Jess' Blog

Okay!

So I have been living it up over the last 2 weeks or so and it has been AWESOME!

Emily & Aaron Gilligan took Anthony and I on some adventures, Ella & I got into some messy mischief, and Bek & the cousins came down for a visit... and so did some snow!

Wanna know what happened? Click on the links ;)

Adventures with the Gilligans

Messy Mischief

Snow Trip!

First item of business... BEKAH IS BACK!

After a semester of study at Adelaide University, my darling sister Bek has returned home for a visit. To add to the excitement, she brought with her our much loved QLD cousins Amber-lee and Adam Woolley!

We had a lot of late nights and a lot of laughs!

But the highlight was by far the snow trip!

On Sunday, in Deloraine, it snowed! Like fluffy white freezing snow. So on Monday 11th July, we went up to the Great Lakes to see the snow.

On the way up we came across this:

As we got closer to the top, we cautiously drove over snow covered road...

But at only 400m from the lakes we HAD to stop because of this:

[Yes, that is thick ice covering that road!]

We didn't have snow chains and we were in a front-wheel drive. We weren't even going to attempt driving on THAT!

So we parked and began the fun!

Of course there were snow ball fights...

...and full blow assaults...!

We walked about 200m up the very icy road to venture to the lookout... THAT was an adventure in itself!

[First we had to walk through canopies of bush]

[And you never know when those canopies will shower you in snow!]

[Then we had to climb VERY slippery stairs]

[But we finally made it to the top of the lookout!]

[and we also found some yellow snow up there... And yes, that really is pee!]

Speaking of coloured snow... We also had a great time making REAL snow cones!

And, naturally, we did TONS of slipping and sliding down the thickly iced road:

And, there was some people-taboganning!

So much funny stuff happened, but I really couldn't blog it all (takes waaaaay too long!)

All in all, we had an awesome day!

Most Friday's, I spend the morning babysitting my utterly adorable cousin Luci while her Mum and big sister Ella go to Pre-Kinder.

When Ella and Aunty Bin came home, I kidnapped Ella and whisked her away to aid me in some mischief and fun!

We went to Maccas for lunch (what kid doesn't like Maccas!?), played with Anthony in the park, then... we got messy! Here's what we got up to:

[Ella LOVED cleaning her hands in the puddle...and her shoes...and her knees...and her shirt...]

[The end product. Ella painted her name all by herself! Which is probably why the L's have come first :P ]

[Ella is spacking with excitement - hence the crazy face!]

We had sooooooo much fun! Thank you Aunty Bin for letting me kidnap your daughter and play the day away!

Since Anthony & I got married we've started a young married couples get together thing. However, we started with 3-4 couples and are now down to the Gilligans and us. We miss the Weedens and the Taylors very much! So our young marrieds get togethers happen probably once every 1 or 2 months during school semesters and then much more regularly during the holidays.

The holidays are great.

No doubt.

But the holidays are AWESOME when you have friends like these:

That's Emily & Aaron Gilligan.

Emily is my cousin, but since being married, we consider the Gilligans in higher regard - close friends.

So because we were all on holidays, the Gilligans took us on some fun adventures!

On one day we decided to road trip it to a beach (Sanky Beach near Hawley) and randomly play Sardines amongst the rocks!

[Hehe, that's me hiding under a big rock!]

The highlight of the day for sure was Emily's outfit! Why? See for yourself:

On the way home, we stopped in at Ashgrove Cheese Farm (so Aaron and I could get our cheese fix), where they were having a 2 for 1 sale! Booyah! We had some sleepy time when we returned to Launceston, then met up again for dinner and games at our place.

It was a great day.

Our next adventure was quite spontaneous! We went on an road-trip-overnighter to HOBART!

On the trip down we had quite a few laughs out of Ice-Breaker cards (like conversation starters)! Once we arrived in Hobart we didn't even stop until we arrived at Lipscombe Larder in Sandy Bay. Emily just HAD to get a choc-raspberry mud cake from this one store (but we were glad she did, it was delicious!)

We had planned on the trip down to eat at Hogs Breath for dinner... However, when we called up we got a devastating message - CLOSED! Closed due to "kitchen problems". Whatever that means. So we ended up dining at La Porchetta. We all underestimated the sizes of the dishes and were VERY full by the end of dinner!

But we still had room for cake. There's always room for cake! :D

We played a card game which we named 'Trump' (because no-one seems to know what it is actually called) and scrabble before we got all silly from tiredness and called it a night.

The following day we went to Eastlands for some retail therapy.

Then came the highlight of the trip... MONA!

Don't know what that is? Click here.

Explaining it is pretty much impossible. You really do have to experience it for yourself to truly understand.

Emily and I were trying to put it into words. We came up with: fascinating, unique and disturbing.

[This was one of my favourites. The lights flickered at the same rate as your heart beat. it measures your pulse and blinks at the same rate. I had alot of fun running from one end of the room to see how fast i could make the lights go and it worked!]

Our favourite I think would have had to have been the water feature as you first enter the lowest floor of MONA:

Before leaving Hobart, we made a quick lunch stop at MacDonalds then hit the road!

As we travelled through the midlands, we found a winter wonderland of SNOW! We were snowed on!

And that, my friends, are just some of the adventures of the Gilligans & Wheelers!

The end.