innocence of children

at work during rest time (for the kids, not us unfortunately) i was sitting near one of the boys that is pretty "macho" and in some ways on a s0cial level he fits in more with older boys. the sun came out during rest time after a pretty heavy downpour and as the sky got bright a stream of light came through a crack between 2 of the blinds and lit up all the dust floating around in the air along that stream of light (it was kinda gross how much dust was floating in the air considering nobody had been moving much for the last 20 or 30 minutes and it was still all floating around). the boy near me turned to me and asked "what is that?" while trying to catch the dust in the sunlight. my response was "just dust. put your hands down and let your body rest a bit." he kind of shocked me with what he asked next "fairies?" it was kinda cute--especially coming from him. i ended up spending most of the next 10 minutes watching the "fairies" sparkle in the stream of light with him.

vegetarian vs. vegan

my "excuse" for not making the jump from vegetarian to vegan has always been that i could never give up cheese and timtams (lame excuse but it would be really hard to give them up). i think the cheese excuse is gone now that "cheezly" has come to australia and is available at vegan revolution which is right near our house. its amazing. it comes in edam, mature cheddar, cheddar, gouda and mozzarella flavours and all but the cheddar ones will melt like real cheese (most vegan cheeses don't melt like real cheese). its kind of expensive but the cheese i buy is more expensive than most anyway (its a non-animal rennet cheese that tastes good).
i think my timtam excuse might be out after what happened the other nite. a friend found these imitation timtams (woolworths/safeway brand) in the natural foods section and zac has been buying those the past few weeks. he won't usually share them cuz i have my own real timtams (they're too-good-for-share-cookies). the other nite he popped one in my mouth and i took a bite. i couldn't tell if it was my last timtam (that i was saving for my coffee the next moring) or the imitation one. i tried to figure it out but couldn't (they're a bit smaller than timtams but i couldn't remember which of the 2 were bigger at the time). i had to get zac to take a bite to prove that it wasn't my last timtam (cuz he would never let dairy cross his lips). i think it'll still be a while before i go fully vegan and give up my eggs from c.e.r.e.s. chooks.
the reasons people go vegan keep sounding better and better the more i think about them and melbourne is a very easy city to do it in (tons of vegetarian restaurants that cater for vegans, a few vegan ones and most other places have 1 dish zac can eat-- although he's usually happy with a plate of hot chips). there's also tons of good cookbooks (vegan planet, how it all vegan, the garden of vegan...) that have great, tasty vegan versions of all types of dishes and yes, the pic of the cheesecake above is a vegan chessecake (we had 2 types of amazing vegan cheesecake at a vegan cafe while we were in brisbane-- i think the place was called the forrest cafe(?), its in west end just up the main strip from "the lizard")

migraine

i don't get headaches too often and when i do i have a series of things that i try doing to fix it because there's usually 4 reasons i get a headache: dehydration (so i drink lots of water over the next hour or so), caffiene withdrawl (not so much anymore but when i did drink caffinated coffee everyday i'd sometimes get withdrawl and having some coffee or chocolate would fix it), hair clips or elastics pulling on hair (take them out) or tense neck and shoulder muscles (usually a heat pack and a bit of a massage or some exercise fixes that). my last resort if none of that works is ibuprofin and that always fixes it when i take it.
the other day i got a bit of a headache at work so i tried my first 4 steps. on the ride home it turned into a POUNDING headache as my heartrate went up. i layed on the couch for a while but everything made it worse (light, sound, any slight raise in heartrate like standing up and walking...). i decided it was time for ibuprofin, knowing that in the past when its got this bad ibuprofin will fix in within an hour. this time it didn't help at all. it was horrible. so i went to bed at 8:30 and just layed in the dark room with very soft music playing.
i think the whole thing is just part of a cold that i've got (the reason i'm not a work today). i hope it is and i'm not gonna be someone who gets migraines where they have to lay in bed all day (with regular headaches i don't let them stop me from doing stuff, i just suffer through them and find something to make it stop. the migraine doesn't stop until its ready though).

fraser island

i found a tour that would take us from caloundra up to fraser island for a day trip so we decided to go for it. they picked us up infront of the house at 5:30am and started the LONG drive to fraser island picking up more people along the way. we got to noosa around 7am and then across a river along the beach and up to fraser island


the day was pretty cold and windy(i never took my hoodie off) and the sky was a bit gray (but the only rain we got was a little bit while we were driving towards home)

while we were on the island we drove up to lake makenzie where we had time to have a swim if we wanted (zac went in, no way i was gonna put more than my feet in). the beach was amazing at the lake-- soft, fine, white silica sand and the water was green/blue (even prettier when the sun is shining--i've seen postcards). they had a bbq for lunch (fish or steaks plus beer, wine and soft drinks and salads). they catered quite well for me and zac's vegetarian lunch, they wrapped our vegie burgers up in foil so they wouldn't get meat or fish juices on them and our guide even made sure he used clean tongs to hand them to us 8) plus they left a large portion of the colslaw with no mayo on it so zac could eat it.

