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Alexis and Mr. Grizzly:

Alexis is loving all of the fun new toys at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

She loves to give Mr. Grizzly hugs:

Alexis is adjusting really well to her new surroundings.  She even started sleeping in a "big girl" bed (a twin bed).  The nursery at John's parents' house has both a crib and a twin bed in it.  When we got here on Friday, the crib level was too high and we didn't want Alexis to fall out, so even though we were both ridiculously tired, we spent about thirty minutes adjusting the mattress level to the lowest setting.  A few minutes after we put Alexis to bed later that night she started crying.  Assuming she was scared in her new bedroom, I went in to check on her.  As soon as she saw me, she started saying "big girl bed, big girl bed."  The twin bed is a trundle, so I pulled the trundle bed out thinking she would sleep on that and since it was on the ground, it would be ok if she rolled off.  She didn't want the trundle bed either, she wanted the true "big girl" bed.  So Alexis ended up sleeping on the twin bed the very first night we were here.  I left the trundle bed pulled out just in case she rolled off the bed and then put a bunch a pillows on the ground on the other side.

Because of jet lag, we all woke up in the middle of the night.  After about two hours, we put Alexis back to bed (in the twin bed).  She started crying again, but this time it was because she wanted to sleep in the trundle bed.  What a cheeky monkey!  By the end of the night, she had used all three bed options (the crib, the twin, and the trundle).

Last night she slept the whole night in the twin bed.  Alexis isn't even two yet and she's already sleeping in a regular bed.  What a grown-up girl we have.

One last time

Well, we made it! We survived our last trans-Pacific flight. We arrived in Salt Lake yesterday.  Our travel went amazingly well.  Alexis was absolutely perfect, all of our flights were on-time, and when we had to go through customs in L.A. we got through first and then our bags were first off the plane.  One of our bags didn't make it to Salt Lake from L.A., but we got it the next day, so it was not a big deal at all.  Here's a few pictures from our trip:

Our last view of Townsville, taken from the airplane window:

Alexis asleep on the flight from Townsville to Brisbane:

Our alarms were set for 4:00am (we had a 6:00am flight), but Alexis woke up at 3:30am, so she pretty much conked out as soon as the plane took off.

We totally lucked out with our seats.  We only bought two tickets but on both the Townsville to Brisbane flight and the one from Brisbane to Los Angeles, we had an empty seat next to us.  That meant Alexis got her own seat and we all had a little more wiggle room.  Alexis loved having her own "big girl" seat and loved to buckle the seat belt herself.  We had booked premium economy tickets, so Alexis got a big leather seat all to herself!  She also had her own T.V. and headphones which were lifesavers.  She loved watching cartoons, as seen below:

Having the extra seat was also nice for nap-time.  John and I could relax while Alexis was sleeping because we didn't have to hold her the whole time.  She took one four-hour nap:

And another two-hour nap:

I'm sure that we looked hilarious going through customs.  We had so many bags (13, including our carry-ons and the stroller) that we each had to push a cart.  John pushed one cart and then pulled the stroller backwards:

And I pushed the other cart:

It hasn't really set in yet that we aren't going back to Australia.  We are used to coming to the States for four to six weeks to visit our families, so I'm interested to see how we feel a month from now when we would normally be preparing to go back to Townsville.

But we are happy to be in Salt Lake and very happy that we had such a good travel experience.

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I can't believe how big/old Alexis looks in this picture!!

This has been a big week for us.  We had a massive garage sale, sold our car and moved out of our Australian home.  (We're staying in a holiday apartment for our last few days in Townsville).  Alexis got her first ear infection this week and she also went potty for the first time while we were not at home.  She went three times while we were at church today (once during Sacrament meeting and twice during nursery).  We are so excited.  Before this, Alexis has been scared of using other toilets.  We are so proud of how well she is doing with potty training.  She now always wears panties during the day and only wears diapers for naptime and bedtime.  Even though she rarely has accidents, when we go out I usually put her in a pull-up (which she calls "princess panties" because they have the Disney princesses on them), just for my piece of mind.  We still call Alexis "baby girl," but she really is turning into a big girl.

Fashion Choices

Alexis is already becoming opinionated about what she wears.  This outfit was her choice:

You can't see it that well in the picture, but she only has one slipper on (she flat refused to put the other one on).  She is wearing blue panties with flowers on them, but no pants.  And after I put her hair up in a ponytail, she then added a leapord print headband.

Luckily, by the time we were ready to leave the house, she consented to putting some pants on.

37:2011

No church pictures today.  Alexis has had a fever since Friday and a bit of a cough, so John stayed at home with her.  It was weird being childless at church.  I tried to enjoy being able to fully pay attention to the talks and lessons, but at the same time I couldn't relax.  I kept feeling like I was forgetting something.  But it was nice.  I appreciated John staying home so that I could go.

When I came home I found John and Alexis playing "Nephites and Lamanites."  They were watching Book of Mormon Stories on DVD.  Then John dressed Alexis up in one of his t-shirts and gave her the whisk.  Alexis the Nephite would then chase John the Lamanite around the room with the whisk.  Thank goodness for a silly Daddy.  Alexis had fun, that's for sure.

