We bought a car....

We have really enjoyed getting to know Win's cousins, and we went to Toby and Charlotte's place for new years day celebrations. They have a lovely home with a very lovable Lab called Lucy. The boys decided to lock themselves in Lucy's Crate. Isabelle was not feeling to perky, so she was enjoying some cuddles from Crystal.


















I took a photo of Lucy's Christmas present: a Dog Hiking Pack- So when they hike or camp they don't have to carry the dog's water and food... she can carry it herself. Brilliant idea.
Toby's kids got a great snow mobile thing for Christmas which the kids had a great time sliding down the front yard. The top house is Toby's and the lower ones are Crystal's (where we are).
The kids all helped to shovel the driveway. It was quite an effort because there was a lot of ice built up that needed to be chipped away.

We also went to the Ogden Temple with the kids on possibly one of the coldest days so far. The Water fountain had frozen into a mound of ice, quite interesting that it would freeze like that.
The kids were aghast when we said that they couldn't go into the temple until they were older. They stood out there like frozen little orphans peering into the warm interior and said "but why can't kids go in??" We explained that you needed to be very reverant in the temple and that when they were older and could understand the significance they would be able to go. Well then Isabelle pipes up "I will be REALLY reverant, I promise!" We would have liked to take them into the annex at least but we were in our casual clothes and it didn't seem right, so we just looked from the outside.
The Ogden temple is going to have a major facelift or makeover would be more accurate, apparantly they have an issue with local couples not wanting to get married at the Ogden temple because it is not as "aesthetically pleasing" as some of the others so the brides don't want their photos there. So there are plans to beautify the temple, but it will be closed for 2 years while they totally change the exterior. That will mean that we will be travelling 45 minutes to Bountiful or when the Brigham City temple is complete we will be able to travel 45 minutes to that one. Which surprises me, because being in Utah we didn't think that the temple would be as far away as it was in Adelaide!
Win and were planning to go to the Salt Lake Temple earlier this week but then we found out that it is closed for cleaning for 2 weeks... so we will have to wait a bit longer for that one. We would have gone earlier but due to sickness it hasn't been possible yet.

We also bought a car about a month ago. As you can see, it is much the same as our old car. All the cars have different names and are slightly different to their Australian counterparts. We bought a Toyota Sienna. A 7 seater with heated leather seats (a necessity in this climate!) and automatic opening doors (good for little people who can't close the rear doors).
We actually drove all the way down to Provo (about 1.30 hrs away) to buy this particular car because it was the only All Wheel Drive version that we could find. A lot of people hear drive big SUV's because they have the 4WD or AWD function that is great in the snow. We considered some 7 seater SUV's but because we have 4 kids in car seats they were too hard reach the back row to buckle up. Plus parking such a big car seemed unappealing to me. Oh, and trying to climb into them with a church skirt on was near impossible.
So we wanted a Van but didn't like that they were all 'front wheel drive'. The Toyota Sienna does occasionally show up in an All Wheel Drive but its an expensive upgrade so not many 2nd hand ones have it. We spotted this one on the internet, and drove down to Provo to buy it on New Years Eve. This particular dealership specialises in import all their cars from California where there is no snow and salt damage (here in Utah they salt the roads to melt the snow and it rusts the underneath of cars).
So Win and I bought the car, but then we had the dilemma of how to get it home, since he had driven a car down to Provo we now had two cars to drive home... and I had not attempted driving in Utah yet.
It was dark and freezing cold, with enough snow on the roads to make me very nervous.
So we set off for home, luckily it was mostly freeway driving between Provo and Ogden but it took more like 2 hours to get home because I was going as slow as I could. I was really nervous about the ice on the freeway, and we were in the slow lane trying not to lose each other. Fortunately because Win was going slow, every time someone cut in between Win's car and mine they would soon change lanes because of the speed we were going :)
I actually found that driving on the wrong side was not the biggest issue. Every time I went to turn on my indicator the windscreen wipers would start up... of course the wipers and blinkers are on the opposite side of the steering wheel here. Also I found that both Win and I would naturally drift to the right side of the lane, dangerously close to the curb or next lane. I really had to concentrate to keep the car over on the left, because you drive on 'Automatic' most of the time I suppose the driving patterns like where you position yourself in relation to the lane is a very ingrained habit.
We made it home OK and Win has since passed a written and practical driving test to get his Utah Licence. I have had to wait because I only got my Social Security Number this week, and you can't even open a bank account without the magic SS no. here!
The photos with the jumping castle were from a place that we went to down South with one of Win's mission buddies, Dan. This place had a whole warehouse full of jumping castles, with lots of slides. Adults get in free, so we joined the kids and had a lot of fun.

