well! long time no blog. what can i say? time flies when you're waiting for your second winter to pass and all your immediate family (in-laws, for payton) flies into the country for three to six weeks...
my parents (liz and fred whitehurst), my sister (lauren), her husband (adam) and their almost-two-year-old son (theo) all flew in to sydney on august 3rd. it's hard to say if payton and i were more excited to see family or to not have to be the ones on the fourteen hour flight... such as it was, their flight went fine (see? all you friends with babies - even international travel can be smooth... and if you do it before jr. turns two - he/she flies for free! the rest of you - i.e. sans kids - hardly have an excuse!). nova and i flew in to sydney that same day and we all stayed for the week. payton, luckily enough, was doing some sampling for work in podunk new south wales (the state in which sydney resides - new south wales, not podunk) where everyone wears "man from snowy river" hats and elastic sided boots, 'roo dog houses are made out of rotted gum tree stumps and the sheds all dress to the left (i have yet to determine if direction of sructure slant depends on the coriolis effect - i'll let you know once i've done some more research), so he was able to spend a couple nights with us in sydney while passing through.
we saw a lot of sydney in those four days: botanic gardens, the sydney opera house, the circular quay (pronounced "key"... you know, they also spell jail "g-a-o-l" here, so if my spelling begins to deteriorate and looks more like aussie-accented phonetics, you'll know why), manly beach (lauren started on a rant when she picked up the "manly guide", wondering where the "womanly guide" was, until she realized manly was our destination and this guide was, well, for that area), the taronga zoo, the aquarium, and darling harbor. we rode some ferries, the light rail, and did a ton of walking. the babies thoroughly enjoyed themselves - mostly running around the apartment with nothing but each other's gumboots on (on the wrong feet, of course) and screaming bloody murder when anyone suggested putting a nappy (diaper) on and some clothes so we might get out the door and see sydney. actually, for the entire three weeks, both babies were champions - napping in strollers and car seats, sleeping in random hotel rooms and sharing rooms and beds with parents, long car drives, moving through time zones.
dad and adam went on a strict meat pie and sausage roll sampling bender, and effectively dragged mom, lauren and me down with them. so bad for you, but oh, so good. australia is a land of dude food - everything is made out of meat: rolls, pasties, pies... kranskies.... i understand aus is the land where vegetarian adam (my bro-in-law was in brisbane for a time while in college) was converted back to a meat-eater; he hardly had a choice.
a final sydney highlight, made possible by outstanding parents/grandparents (it turns out my mom is better at getting nova to sleep at bed and naptime than her own darling mother) was the chance for lauren, adam and me to see a symphony in the sydney opera house. amazing! there are a number of different stages/performance halls in the opera house and the symphony hall was gorgeous. nick and claudia - we saw/heard "a hero's life", which we heard you perform while in salt lake. unfortunately, payton couldn't make the symphony (he was flying in from sampling in tamworth), but he met us after the show (imagine, outback aus to downtown, cosmopolitan sydney in the span of a few hours... from sampling water from a well on some farm somewhere to sipping a beer on the circular quay watching the ferries come and go and all the lively, well-shod citizens of sydney drink up the night life... does the guy live a charmed life, or what?!). the four of us walked to an area called the rocks and had a fantastic steak dinner with vegemite butter served on top!
the next day, friday, the whole fam-dam boarded a flight to adelaide - to see the gardner stronghold and our new city.
note: i promise i'll post pics asap. fortunately, adam and lauren are great photographers with a really nice camera and dad is the seasoned photo chronicler of all whitehurst family adventures. unfortunately, our iphoto is undergoing an over-haul and merging of different photo libraries.
Monday, August 31, 2009
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