Since we missed the Balloon Classic and the 4th of July. . .

There is a large Asian population living in Australia - and over the next few days, there is an Asian festival going on in Adelaide. Last night, we went to the Moon Lantern parade; one of the events associated with this festival. In some ways, it reminded me of the Balloon Classic at home. . . food vendors, a stage with performers, and LOTS of people spread out over a grassy area, waiting to see big, pretty inflatable things. Although the Balloon Classic doesn't have the Oval for a backdrop. . .

 Here we are waiting for the parade to start.

We managed to get pretty good seats (ie we found a small spot of unattended grass) and the parade walks right by in front of you! These are floats lighted from the inside, and looked pretty cool as the sun went down.

Who said pigs can't fly?

Our favorite bird here in Australia: the rainbow lorikeet!

A few of our other favorites:

To any parent of a Thomas the Tank Engine fan, does this next one look familiar at all??

And. . .the night was capped off by fireworks! Since we've been here since July 2, this is the first time we've seen fireworks in quite a while!

Your daily science lesson that you may or may not want

Tucked in between the Adelaide Zoo and the Botanic Gardens (which are both close to our apartment), are some very tall trees.

In those trees, live about 10,000 bats. HUGE bats. To be specific, they are flying fox bats, which are the biggest species of bat.

These bats migrated to Adelaide in 2010, driven here from other states due to a drought. They wake up at night and fly, up to 30 miles, to find food. They are also known as fruit bats, because they eat mostly fruit from flowering fruit trees.

These bats have a wingspan of over 3 feet!

They mostly sleep during the day, but you can hear their 'chirps' whenever you walk by, and there are usually a few flying about, trying to find a new sleeping position in the trees. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it is really fascinating to watch them fly. From a safe distance. But the trees are really tall so they don't feel too close. That's good.

Why Australia is Awesome: Exhibit 143

We went to yet another fun playground this weekend. Man, are we going to miss all the awesome playspaces here! The boys were having so much fun running to all the different areas, that I didn't take that many pics.

So there's no way this next apparatus would be found in the States, but it was the boys' favorite! Unfortunately it is kind of a workout for the adults too, as my boys didn't have enough bodyweight momentum to get all the way around. I even took a spin or two - but thankfully that was not caught on video. . .

Heard Down Under

Yes, Australians speak English. But we've noticed some words are used more frequently here than in the States.

1. Lovely
Things here aren't nice, or beautiful; they are more likely lovely. That is a lovely shirt. You have a lovely baby. Have a lovely day.

2. Love
Closely related to the word above. While men are called mates, it's not uncommon for women to be called by 'love.' For instance, you might hear "have a great day, Love," from your cashier at the store. Or more likely, "Have a lovely day, Love."

3. Nearly
Used in place of 'almost.' As in, "Are you nearly ready to leave?" or "I have 2 kids; one is 5 and one is nearly 3."

4. A go
Instead of "Can I have a turn on the swing?" it is "Can I have a go on the swing?"

5. Keen
Australians might be keen to go somewhere, or keen to try something. While Americans tend to use this phrase mostly when they're not too keen on something, Australians use it in the positive more than we do.

6. I'm after
Used in place of 'I'm looking for' or 'I'd like to find.' For example, "I'm after a place to hold my child's birthday party" or "I'm after a brown lamp with a white shade."

7. I reckon
And when Australians use this phrase, they don't sound like a cowboy, or rednecky, like Amercans do :)

8. Massive
Things here aren't usually large, huge, or gigantic. They are massive.

9. Gutted
When you're super upset about something, you are gutted. "When my team lost the match in the final seconds, I was GUTTED!"

10. How're you going?
Used as a greeting like "How are you doing?" in the States, where the reply is "Fine, thanks; how are you going?" This one initially drove me a little crazy but it's actually grown on me.

11. Good on you!
Spoken like, "good ON ya," it is the equivalent of "Good for you!" Me: "I just booked a vacation to Bali!" Australian person responding: "Good on ya! That's exciting."

