A random fact about pregnant kangaroos

I'm working on my scrapbook today and am looking at all my pics of kangaroos.. . . not a bad way to spend an afternoon!

 I don't think I ever shared this. . . so here is a really weird fact about kangaroos that you may or may not want to know :)

Kangaroos can 'pause' their pregnancy! The average gestation for different varieties of kangaroos averages anywhere from 28-37 days. Then the teeny tiny (and kind of gross looking) baby kangaroo, called a joey, is born and climbs into Mom's pouch, where it nurses and continues to develop. However, if Mom gets pregnant again while she's still nursing a joey in her pouch, her body can 'pause' the pregnancy! That's right; the embryo grows to around 100 cells and then stops growing! Once older sibling is fully developed and done nursing, and Mom's pouch is free, the embryo starts growing again and the joey is born as normal.

The official term for this is 'embryonic diapause' - google if you want more info :)

Amazing!

Gold Coast 2: Dreamworld!

The Gold Coast reminded us a lot of Florida: warm, sunny weather, lots of tourists, beautiful beaches, AND theme parks!! We spent our second day in the Gold Coast checking out Dreamworld, which is affiliated with the Dreamworks studios. Here are Ked and I in front of the sign. . . although our photographer (Micah) was a little off centered. . .

In addition to the typical theme park thrill rides, there were also fun animals to see!

Yes, this one is real: 

No, this one is not real: 

The log ride! This was a favorite of for all of us, and made us miss the old log ride at Adventureland.

They also had an old-timey car driving track. Notice how Eli is totally driving on the wrong side of the car.

There was a big car backup on the track, because there was an iguana in everyone's way! Ahh. . . Australia life. . .

There were lots of photo ops with Dreamworks movie characters. I didn't realize there were so many Dreamworks movies that we've never seen :)

I don't think I've ever seen a Shrek movie:

A penguin from. . .some movie. . .

We have seen Trolls. They had a Trolls dancing show and all the little girls there were pretty excited!

More real zoo animals to see: 

  The boys were pretty adventurous on all these new rides! Here are Eli and I on a roller coaster where you sat in motorcycle-riding position. It went FAST! The first 10-15 seconds were pretty scary. . .but I then heard Eli yell. . "This is AWESOME!!"

  Here was Micah's favorite. They rode it probably 7 or 8 times over 2 days. Can you find Micah and Eli (and Kedron) in this pic?

Or this one?

This pic pretty much sums up our experience on the bumper cars.

The older the boys get, the more fun we seem to have at theme parks like this one! It was a great day. Except for the bumper cars :)

Yes, this post is basically just about a hotel room

Two weeks before we left the great country of Australia, we took another mini vacation to the Gold Coast. The weather was finally starting to warm up, and we thought it would be nice to end our time in this country with some sun and relaxation. Where exactly is the Gold Coast, you ask?

Adelaide is on the jagged part of South Australia (on the map above), and it was around a 2 hour flight from Adelaide to the Gold Coast. Weirdly, the Gold Coast doesn't change their clocks for Daylight Savings time, so even though they were east of us, their clocks were behind those in Adelaide. Very weird. As an aside, I NEVER ONCE heard an Australian complain about Daylight Savings Time. Americans, please take note of this :)

Now. Our hotel room. Let me put in a plug for our Marriott credit card: we were pleasantly surprised at check in to have our 5 nights on the Gold Coast upgraded to an Executive Suite!!

Our living room:

Bedroom:

 And maybe the best part: the bathroom!

Yes, that's a whirlpool tub with city views! We felt very important staying in such a fancy room.

We were on the 23rd floor, and our ears popped whenever we took the elevator to our floor. Here is the view from our deck. Mmm. . . I miss that view. . .

And our view straight down, of the hotel pool and salt water lagoon (with real fish in it). I will admit, I always felt a little dizzy out on the deck so that made me a little nervous to be out there. The large body of water at the top of the pic is a little inlet from the ocean and not part of the hotel.

A pools eye view of the hotel:

The Ibis. We occasionally saw these birds in Adelaide, but they were everywhere on the Gold Coast. Ked and Eli wondered if the plural of ibis is ibii? Yes? No? 

We were very grateful for such a nice room and hotel. We didn't overschedule this trip, and ended up spending a lot of time in our room just relaxing. What a blessing it was for us!

Sydney: Last Post

Out of all the places in all of Sydney (population 5 million), our hotel was right down the street from this prominent landmark, in the Kings Cross neighborhood. For those who have known me for any length of time, you'll know the significance of this :)

Two of our favorite things

One of my favorite places in Adelaide was the Botanic Gardens, which was about a 10-15 minute walk south of our apartment.  Another one of our favorite things in Adelaide are Rainbow Lorikeets - colorful birds that we commonly saw around the city.

