31:2011

Yes, that is a nasal spray bottle that she is holding and no, she wasn't spraying it (she was playing with the cap) . . .

She's just tall enough to reach the doorknob, but thankfully she's not strong enough to open it (yet).

Left: Alexis' "smile" face, Right: Alexis' "silly" face

Alexis said her first complete sentence this week!  She said "I did it!" when we were at swimming on Friday.  She kept saying it over and over when she would do something good.  Later that day she also said "I do it" and "I get it."  What's even more amazing is that the very next day (Saturday), she switched to saying the proper pronoun "I'll do it" and "I'll get it."  She also says the phrases "oh dear" and "poor baby" all the time (John also says them all the time, so we know where she learned them).  She can also say all of the names of her friends from playgroup and nursery without any prompting (about eight names).  When she sees one of them, she will just point to them and say their name.  We are so amazed at how well Alexis is talking and at how quickly she is learning new words.

30:2011

You can see from last week's picture and this week's, that Alexis has become very attached to her blankie.  We used to only give it to her when she was sleeping or really, really upset.  But now, she asks for it all the time (or she just goes and gets it herself) and carries it around with her constantly.

Yesterday, John took Alexis on another daddy/daughter date, this time to the Strand.

Isn't it beautiful?  (That's Magnetic Island in the background.)  This is one the places in Townsville that we will miss the most.

Also, last night was the Townsville Branch's (our church) 3rd Annual Connect Four Tournament.  Yes, that's right, connect four tournament.  The last two years John has come in second place.  He was determined to win this year (even practising online).  Sadly, he was knocked out in the third round (there were five rounds total) by one of the young women.  I only made it to the second round.

Western Australia Adventure - Part III

This is the third and last instalment about our holiday to Western Australia.  Haven't read about the beginning of our trip yet?  Read part I here and part II here.

Day 10

Exmouth/Ningaloo

Our plan while we were in Exmouth was to pretty much just go to different beaches everyday and do a lot of snorkeling.  Our first day was spent at Turquoise Bay which is famous for it's drift snorkel.  Meaning you enter the water at a certain point and then you just float in the water while the current carries you across the bay and over the coral.  We had the same problem in the morning here as we had at Coral Bay - there was almost no beach.  So while John went snorkeling first, Alexis and I played outside the campervan.  When John came back he reported that the snorkeling was on par with the best he had ever seen.  He was able to see an octopus, turtle and shark.  I wasn't too keen to go once he mentioned the shark, but I did it anyway.  I'm not as strong a swimmer as John is and the current was a little too much for me.  It probably didn't help that I went in right at high tide.  So I didn't stay in too long (I was too nervous with the strong current, the possibility of seeing a shark and the fact that I was in the water by myself).  I too was impressed though.  To my untrained eye, the coral didn't look like anything special, but John assured me that it was.  My favourite part was the large groups of fish.  Instead of seeing a few of each kind of fish, there were tons of each kind and I also saw a huge unicorn fish.

After lunch, we walked to the other side of the bay and played in the sand.  I am so mad at myself because I left the camera in the van.  And Alexis and John built some great sand castles.  Afterward, Alexis and I headed back to the van so that she could take a nap.  I sat outside and read while John did some more snorkeling.  It was a good day.

Day 11

Exmouth/Ningaloo

First on the agenda for our second day in Exmouth was a glass-bottom boat tour.  We thought this would be a good choice to enable us to do some more snorkeling farther out on the reef and still be fun for Alexis.  We were right.  John and I were able to take turns snorkeling and I was a lot more comfortable because there wasn't a strong current and they provided us with fins, which always help.  And Alexis absolutely loved sitting on the floor of the boat and looking at all of the fish through the glass.  She especially loved it when her daddy swam under the boat:

After the boat tour, we headed over to Lakeside, another beach in the Cape Range National Park and on the Ningaloo Marine Reserve.

We all had fun playing in the sand.

First, Daddy got buried.

And then, Alexis got buried.