(By the way, no trip to Bali for me :) But Bali is a very popular place for Australians to vacation. Only they call it 'holiday' rather than 'vacation.' And there's your bonus number 12!

Morialta Conservation Park. AKA the post with 139 pictures.

The boys are on a school break for 2 weeks, and we're trying to use the time well! With only 7 weeks (!!) left in Adelaide, the rush is on to complete everything on our Australia To-Do list!

Morialta Conservation Park is a national park on the east side of the city, which is fortunately accessible by Adelaide city bus. I'm already regretting not bringing my parents here (sorry Mom and Dad) because it had a very 'Wyoming/Colorado mountain hike' kind of vibe.

Another sighting of my favorite animal here, the rainbow lorikeet. Australia birds are so much more colorful than Iowa birds! I'd love to bring one of these home, but I don't think living in a cage in our house would be very much fun.

Micah almost stepped on this critter: 

Our initial plan was to walk the 45 minute round-trip walk to Morialta Falls. We got sidetracked by a little lookout with a cave at the top. 

The view from this lookout. Eli exclaimed how good it was to "see so many natural resources in one place." Makes me wonder if that boy has a future in environmental science :)

There was a creek running throughout our walk, and the boys crossed it a few times by hopping on the stones. There were only a few wet socks at the end of our walk :)

Morialta Falls! 

Brothers!!

We decided to take another little detour up to an overlook of the falls. This hike was a little bit more strenuous, but provided some very beautiful views. Here is the city of Adelaide peeking through the hills: 

And the view of Morialta Falls from above. There was some grumbling and complaining about the walk on the way up (I'll let you guess who did most of the grumbling), but we all agreed the view was worth the hike.

Oh, and I got a haircut!!

Morialta Park also contains a super cool playground! Actually, they're not called playgrounds here, but "nature playspaces" - and this one had a snake! You could crawl through its 'body' as it was a big tunnel. 

Adelaide parks have tons of cool (and borderline unsafe, if I'm being honest) slides. I also realized what a pet peeve it is of mine when kids try to climb UP slides. Also, I almost yelled at a girl who was purposely standing at the bottom, looking up the slide as kids came down, and then would jerk her head out of the way at the very last second so she didn't get hit. Seriously, I had to walk away. . . but I digress. Here's the slide.

And we had another koala sighting! I spotted this one, just randomly hanging out in nature by the playground. While we were looking up at it, a grandmother and her 2 grandkids walked by. The grandkids commented on the koala, wanting to stop and look, but Grandma shooed them along, commenting, "I can see koalas in my backyard!" File that under "things never said in Iowa."

Kangaroo Island, part 4

I promise this is my last KI post! Our journey next took us to Admiral's Arch, which was beautiful, but very hard to photograph! This looks like an inside of a cave. . . but the "stalactites" hanging from the ceiling are actually petrified tree roots!

Here's the only pic we got of all 6 of us! So glad Mom and Dad could join us on KI. We think they enjoyed the trip. . . despite being stuck with us. . .

An old lighthouse on the island, where 3 lightkeepers and their families used to live. 

Back when this lighthouse was active, a supply ship would come every 3-6 months and deliver supplies to the 3 lightkeeper families. And these are the steps that all those supplies need to be carried up. . . oh my.

Just another pretty pic by the ocean. . . honestly, we visited so many beaches that I'm kind of losing track of all of them!

And the boys' favorite:  Little Sahara! These huge sand dunes are NOT on the coastline; in fact, they are about 2 miles inland! Scientists can't really explain where all this sand came from. . . but it's become quite the sledding destination!   

Ked may or may not have bruised his tailbone a little. . .

Eli had so much sand in his clothing afterwards. . . we probably dumped out 2 cups' worth in the parking lot.

Micah flew down the hills.

We all got in on the act! They ordered us to keep our mouths closed, so we wouldn't get a mouthful of sand. It didn't really work.

Here are the boys and one of our other tour-mates (a guy from France if I remember right). The boys could have stayed longer, but it was a long walk up that hill every time!