made me that poster when I was about to leave for university. D’awww.

Same pictures that I already posted on Facebook/Instagram:

Party at Liz’s.
Brunch at the Haberl’s.
Diane’s big chair.
Death by squats.
Camel Up was a hit, as usual.
Canada Geese.
So flattering.
Fam,
Joe’s memorial party at the Nature Museum.
House tour.

by ·0 Comments

We started March off with a double wedding weekend. One on Saturday in Ballarat with work friends, and one on Sunday in the Yarra Valley with board game friends. Big weekend of driving and canapes. Both fun. Took me three more days to recover.

Home invader.

We went to the opening game of the AFL season: Melbourne Demons vs Western Bulldogs. A Grand Final rematch. The first time that us Melbourne Dees fans got to see them play since they won everything last year while we were stuck at home in severe lockdown.

The first quarter was so good it brought a tear to my eye. Then the second quarter was very bad. Then in the exact same way as the grand final last year, the Dees pulled ahead in the last half of the game and got the win. It was great.

(Belated) January #SMAJ was a meal at The Boiling Crab. It was… OK. Partly because I don’t think boiling in a bag is necessarily the tastiest way to cook seafood, and partly because we really do not know how to break down crab. So much work with so little pay off. Also food gets cold quite quickly when it’s just poured onto the table.

I went out to do trivia with my pals at a new place in Ringwood. We won three out of four $20 vouchers and none of us were drinking so we decided to order the “Celebration Brownie Tower” because why not. When the staff brought it out it had sparklers on it and they all started singing Happy Birthday and everyone playing trivia joined in and the host asked us whose birthday it was and we were like “umm… no one…”. It was pretty funny. We also won second place overall which had a prize of six take home cocktails. Very good haul.

I went out for noodles and bingsu with internet friends. Yum.

OK apparently all we did lately is EAT. (Belated) February #SMAJ was a dinner out at a Japanese BBQ restaurant. We splurged and got a set meal that came with delicious fancy beef and a bunch of other stuff. It was very very delicious.

I did a weightlifting competition in Geelong. The timing of the comp worked well to squeeze in one last max out before our Canada trip. I really wanted to snatch 50kg and clean and jerk 60kg for a while now and have been sooo close to getting to do it. It was a bit of a drive to get to Geelong but my coach actually lives there so at least that part was convenient.

However I missed my second snatch attempt at 48kg so I didn’t get to try 50kg on my third attempt as planned. :( Extra annoying considering I snatched 48kg really nicely on my third attempt. Clean and jerks were better, at least I got to try 60kg on my third attempt but unfortunately I didn’t catch the bounce well and didn’t stand up the clean.

I snatched 45/48x/48, and CJ 54/57/60x for a 105kg total. No PBs. Next time.

When I signed up for the comp I assumed that I would be in the first session like usual and have to weigh in quite early in the morning, so I booked us an Airbnb in Ocean Grove to make a weekend of it. Turned out I lifted in the last session and I probably should have just cancelled the Airbnb booking so I could have slept in my normal not-extremely-squeaky bed and eaten my normal food but that didn’t occur to me until it was too late to cancel.

So we ended up with a lot of time to kill and the weather wasn’t great. We went to a CHEESE TRAIN, like a sushi train but with plates of cheese. We drove around Queenscliffe. We tried to find things to take a picture of with my new telephoto lens. We ate burgers. (Much nutrition, maybe this is why I didn’t lift the best.) We watched two games of footy at the same time. We met up with Scott’s school friend for coffee. We went to the Geelong Art Gallery and were amazed by this lino print art piece that went around a whole room. We went to the library and read our Kindles.

Unpictured stuff:

  • I did a lot of on call and extra shifts because of people having covid. This meant I reached my budget target for a telephoto lens much earlier than predicted! Pretty exciting. I haven’t really gotten to use it much yet.
  • We saw the new Batman movie with Jemma. It was very dark, literally. Apparently if you are rich you never turn the lights on. Also I giggled every time thinking about how he would have to put his eye makeup on super fast every time he had to get dressed up.
  • We had a family dinner! On a Sunday with everyone there like the olden days!
  • Scott went to Ballarat to see his school friend who is visiting from Scotland.
  • We were supposed to go to another wedding this weekend, but it has been postponed because they have covid. Oops.

I actually haven’t been doing that much lately besides work and gym because we leave for Canada this week and I am paranoid about getting covid and ruining all our plans. Only a couple more days to go!!!

by ·0 Comments

We had a much more relaxed third day. We stopped in Eurong to buy some breakfast ice cream and then headed down a bumpy track for more lakes.

Us being very responsible and checking water depth before driving through. :)

First lake was Lake Birrabeen, which has very nice clear water and doesn’t get crowded. Unfortunately it was very windy when we were there so it wasn’t that great conditions for us. 5/10, probably a lot better on a calm day.

Next was Lake Boomanjin. The largest perched lake in the world, stained with tea tree. Now this was neat! So colourful!! Apparently it is good for your skin and hair. 7/10, bring your polarised sunglasses for maximum rainbow.

Monopoly Deal is srs bsnss.

We drove back to Central Station to camp that night. Rosemarie cooked us steak. We had showers. It was still pretty uncomfortable but at least this time we had bug spray.

The final day. Another lake. We hiked into Basin Lake, a teeny tiny lake that doesn’t get very busy. Scott walked all the way around and saw a snake. 6/10, nothing too special, by comparison.