After the fun in the sand, I took Alexis back to the van for a nap and John went snorkeling.  It took me over an hour to settle Alexis down for a nap, but I was eventually able to get in a little reading.  Lakeside wasn't quite as nice as Turquoise Bay (it would be hard for anything to be better, it was that nice), but still a good place to spend the afternoon.

Before heading back to town, we drove up to the Vlamingh Head Lighthouse to watch the sunset.  Up until this point in the trip I had yet to see a sunset over the Indian Ocean because I was always in the van cooking dinner.  So I especially enjoyed it.

Being on top of the hill that the lighthouse is on gave us a great view of this:

John and I had never seen anything like it before and when we drove by it the first day (it's located at the end of the peninsula between the town and the national park) we couldn't figure out what it was.  There was a huge barricade at the entrance and 'no trespassing' signs everywhere.  It turns out it is a large Navy communication base to communicate with submarines.  Interesting.

After enjoying the sunset we headed out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Exmouth.  It wasn't anything special, but it was sure nice to have a break from cooking in the van and doing the dishes.

Day 12

Exmouth/Ningaloo

The original plan for today was to make a nine hour drive west to the Karijini National Park.  Karijini is famous for it's stunning gorges and was highly recommended by our friends Peter and Dorothy.  On the return trip from Karijini our plan was to head south and drive thirteen hours overnight.  Once we got an actual road map in our hands that listed all of the petrol stops, we saw that there was no way to make the trip at night (none of the petrol stations were open overnight) and we didn't have enough time in our itinerary to make the drive during the day.  We also thought that we probably wouldn't be able to take full advantage of the gorges and the hiking because of Alexis, so we made the decision to spend an extra day in Exmouth and drive south for an extra day in Coral Bay instead.  We were very happy with our decision.  After all, the main reason for the trip was so that John could snorkel on the Ningaloo Reef!

So we headed out to a beach called Oyster Stacks, because you guessed it, there are lots of oyster stacks there.  Or at least there are supposed to be; John didn't actually see any.

As you can see from the above picture the beach was beautiful and there was lots of coral.  Also, it was the narrowest part of the reef, so John was able to swim all the way out to the reef shelf which he loved.  Because the beach was all rock, Alexis and I watched the Wiggles in the van while John snorkeled.

After John's snorkeling, we headed over to Sandy Bay.  This beach didn't have any coral for snorkeling, but was recommended as a nice, sandy, shallow bay for families.

Alexis took an early nap and John stayed with her so that I could go lay out at the beach and read.  I couldn't believe my luck, but I had the entire beach to myself!  It was so nice and peaceful.

After lunch, we brought Alexis out to the beach to play in the sand.

We then coaxed her into the water.  Up until this point, Alexis had not gone in the water further than her toes.  Even though Alexis absolutely loves the water, it was a lot more chilly than she was used to (remember she's a native North Queenslander).

Day 13

Exmouth to Coral Bay

We knew our trip was coming to a close when we started heading south.  Up until now, we had always been driving north.  We were so impressed with the beauty of Coral Bay that we decided to spend another night there.

Guess what arrived in town about twenty minutes after us?  That plague of locusts we had seen earlier in the week.

It was amazing to look up and see so many huge insects.  They weren't too bad of a nuisance except when one landed on my head as I was walking to the toilets.  Gross!

John of course was eager to do his last bit of snorkeling.  Alexis took a nap and I enjoyed some more reading time.  I couldn't resist snapping a picture of Alexis' bedhead when she woke up.

There was just so many interesting things to look at out the window (mainly locusts).

Day 14

Coral Bay to Geraldton

Today was our longest driving day.  Up until now we had only driven between 2.5-5 hours a day, but the drive from Coral Bay to Geraldton took us 7.5 hours, including our 30 minute stop for petrol and lunch.  Alexis did amazingly well and never fussed once.  Do we have the best baby or what?  Once we got settled at the caravan park in Geraldton, John took Alexis out to the playground for some much deserved playtime.  The caravan park was at Sunset Beach, so I thought I might as well take advantage of the great location and go watch the sunset.  It was beautiful and very peaceful to spend a quiet 15 minutes on the beach by myself.