Tollhouse Cookies and the Tree House

Some of the activities that have been keeping us busy:
Discovered a tub of Toll House Cookies at Walmart.... for $2 (makes me want to do that crazy hand gesture thing that the $2 Cunnighams Man does in Adelaide, but I think the Americans would take it the wrong way).
George helped me make the cookies, very complex, involved a spoon and a cookie tray.
10 minutes later we were enjoying hot toll house cookies. Obesity, here we come ;)

Ok, not really, I did spend about an hour in the cereal aisle trying to find something that resembled weet-bix.
Just before we moved here I asked Kylie (my cousin who lived here for several years) what she would take with her to America and she said "Weet Bix".
I laughed and said "I don't think I'll be packing those."
I see now that she had a point. The only cereal I could find that did not have added frosting was a box of plain mini wheats. So I bought those, and planned to have banana and yogurt on top for breakfast. That was when I passed the refrigerated section and saw the tubs of Toll House cookies. I had the best of intentions before that.
















Win discovered a great place for the kids;
The Treehouse
It is an educational fun house where they have many different rooms and activities for little people to explore. They put on plays, puppet shows, craft time and stories. They have little old fashioned classrooms, stages for them to perform on, cows to milk, dress ups and tea houses from all over the world.
We bought a year pass for the family, and it looks like we might be there a lot! There are so many great things for the kids to do that it won't get old. They are also constantly changing the rooms to keep it new.
It is a fantastic place, and it is right next to the Ogden Temple.













































































Back at home I snapped this rather funny photo of Isabelle after I found her dressed up in my heals to go to the ladies room....
The photo of the cat was taken by one of the kids, it is one of their favourite things to chase the poor cats around and cuddle them to death. This cat was trying to hide under the table on a chair.

Sydney, Oprah and the Opera House

I know that I have not posted anything new for awhile. I will place most of the blame on the black plague that has been circulating in our house for the last couple weeks.
I had just recovered from a tummy bug and then I came down with what I am certain was swine flu. It really knocked me out for a few days, and ticked every box in the swine flu symptoms checklist, of course being here, going to a GP was not going to be a simple excercise so I just stayed at home and quietly died. The kids all had the flu too, everyone except Win and of course George... he has a nack for avoiding these things. The secret to his success I believe is that he keeps his puppy's tail firmly pressed under his nose to act as a filter against all the airborne germs.

It makes you appreciate good health all the more when you have been very sick for a couple weeks. I woke up from the first normal nights sleep last night and felt like a new person.


On the plus side of being sick, I watched some day time TV, and it just so happened that it was the airing of Oprahs' Australian Show.

I was pretty excited to see the show, each place they showed bought back such memories. The great barrier reef made me relive our honeymoon, and the episode on Sydney's harbour bridge and opera house bought back a mix of memories from when I was six and Nanny took me out on the Ferry to see the harbour, then all the years in between when I lived there, visited and more recently when we traveled to Sydney to get our visa .
Win and I flew to Sydney in late November, about 3 weeks before we left Australia, with all the kids in tow, for our visa interview at the U.S. consulate.
As some of you know Win came down with an almighty migraine the day before. He was so debillitated that I came home to find him passed out on the floor. He couldn't lift his head to drink, let alone fly to Sydney with 4 small kids.
However, we had booked our tickets and we could not reschedule the Consulate appointments. It was also 2 days before settlement on our house sale, so we had to do the final cleaning of our house that day. My Mum helped me clean our old house and later that night Joe Rice came around and gave Win a blessing. He blessed him that he would be able to have the strength to get through the next day in Sydney. Well, his migraine continued through out the night, and we we had to be up at 5am for our flight. It must have been about to the hour that we had to leave for the plane that his migraine eased, and the vomiting side effects subsided.
Win was extremely drained, but he was able to function that day, as we made it through the airport, onto trains and found our way around Sydney's CBD to the U.S. Embassy. There we had to sit around and wait for quite a time and Win had to go off and find a post office because we had forgotten to get the self addressed envelope that the embassy needed. I was left in the waiting room alone with the kids. They were particularly mischievious that day, I suppose the 5 am start and excitement of being in Sydney was taking a toll, because I can tell you that we cleared out that waiting room in 3 minutes flat! There were 3 areas of waiting rooms and all the single men that had been sitting in our area decided to relocate because of the noise.
There was one positive that came out of this. The Staff members realised the chaos was not good for morale so they rushed us through earlier than normal. So we were finished before lunch, and we had the rest of the day to kill in Sydney.
Because we were in walking distance to the Botanic gardens we and it was a hot day, we found a shady tree and left Win to lie underneath (remembering that he had not kept down any food
in the last 24 hours, he was very weak).
The kids and I decided to explore the botanic gardens and we walked all the way from one end to the other in an effort to see the sydney opera house. I wanted the kids to have seen it with their own eyes. The walk was a lot further than we originally thought and when we finally came around the curve in the boardwalk and it came into full view the kids didn't give it a second glance. All they were interested in was staring over the cement railing at the harbour, and the thing that captured their imagination? The rubbish in the water. "What if they kill the fish??" Who would do such a thing?" they kept asking. I think that their interest stemmed from "finding Nemo" because I did hear them discussing that 'Sydney was where Nemo lives (if you remember the Dentist that caught Nemo was looking out on the harbour).
So the Opera house was a non-event for the kids. Which brings me to the point of all this reminiscing- as we were watching Oprah's show in Sydney they showed the harbour and opera house and I said to the kids "Look, we saw that, remember?" they stared at me blankly and said "no we didn't". So note to self: Don't bother with the road trip to the Grand Canyon.