Two & a half weeks just flew by. Not counting the sad trip in April (which was barely a week), it's been almost four years since I last saw my birth family. It really hit home just how much has happened and how much has changed since I've been gone. We had a great time...except for Kim (my older sis) falling down while carrying Amber on the Thursday before we left. She sacrificed herself to save Amber, hit her head on the cupboard and tore the ligaments in her left knee; Amber was shaken and stirred but unharmed. Thank you, Kim. I know you said you didn't even think about it, that it was an automatic reaction to protect the baby but some small (tiny) part of you must have still made the decision to save Amber rather than yourself and damn the consequences. Thank you.

We got into Melbourne on Wednesday morning and were met by Nanna (my mum), Kim, and Carol (younger sis). Tullamarine (Melbourne Airport) has a funny passenger arrival area where you can greet & touch the arriving passengers but they (us) still have to walk for maybe 10 to 15 metres around a waist-high plexi-glass wall. I handed Amber over this silly wall to Carol then Liz, JE & I walked around it to "officially" greet everyone. Amber was apparently fine with being given to a complete stranger, a bit of a worry, or maybe she just knew she was with family. Nanna had a giant chocky frog for JE, he ate half of it then gave it to me; I stuck it in my bag and we didn't see it again for two weeks. Lucky it was winter in Australia or it might have melted.

We went back to Kim's house where we were going to spend the next few days, then Kim and I went and picked up Casey (her daughter) from school. Needless to say Casey was ecstatic her Uncle John & family had arrived, especially as it meant she got the afternoon off ;) Lunch on the first day was fish & chips which was delicious, although a little greasier than I remembered. The chunks of battered, deep-fried fish you get in most Aussie Fish & Chip shops, if you order the standard "Flake" rather than Whiting or some other "named" fish, is actually shark, either school shark or gummy shark. Because it's shark you get honking big chunks of greasy, battered meat that you can really rip into, and boy is it good.

We relaxed on Wednesday afternoon then Thursday Liz went shopping with Mum and the girls...I think I went too...they needed someone to carry all their shopping while they bought more ;)

On Friday Liz and I rode the train into "The City", that would be the part of Melbourne which American's would call "Downtown", where we met an old friend of mine for lunch. He took us to a Vietnamese Noodle House because the Greek Restaurant we were originally going to was closed. Liz picked up some souvineers and other goodies, and did some more shopping at the Bourke Street Mall ;)

Saturday we went to the Melbourne Zoo and apparently saw barely half of it. I think that was because there were a couple of paths closed off necessitating a detour around the giraffe enclosure. Lunch was at the Zoo and by early afternoon JE was getting very stroppy and refusing to walk any further. Lucky we had the stroller in which to push him around but when we came across the exit (darn detours) we decided to call it a day anyway. Liz and I were planning to go and see a real, live footy game that evening so we needed to conserve our energy. After dinner Shaun (Kim's husband) drove us into The City and we witnessed the tragic flogging of my beloved Tigers by the detestable Adelaide Crows. Richmond's aging Full-Forward had a good game but he's only one man (and he's getting old by footy standards) and while he affected a couple of plays he couldn't swing the game our way. The Tigers did redeem themselves the Saturday before we left by beating the Sydney Swans (sorry, mate) at the hallowed ground that is the Melbourne Cricket Ground, aka, The MCG, aka, The "G". I don't know why we didn't go to that game instead, but as Richmond have a tendency to lose any match I actually attend it's probably a good thing, otherwise the Tigers might have lost by 5 points rather than winning by just 1 point.

AN AWESOME PIC!



The following week & half we spent down in Traralgon (Liz's least favourite part of the trip) at my mum's house. According to the sign at the City Limits, Traralgon now has almost 20,000 people living there :) Carol & Zac live next door to Mum and when Kim & Shaun and Thomas (nephew) and Casey (still the niece) came down later that week that meant at any one time we would have 11 people in Mum's house. When visitors came around (which they usually did) we had up to 15 people in the house. Poor Liz is used to a relatively quiet household. This was not a relaxing time for her.

We didn't do a whole lot more. The weather didn't cooperate and we got quite a few rainy days. Most of the time was spent just with family. I did spend a lot of time playing World of Warcraft, admittedly with Shaun and/or Thomas and/or Casey, but computer/video gaming is (IMO) a bonding experience, especially for us Gen-Xers and the subsequent generation. Shaun, Zac & I (and various other friends) used to while away many an evening (& early morning) with marathon Doom & Quake frag-fests. Aah, those were the days.

We went up to the cemetary to see Dad's grave. The headstone/plaque is in place now. That got a little teary. I found Jonno's grave as well. It's hard to believe he's been dead for over 14 years. He'd have been 34 next week.

I know we didn't do as many touristy things as Liz would have liked, but with Dad passing away earlier this year I was just happy to be able to spend some time with my family. We did go to Sale (two towns over) to see the Kangaroos, but there's not many roos in the park there now. I think there were just two small ones, there were quite a few wallabies but only the couple of roos. We had lunch at the Sale mall (another mall which barely qualifies to be known as such) and JE fell asleep in the car on the way back, and a good thing too. It's barely a 30-min drive to Sale but JE managed to whine for most of it. He's at that age where he wants something now and hates sitting in the car for extended periods of time. Considering Mum lives over 100 miles from Melbourne it's amazing we made that trip w/o too much whining from JE.

Next time (maybe 2007 or 2008) we'll hopefully do a bit more tourist stuff. Of course by then Amber will be four years old...hopefully she won't be as whiny as JE on car trips :P

I must admit, however, they both traveled in the plane exceptionally well. We all napped in spurts but of course the kids got more sleep than we did. Amber had a small vomiting incident on the way over, fortunately during the last hour or two of the flight, so Liz didn't have to sit in vomit scented jeans for too long. Other than that, the trip both ways was pretty good...of course you tend to block out the bad parts ;)

So now we're back in the US of A.