We noticed on the hike to Basin Lake that there was a turnoff to hike to Lake McKenzie, our next stop, but only Scott was interested in extra walking so he went off on a solo hike and Rosemarie and I went back to the car and drove to meet him at Lake McKenzie. He still beat us there by like 30 minutes because the driving tracks around the inside of the island are bumpy AF!

No one wants to see a lizard from above!!!
Nic’s right though, this is a pretty epic shot.
Katrina for scale.

One last dip in Lake McKenzie before heading back to the ferry. I did some broad jumps in the water to keep the legs alive. This time we got to the ferry way too early, due to past trauma, haha.

Us with nice clean car in Hervey Bay.

We had a hotel in Hervey Bay that night, where we attempted to clean ourselves up. But no matter how many times you shake out your shoes, more sand comes out. We got way too much fish and chips for dinner that night and then stayed up late to watch the final heats of the ladies skeleton in the Olympics. The whole country was HYPED because Jaclyn Naracott was sitting in first place after the first two heats. Amazing. She ended up finishing silver, still an incredible result.

The final morning we woke up to emails from Jetstar saying that our flight from Sydney to Melbourne had been cancelled. Rosemarie tried to do an online chat and the dude told her that there were no possible other flights but we could cancel and get our money back if we wanted. Not very helpful considering Scott and I had work the next day, but also didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars trying to get home on a new flight.

After getting breakfast we decided to just head to the airport early, ready to negotiate either a new flight or a hotel. We check in and the lady didn’t say anything at all so we said “Um, I think the second part of our flight has been cancelled?” and she was like “Oh yeah, nah they put you on a Qantas flight at the same time, here are the details, just walk to the other terminal in Sydney and check in again”. Was anyone planning on telling us???? Anyway despite the sketchiest “boarding pass” in the world, it all worked out and we even got a hot snack (arancini) and wine on the flight!

by ·0 Comments

I was so excited to take Rosemarie and Scott to Fraser Island. We used the same company as when I went with Natasha in 2017, Fraser Dingo 4WD, who prepared us an epic 4 day/3 night itinerary. We had a blast!! Prepare for a lot of pictures!!

The trip did start out a little stressful. It took the guy a bit longer than expected to go over all the safety information and itinerary with us, and then we didn’t follow their advice of going to the close grocery store for supplies, which resulted in a serious race to get to the ferry in time. We made it, but like… barely.

Scott letting the air out of the tires to prepare for driving on sand.
Me supervising Scott letting the air out of the tires. :D

Our first stop was Lake McKenzie. It has got to be one of the most pleasant places for a swim in the whole world. I just love that the sand is so soft, with no rocks, and the water is beautifully clear. 10/10, maybe 9.5/10 when it’s windy.

That night we camped in Central Station, in the forest. I recognized the exact campsite I stayed at in 2008! We set up camp and made dinner while getting laughed at by tons of kookaburras, and getting our ears buzzed off by seriously loud waves of cicadas. None of us had ever experienced that before, it was crazy, borderline painful. There were also tons of mosquitos so we decided we were just going to stay on Melbourne time and went to bed quite early.

The second day was going to be our only possible beach driving day, so we had to get up very early to maximize our chances of making it to the Champagne Pools, something that I didn’t get to do in 2008 OR 2017 and was dying to do.

Despite the 4WD guy making it sound extremely treacherous, we made it up to the Champagne Pools with no issues whatsoever. I actually really enjoyed the bit where I had to keep up speed to make it through the deep soft sand. Exhilarating! Rosemarie did ask if I wanted to the passage again just for fun and in hindsight maybe we should have!

Us dumdums didn’t realise there was a second parking lot so we drove back down and parked on the beach and walked back up!! Doh.

Me being a whale.

The Pools were awesome. Nice shallow spots protected by rocks, so when the waves crash in it splashes up and bubbles around you. It’s not safe to swim in the ocean anywhere else on Fraser so it’s extra special that this place exists. 10/10. Amazing.

The trail up to Indian Heads was closed for maintenance so we didn’t get to go up there, but it wasn’t whale season anyway so oh well.

Rosemarie and I on a “hike” at The Pinnacles that turned out to be about 20m long, hahaha. Good thing I brought snacks.
Maheno shipwreck.
No one wants to see a shipwreck from above!!!

We actually stopped at Eli Creek on the way up the beach first thing in the morning as well as on the way back down. I had such fond memories of it we didn’t want to risk missing in it so we did a couple loops first thing in the morning. We were the only ones there and it was REFRESHING. And of course Rosemarie loved it as much as me so we stopped there again in the afternoon and did another few laps. 9/10, needs to be longer.

Then our last activity for the day was Lake Wabby, in the dunes. We had to walk in from our beach campsite for that evening so it involved quite a bit of sand walking, but we all survived and the lake at the end is a pretty unique reward. Scott was very surprised that the lake was literally right at the edge of the dune. There are some huge fish in it as well. We had the whole lake to ourselves for quite a while too, since we were there so late in the day. I did some hill sprints to keep up my fitness. This was Scott’s favourite lake. I give it an 8/10, fish nibbling a bit and hike too long.

Visitor to our beach camp site. Scott chased him away with our Dingo Stick.
Stir fry on the dune by our beach camp site at the end of a huge day.

To be continued….