Day 15

Geraldton to Perth

We had originally planned to spend the day in Geraldton and then drive back to Perth the following day.  We thought we would need a break from driving after our long drive the day before.  But both John and I woke up with a great urge to just be finished with our trip (mostly to just be finished with our campervan).  So we decided to return the campervan a day early and check into a hotel in Perth for the night.  We spent a good two hours packing up the van and cleaning it out and by 10:00am we were on the road to Perth.  It took us about five hours and we got to the rental depot just before it closed.  Perfect!  We checked in to the Holiday Inn Burswood and enjoyed room service for dinner and having access to a bathtub (we don't have one in our house).

This was the view of downtown Perth from our hotel room.  We were amazed at all of the construction going on!  You can see five cranes in this picture and there were more that were out of the shot.

Day 16

Perth to Townsville

Our flight back to Townsville didn't leave until 11:00pm, so we spent a leisurely day at the hotel.  We enjoyed a wonderful buffet breakfast at the Intercontinental Hotel next door and then let Alexis run around a bit in their ginormous lobby.  We took quite a long walk around the Burswood Entertainment Complex and then went to the playground across the street.  Alexis was in heaven this entire trip because she got to play outside so much and got to go to a playground everyday.

We all enjoyed a nice afternoon nap and then spent the evening relaxing in our hotel room and packing up the odds and ends.  Alexis got a hold of one of the hotel pens and coloured on herself for the first time.  This is her showing me where she coloured (there was also some on her cheek).

We put Alexis down at 7:00pm, her normal bedtime, since we didn't need to leave for the airport until 9:00pm. The flight back was mostly uneventful, thank goodness.  It took Alexis quite a while to get settled (probably because we let her sleep for two hours before we left), but eventually we were all able to get some sleep.  Unfortunately the flight from Perth to Townsville was significantly shorter than the one going the opposite direction.  The Perth-Townsville flight only took four hours (and was a night flight, so we all wanted to sleep), while the Townsville-Perth flight was six hours (and was a day flight, so we had to fight Alexis to get her to take a nap).  It would have been perfect if the flying times were reversed.  By the time we got Alexis settled on the night flight, it felt like we were landing an hour later.  So we were pretty exhausted when we got home.

 We were exhausted, but happy.  Happy to be home and happy that we got to go on such an awesome trip before we leave Australia.  We know that this is a holiday that we will never forget and always be grateful that we could take.  Forgive me for writing about it in such detail, but we wanted to make sure we remembered as much as possible.  We would highly recommend traveling to Western Australia if you ever have the chance.  We would go back in a heartbeat.  There's so much more that we didn't get to see.

Western Australia Adventure - Part II

If you haven't read part one of our adventure yet, read it here first.

Day 6

Monkey Mia

(pronounced my-ah, not me-ah)

The day we spent in Monkey Mia was John's 30th birthday.  We started off the morning by going to see the dolphins.  They come into shore a couple of times during the day for a feeding.  We thought that we would all be able to go in the water with the dolphins and feed them ourselves.  We learned that this is what they did in the past, but now only the staff go in the water and everyone else just watches from the beach.  It was still cool to see the wild dolphins so close up (and Alexis loved it), but it was a bit of a let-down that we couldn't go in the water as well.  And it was super crowded.  You kind of had to fight your way to the front of the group.  It was nice, just not exactly what we were expecting.

It was windy and cold on the beach (it was only 7:30 in the morning).

After seeing the dolphins, John and Alexis spent some time colouring, while I got breakfast ready.

We had booked a wildlife cruise for later in the morning.  This is Alexis waiting for the boat.  It is one of my favourite pictures from the whole trip.

And this is the catamaran that we went sailing on - the Aristocat 2.