Imagine how excited I got when this popped up on my FB feed!



(And truthfully it also made me sad to think of all the things we're missing in Adelaide. . .)

Back to Sydney: Harbour Bridge and Luna Park

We're home! We made it back to Iowa. . . the trip took around 26 hours total. It was not quite as smooth as our trip there, but we have adjusted surprisingly well now that we're home. Everyone said the adjustment between time zones would be more difficult on the return trip, and we were pleasantly surprised that this hasn't been true for us! The boys are back at school and we're back at work, and things feel fairly normal.

But we miss Australia! So I'm going to keep blogging all the things I didn't get a chance to write about before we left. Feel free to keep reading. .  or not. I know it's not the same now that we're home :)

Anyway, let's go back to our Sydney trip. Next to the Opera House is the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. Not surprisingly, it's a big bridge that spans the Sydney Harbour!

Wow. These boys are strong. That's a lot of weight to support. 

You can do a very expensive bridge climb, where you wear a special suit with harnesses, and you actually climb on top of the bridge. We opted for the more economical route: The Pylon Lookout. Instead of climbing on the bridge, you climb up inside one of the concrete ends and look out the top. Unfortunately, Google took us on some wrong walking turns, so it took us a long time to find where we were supposed to go.

But eventually we made it! There's no elevator, so we had a workout by the time we got to the top. We had great views of the city!

And the Harbour. And the Opera House.

Here are the actual people doing the Bridge Climb. I think it was around $300/person. Times four for our family = no thanks. But I'm sure it is a fun thing for rich people to do :)

The boys really wanted to go to Luna Park, so we changed our planned schedule around quite a bit to do that. Luna Park is an old school amusement park.

You can see it here, below the bridge, on the right. We took a ferry across the Harbour to get there, which was a fun way to travel!

Umm. . . boys. . . not to alarm you but that giant scary man might eat you.

Admission to Luna Park is free (yay!) and then you pay for rides once you enter. We went easy on the rides, since we knew we'd be riding more in a few weeks (future blog post). But we still spent several hours here and had a nice time.

For some reason, Eli was very grumpy about getting his pic taken with the Luna Park mascot. 

 What a view: Luna Park with the Harbour Bridge in the background. Sydney is awesome!

Belair National Park

So. I've obviously been a little sporadic in my blog posts. We took another trip, and now we leave the country in four days!! So there is kind of a lot to do, and blogging has slipped down my priority list. I will probably continue to blog after we get back to catch up, if anyone is interested after we return!

The hot weather (well. . . all 2-ish weeks of it that we got) has ended. It's back in the low 60's and rainy until we leave. I guess that's God's way of preparing us to go home??  Anyway, today, we took what is probably our last day trip during our time here.

We went to Belair National Park, which is just southeast of the city center.

Fortunately, it was accessible by bus, and the views on this bus line were very pretty! It was a a very scenic ride, with both ocean and hill views. The park was also very pretty. It wasn't as hilly as others we've been to, and it reminded me of wooded areas in the States.

We had a little contest going to see who could spot the most koalas! Most were sleeping, given the time of day we were there.

The 'who can spot the most koalas' competition got a little intense, and we ended up canceling it. . . but we saw probably 10ish koalas in our time there. It is still amazing to me that we can just look up, and there they are, right in the tree.

Australia also has the most amazing native birds!!

The boys love the 'duckies' almost as much as the fancy birds, and they liked seeing these little ducklings. The boys are such softies when it comes to baby animals :)

It's not uncommon to see burned trees here. Bush fires are quite common here. Eucalyptus trees are EVERYWHERE (they are kind of like the oak or maple tree equivalent in the US), and apparently the eucalyptus oil is a fire accelerant. However, for reasons I don't really understand, these fires don't wipe out a forest the same way they do in the US. It's pretty common to see a burned-looking tree, with leaves growing out of it, as if nothing had happened. I need to research this a little more. . .

As the afternoon wore on, we kept our eyes open for kangaroos, which we'd never spotted in other similar parks we've been to. Kangaroos are nocturnal, and they start waking up in the late afternoon hours. We ended up seeing around 10 kangaroos as well! 

Most seem to lay in the grassy scrub areas to sleep during the day.

  I think this is one of my favorite pics I've taken in the last 5 months.

We are still very much in awe of all the great things we have gotten to do here. This trip seemed like a great way to end our time in Australia.

More blog posts to come. . . but maybe not until I'm back on US soil!