Mackay Recap

Last weekend, we drove about 4 1/2 hours south to Mackay to visit the Atkinsons.  We first met Seth, Steph and Eliana (she was only about 7 months old at the time and now she's 4!), when they moved to Townsville a few years ago.  We were so sad when they moved to Brisbane just over a year ago.  But since then, baby Noah has joined their family and they recently moved to Mackay which is driving distance from Townsville.  We knew that we couldn't pass up one last visit with our friends before we left Australia.  So, here's our Mackay recap:

Friday

We left Friday around 11:30am with the hopes that Alexis would take a nice nap in the car.  She did sleep for about an hour, but not nearly as long as we were hoping.  But because she has so much experience being in the car (from our Western Australia adventure), she was a good sport most of the time.  We ran into some bad construction traffic, so the trip took a little longer than we were expecting, but other than that, it was a good drive.

Alexis loves to sing songs and one of her favourites to sing is the ABC's.  Alexis usually sings most of it with us, but we didn't know she could sing it all by herself until she started singing it in the car.  Luckily, our video camera was within easy reach.

We can't believe that Alexis can sing the ABC's and she's only 22 months old!!  We definitely have a smarty pants on our hands.

While we were driving, I tried to teach Alexis how to say everyone's name.  She would say "Seth" for both Seth and Steph (they are pretty similar), but she could say "Noah" and "Ellie."  It was so funny when we got to the Atkinson's house because Eliana came running out and Alexis yelled "Noah!".  Being at the age where she doesn't know the difference between boys and girls names, we thought it was pretty funny.  We got to Mackay in the late afternoon and decided to head out to the beach before dinner.

Here's the gang walking to the beach:

It only took us five minutes to walk to this beach from Seth and Steph's house:

Noah had a ton of fun playing in the wet sand:

And Alexis and Eliana had lots of fun in the water:

Saturday

We went on a little driving tour of Mackay on Saturday morning.  Alexis thought she was such a big girl, because she got to sit next to Eliana in the car.

Smile!

This was a beautiful lookout by the Marina:

Alexis had fun eating her first whole apple.  I was surprised that she could even bite into it!

We stopped by a playground to let the kids run around.  Alexis and Noah had fun on the swings:

And Steph had fun on this:

I don't know what it's called, but it was a little seat that you could sit on and use your body weight and momentum to spin around really fast.  You can tell that Steph was going fast by looking at her hair flying around.

After some nice nap time, we headed out to the beach at Shoal Point for some beach cricket.  Amazingly, in the almost five years that we have lived in Townsville, John and I have never played cricket.  It was so much fun!!  We never understood the appeal when we saw cricket matches on T.V., but beach cricket was a blast.  We wish we would have known about it earlier.  Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of us playing (Steph and I were the best!), but here's the beach:

It really reminded me of Mission Beach.

Sleeping Noah:

Alexis had fun digging in the sand and even took a turn with the cricket bat!

We had an indoor BBQ back at home with another couple from the Mackay Branch.  After the kids were in bed we played an exciting game of Spoons.  It came down to just me and Seth, but I won in the end.

Sunday

Sunday was Father's Day and we celebrated with a nice breakfast before church.  The afternoon was spent relaxing and taking naps.  After a nice dinner, we packed up and headed back to Townsville.

The weekend went by way too fast.  We all had fun, but especially Alexis.  She was in absolute heaven to have friends to play with all the time.  She followed Ellie around everywhere, and thankfully, Ellie didn't mind.  Every time we took Alexis away (to change her or something), she would start crying "play with friends, play with friends."  It made me excited for her to be able to play with all of her cousins in a few weeks.

This is a picture of Alexis playing with Eliana.  So goofy.

Thank you Atkinsons for a great weekend!  We miss you already.

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"No . . . I don't want my picture taken!"

"I'm still fussy, but Happy Father's Day Daddy!"

Today is "Father's Day" in Australia.  We are in Mackay visiting our friends the Atkinsons for the weekend.  We served John and Seth a special breakfast (pancakes with fresh strawberries and yummy croissants with ham and cheese) before heading off to church.  More details from our fun weekend to come soon.

We love our Daddy!!

Friends

We had some friends come over for a visit today. While Olivia and I had a nice chat, her daughter Sprinkle and Alexis had an absolute ball. Sprinkle is just one month older than Alexis and they play so well together.

You'll probably notice from the pictures that Alexis and Sprinkle are dressed similarly.  This was half coincidence and half on purpose.  I dressed Alexis in purple and then Sprinkle came over wearing her pink tutu with a purple shirt.  I got Alexis' tutu out so that they could have fun dancing.  It was so cute!

Building towers:

Playing with the scooter:

Being silly:

They seriously ran back and forth for at least 10 minutes!

I think this picture is so adorable:

We're certainly going to miss Olivia, Sprinkle and all of the good friends that we've made here.