The best part of the cruise was that there was only one other family of four on the cruise with us,  and it was nice to just be out on the water.  The main reason we booked the cruise was because Shark Bay is famous for the large amount of dugongs, dolphins and sharks that reside there.  We didn't see any!  Correction, we saw four dolphins at the last moment before the cruise ended.  I was really looking forward to seeing the dugongs, so it was disappointing.  Alexis had fun though, which is important, though it was stressful for us to keep her away from the edge of the boat.  By the end of the cruise she was so tired that she fell asleep standing up!

Because of her catnap on the boat, Alexis wouldn't take a proper nap later that afternoon, so we went to the beach instead.

There was lots of wildlife around the resort.  By the end of the day Alexis had learned how to say "dolphin" and "emu."

Day 7
Monkey Mia to Carnarvon 

As we headed out of Monkey Mia, the rain set in.  We didn't mind too much because we had about a five hour drive ahead of us and weren't planning on doing anything big.  We had had perfect weather up until then.  We drove through Denham which is the main town on the Shark Bay peninsula.  It was very picturesque and on an absolutely gorgeous bay.  If we ever go back, we will definitely stay in Denham instead of Monkey Mia.  The highlight of the day was stopping by Shell Beach, also on the Shark Bay peninsula.  The entire beach is made up of tiny shells, instead of sand.  We only stayed for about 15 minutes (because it was raining), but we loved it.

Once we got to Carnarvon, we headed straight to the Woolworths (grocery store) to get supplies.  Carnarvon looked liked a nice country town, just a bit (or maybe a lot) run down.  But the caravan park we stayed in was fabulous.  It was super clean and we had tons of space.  It was still raining when we went to bed and we were just crossing our fingers that it would pass over night because we were heading to Coral Bay the next day.

Day 8

Carnarvon to Coral Bay
 

We woke up and it was still raining.  We started our drive to Coral Bay and took a detour out to Quobba Point to see the blowholes.  There was also supposed to be a great calm lagoon for snorkeling.  The cliffs were gorgeous, but we didn't actually see any water go through the blowholes.  And because it was so windy and rainy, the snorkeling was out of the question.  Even though it was beautiful, we don't think it justified the additional hour it added to our driving time.

I couldn't resist posting this picture of John wearing his "mantyhose" (that what he calls them).  They're really just a pair of my old leggings.  He woke up feeling a little unwell, so he relaxed in his pj's while I did the driving.

When we got to Coral Bay, the rain had stopped but it was still overcast.  Luckily for me, John was feeling better, because it was my turn to get sick and I mean really sick.  John took Alexis outside to feed the birds and run around.  He was so helpful to take care of dinner for the two of them and then lucky Alexis got to sleep with her daddy up in the loft.

Day 9
Coral Bay to Exmouth

We woke up to sunshine!  And I was feeling weak/tired, but otherwise a lot better.  Coral Bay is a small tourist town located on the southern end of the Ningaloo

Alexis was such a good traveler in the van.  She never fussed in her car seat while we were driving (not even on the long seven hour drive we did later in the week).  On the days we had a long drive to do, we would start Alexis off in her seat and then once she fell asleep, we would move her to the bed in the back because she would sleep longer if she was laying down.  The drive to Exmouth from Coral Bay was only about 2.5 hours, so we decided to just leave Alexis in her car seat.  But her head kept falling down at a weird angle so this is what I came up with:

I just rolled her sleepsak up and tucked the ends into her car seat.  It ended up working pretty well.

On the way to Exmouth we drove through a plague of locusts.  I had never seen a locust before.  They were huge!

We arrived in Exmouth feeling energised and excited.  The main reason we wanted to go to Western Australia was to go to Exmouth to see the Ningaloo Reef.  Exmouth is on the west side of a peninsula and the Ningaloo Marine Park is on the east side (in the Cape Range National Park), about a 30-60 minute drive from town depending on what beach you are going to.  So we just settled in for the night so that we would be ready in the morning.

. . . Western Australia Adventure - Part III (the best part)

coming soon, hopefully tomorrow night . . .