oh man! i can't believe i forgot to mention the huge golden guitar in my last post. for anyone who has either been to australia or read bill bryson's in a sunburned country, you should be familiar with the australians' affinity for making large, random monuments to... whatever (it may or may not have a specific connection to the area - e.g. the giant koala between melbourne and adelaide; koalas are everywhere here, or the huge golden guitar in tamworth... i mean, where did THAT one come from?!). actually, i guess they're not really monuments, but they are huge and made from wood, fiberglass, steel, chicken wire, whatever. and they don't necessarily weather that well. BUT! they do make for a great magnet collection. payton started one for theo and nova each when, on his sampling trip in tamworth (while the rest of us were in sydney), he got both SEE the huge golden guitar and then BUY a smaller, sturdier, magnetic version that says "tamworth" across the front. lauren and i were thrilled. the kids just tried to eat them. ken, phil... possible guitar night group pilgrimage spot?
on to adelaide... well, we arrived, piled everyone and everything into gg - except mom, dad, me and an empty stroller... we took a cab. but don't worry, we utilized the full hugeness of gg in a later trip - you'll see... it took most the afternoon to settle six adults and two babies into a small, single-level, three room, ONE BATHROOM (with very little hot water - payton actually moved his entire toilette to work, where he, at least, got one hot shower a day) house, with mom and dad on the pull out couch in the living room. note: i do not abuse my parents! it's a nice couch! but they were the unfortunate first tier greeters to early rising babies wandering from their rooms down the hall to find (gasp!) gran and grandaddy!! the rest of us tried to keep our doors shut as tightly as possible...
saturday morning, we went to adelaide's central market - only pictures will do it justice (i'll get there) - but it is huge and busy and full of beautiful fruit, veggies, meat, cheese, bread, flowers, etc. that afternoon, we went to our local oval, home of the norwood redlegs, and caught the tail end of the footy game.
and on sunday... NOVA TURNED TWO!!!!! wow! that was fast (but the first few weeks seemed so long...) i can't believe it. what a charmer. for her birthday, we drove down to victor harbor and hiked a small part of the hans heyson trail (ol' hans was a german immigrant and local artist and naturalist that painted a lot of pastoral australia). the trail is something like 1000 km in its entirety. this section was stunning. we ate lunch on a little half-moon bay beach and were treated to a school of dolphins (porpoises?) that came in close to fish and play. just a little ways up the trail, we saw a huge mob of kangaroos and further still, out in the water, a group of seals. ah, nature! the majority of the hike is spent on top of 1000 ft lush, emerald-green cliffs that sort of curve around so you get a good view ahead of time of what you'll be hiking above.
back home, in true whitehurst fashion, we were running late, didn't have a cake prepared, didn't have presents wrapped and so decided to just draw the festivities out for at least another day. i mean, why only celebrate once when you can celebrate twice? why only celebrate for one baby when there are two present? why only have one cake when you can have two or three or four? party on. (we didn't really eat four cakes.) the kids made do, however, with a small cake-from-the-24 hr-bakery-down-the-road, blew out some candles, got extremely wired, did some major running and (happy) screaming and finally crashed much later than they should have. this was the end of "bedtime". for the rest of the trip. so we did it all again the next day. only this time, we had presents and lauren made a small sheet cake and decorated it with a kangaroo wearing a purple feather boa. lauren, you have to understand, has been in charge of decorating my cake since time immemorial. this is the creative mind who, while celebrating my 24th birthday with me in montana just a few weeks after i'd broken my femur, decided to have a "leg party" (these are also my initials, mind you - lindsey elizabeth gardner). we had crab legs, chicken legs, and leg of lamb. and lauren made two RED VELVET sheet cakes (get it? it's red when you cut in to it...), put them end to end and cut it in the shape of a leg and then decorated it, complete with little icing shorts with my initials, painted toenails and an ankle bracelent. bloody good.
good weather got us some great days on the beach as well as time to explore norwood itself. payton just got to go to work. but keep in mind, he was getting the hot showers and a private bathroom. but the next weekend, lauren, adam, payton and i abandoned our children and our parents, and left them carless so we could drive up to the barossa valley and go road biking and wine tasting for three days. mom and dad will not only GO to heaven for this, they will OWN heaven for their saintliness. because not only did they do this for us..., but they did it on their 40th wedding anniversary!!!
the rest of us had a great time! and, hey, we brought them back a magnet of the huge grape... (kidding, there is no huge grape in the barossa valley). actually, we were told the kids did great - which i believe because they seem to do better with gran and grandaddy around. and the rest of us really did have a great time. it was the first time lauren and i had ever spent a night away from our spawn. you may be expecting an emotion laden pause here... but there's not. we missed the babies, but it was SO nice to get to do that. thanks mom and dad! we stayed in a self-contained cottage, had coffee and eggs and bacon when we were ready, watched "the man from snowy river", saw a lot of the valley from a bike seat, had some trouble sitting after that first ride, and managed to hit up a whopping four vineyards! for posterity's sake, i'll list them: bethany vineyards, turkey flat vinyards, rockfor vineyards, and seppeltsfield where we got a tour and learned a lot about fortified wines (eg. port). on saturday, we ate a sinfully rich lunch of pate, bread roles, and wine at maggie beer's farm shop (it was a little difficult getting the ol' pedals rolling after that one). we hoped we pedalled off more calories than we ingested, but i'm not so sure. it was WONDERFUL to see the babes when we got home.
in celebration of mom and dad's anniversary, we went straight from the barossa valley out to very nice (too nice for two year olds) italian dinner. the food was fantast, the service impeccable and the seating arrangement hilarious. the rambunctious whitehurst/gardner/rankin clan was sequestered to one corner of the restaurant while all other patrons were seated in such a way that when you looked out over the room, there was a buffer of empty seats one to two tables thick separating our table from the other diners! the kids penetrated this moat in seconds flat with their sort of well dressed moms (its hard to maintain fahionista status in motherhood, much less through a pasta dinner with a toddler) weaving between white table cloths, waiters, and other people's nice shoes, chasing after spaghetti-sauce-faced children with a wet napkin in their hands. ultimately, dinner turned into a relay race where the kids ran around outside after their five-minute attention span was wasted on a pasta plate that took 20 minutes to arrive, and the rest of us, grandparents included, swapped between eating, charming the waiters to avoid getting kicked out, and keeping the kids out of the street. and after all that, they wouldn't let us take desert home (i guess we should be thankful they didn't serve us our entire meal in "to go" boxes!). a meal to remember!!
that was on sunday. on wednesday, we loaded gg up for an epic whitehurst road trip.
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