after lunch we went for a walk through the wanggoolba creek rainforest. the water in the creek there was so clear it was almost invisible (you look down at it and you just see sand until you look really closely and see that there is water running over it). there were all sorts of amazing tropical plants and vines running up and down.
after the walk we started heading back home again, stopping along the beach for afternoon tea.
we didn't get to see too much wildlife (the day before they saw dingos, whales and dolphins). we saw one dingo (the only one on the island with a radio collar for tracking-- we just spotted him along the "roadside"). saw a few different birds and me and zac found a seahorse skeleton on the beach during moring tea.
i'd highly recommend the tour we went on for anyone wanting to do an organized tour of fraser island: fraser island adventure tours. we're definately gonna try to get back to fraser island and do a self-drive tour one day (even though our tour guide was really against all the backpackers coming onto the island with their hired 4wd). its nice to be able to do things at your own pace and stop when you want for photo opps and stuff.

lone pine

i went to lone pine koala sancturary just outside of brisbane on monday. i highly recommend this place. the animals seemed really relaxed and well cared for. koalas are obviously happy sitting on a branch having food brought to them (fresh eucalyptus leaves a couple times a day) but all the other animals (emus, dingos, wombats, kangaroos, wallabys....) seemed content and relaxed too.
zac wouldn't go with me (animals in cages even if it is a sanctuary and most of them were quite large enclosures) so i got a couple people to take photos of me with wallabys and kangaroos and then i decided i'd do self portraits with them:

a mommy koala and her baby:
me and neon (there's another photo of me and him here for the next 56 days)
i'll be uploading more photos of lone pine (and other queensland stuff) to my flickr site in the next day or 2.

queensland

poor zac.

the day after the last blog where we were a bit sore, it got worse-- much worse. both of us could barely move. walking was pretty bad but stairs and hills were horrible. zac actually didn't go into 2 music shops that day solely cuz there were several stairs up or down to get into them (its gotta be pretty bad if zac's not going to look at cds or instuments). in the photo he's trying to get down some stairs to get to a ferry (the ramp stopped half way down-- what would you do in a wheelchair??). i was in horrible pain too but the fact that zac was stuggling so much made me laugh (does that make me a horrible person, finding humor in others pain?). today is the first day zac has been able to handle stairs (5 days later) the bike ride we took the day i fell off (hours before 6 hrs of laser tag) we rode out to pelican waters in caloundra. not just a clever name-- dozens of pelicans (and of course i took dozens of photos of them)

one of the beaches at caloundra (we were pretty much surrounded by them): zac body surfing (the water and the air were too cold for me):

sore and exhausted (but having fun)

we're still up in queensland (right now we're on the sunshine coast-- although i think we brought melbourne's weather cuz there's been very little sun, especially for a state that brags "beautiful one day, perfect the next). i've been lacking sleep since we got here. didn't sleep well the first 3 nites, had to get up at 5am the 3rd morning to go on a tour to fraser island. that was a cool trip but a VERY long day. the next nite (last nite) we got invited to go play laser tag at a midnite til 6am lock-in so we went. it was really fun (we actually made it until 6am, we were all doubting that considering we were all having trouble staying awake at 10pm before we left to go play). i'm VERY sore today though. firstly, laser tag uses a lot of muscles in ways they haven't been used in a long time (and lots of little muscles i didn't realize i had). plus i kinda had 2 falls yesterday. the first was i slipped down a grassy hill onto my ass in the rain (that hurt pretty bad) then 5 minutes later we were biking along a shared path and a guy with his dog were ahead of us taking up the whole path. zac rang his bell but the guy didn't respond so zac just went onto the grass around the guy. i did the same when i approached only when i went to get back on the path my wheel was a bit too paralell to the path and cuz it was wet i ended up sliding and crashing just infront of the guy and his dog. so i have a big bruise on my knee and shin in addition to all the muscle soreness. vacations are fun 8)

 
i was just told the brother of a friend back home was killed while biking yesterday. a car hit him from behind yesterday afternoon and he died pretty much instantly. please keep his family and friends in your prayers as they mourn their loss. he was a christian and his family are christians but although knowing that he is with Jesus now provides some comfort i'm sure they are still struggling to accept this tragedy. 

canada day the aussie way

i got to spend the first half of canada day doing one of the most australian things i could do-- the footy! zac's nanna took me to go see the demons play (cuz that's my team now too). she didn't just take me to the game though. she has a friend that is an mcc (melbourne cricket club) member and he was able to get us all into the members section as guests. he also managed to get us a booking in the mcc dining hall (a very nice restaurant in the mcg). so we had a fancy (expensive) lunch and some wine before the game and then instead of using our complemetary reserved seat tickets that we get with out meals we went back downstairs closer to the action and sat in the members section right near the bottom (we could have sat in the very front but there was a big chance of rain during the game so we sat in the first undercover row). the game was really good (melbourne played pretty poorly in the first half but they were ahead the whole game). melbourne won 120-82 (against port adelaide).
the second part of the day i got to spend with a bunch of other canadians celebrating canada day. the canada club got a function room at a pub and had a huge turnout to celebrate. they played the grey cup game and the stanley cup games (the ones the oilers won) and i even got to drink a labatts (mmmmm). i haven't seen a room filled with that much red and white and so many people wearing team canada hockey jerseys in a long time.