Its a big week..

Hi y'all!
Yep, its a big week this week. Guess who's birthday it is tomorrow {questioning look}?..... Not to blow my own horn or anything, but.... MINE! And it's a big one. 3-0. OMG. Today is my last day in my 20's! {sobbing!} LOL! Nah, it'll be ok. Really, it will. It will, wont it?
Do you want a quick recap of some moments of my 20s?
Here goes!
I graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Science (Microbiology). And started work in Pathology where I met Willy.I went to Disneyland 3 times and Disneyworld once!I went on this ridiculous Rollercoaster at Knott's Berry Farm, 3 times. I LOVE adrenaline!
I went to NZ and did the Canyon Swing and Paragliding off the top of Bob's Peak in Queenstown. (yes, those pics are me!)
I went to Hawaii twice, once with just Willy and once with Mum, Dad, Alicia, Xander, my Godparents and Willy!I visited Japan (loved it!)
Will and I got engaged on the top of Mt Fuji in Japan!
Then we got married :)And honeymooned in America. We went to LA, Vegas (been there 3 times), NY (been twice), Washington DC, Grand Canyon (been twice) and Disneyland (of course!)
Then I fell pregnant. Look at that tummy (and fat face!) When we were married I was 28 and I never thought that I'd have a baby by 30!I gave birth to the gorgeous little man, Jaimeson! A very uncomplicated labour and birth, just gas, no epidural. Hooray!
Wow! I guess I did do a lot in my 20s! I am so grateful for a supportive, loving husband and gorgeous son, my fantastic loving and caring family and my humourous and fun friends! I am very blessed! I guess turning 30 wont be so bad after all, if it's even a part as much fun as my 20s were, then it will be alright!
:) C

Holiday Scrapping!

OOhh, it's so gloomy and rainy here today. What happened to "Summer's on it's way!" I think it got lost!
It is a good day, however, for sitting at my desk and doing some scrapping! I haven't been overly creative lately, it seems I sit at my desk and just watch TV from there, rather than actually doing anything creative! {sigh}. I didn't think I'd be this tired so early in my pregnancy, I thought it came later when you were big and heavy! Not sure if its worse cos I work nights.... anywho, enough whinging! I did manage to do this page of Will and I enjoying our virgin Pina Colada's in Hawaii! I thought, seeing as I couldn't have alcohol in my drink I was going to enjoy it out of a pineapple instead! I loved it!! It was so much fun to grasp that giant fruit with 2 hands and take a sip! I did joke that I ate so much pineapple on our holiday that Peabody was going to never want to eat pineapple ever again! {giggles} Either that or it's all Peabody will want to eat! I bought this pineapple paper on our honeymoon, specifically with Hawaiian pages in mind! Isn't it so cute :)
And cos I haven't posted in a while, here is another page (bonus!) that I did of our Applebees meal on our Honeymoon. Yes, all I seem to do is scrapbook pages about food! I can't help it, I love taking pics of my meals when I'm overseas! Especially in America, cos their food is so massive and delicious! Check out all the food you get on your plate for $20! Bargain {wink}. I did take a bunch of food pics in Hawaii too, so I'm sure you'll be seeing more food pages!
Hope you're having a good monday! I'm off to (hopefully, if the TV doesn't distract me too much) do some more scrappin!
:) C

Another from the stash..

Hi Y'all!
I haven't been purposefully neglecting you, it's just i haven't found Mr Mojo yet, and now that has extended to blogging too! Without anything interesting to say, I have just been saying nothing at all!
But here is the last page I did before Mr Mojo left (hopefully for only a short soiree somewhere else.. come back Mr Mojo!!) Obviously the page is about how I love travelling with Will, but it was inspired by this photo. He loves to snap random pics, sometimes I just wish he'd take a proper photo! But other times, like with this pic, I just love his off-beat perspective. I love that not all his face is in the pic, but that he managed to get the American flag, and also in the very bottom left corner you can see the Lincoln Memorial off in the distance! I know I boss him around too much and I should let him show his perspective more often. I'll try, I really will {holding 2 fingers to forehead, like a scout salute}. Love you Willy! And your crazy photo taking :) and that you are such an easy travelling companion. LOVE!
:) C

The other Canberra pages...

Yes Yvette, I am spoon feeding you only a couple of pages at a time! LOL! It's only cos I haven't done any scrapping/card making since I left Canberra (oh, actually I finished the last page I did with you.. that will be the next post.. hehehe!) I don't know why I haven't been that creative- I keep looking at my desk and thinking "yes, I'd like to sit there and stamp" but then I just walk away cos my Mojo isn't with me! Annoying! So this is a shout-out to my Mojo- "Come back!!"
I had a look around our house the other day and thought it was time to snap some pics and celebrate the fact that a boy lives in this house now! There are things in places there weren't before, there are new things and boy things everywhere! Every time I open the pantry and see the Spam it makes me smile! And the rice cooker that Will couldn't live without. His pile of shoes at the front door and wallet and keys on the table. Just a bit here and there that remind me we're married and this is my life.. forever. It makes me happy! And I got to use that Basic Grey boy background paper that I've been saving up. Hooray! LOL!!
This was the last page I finished while staying with Yvette, its our Saturday walk through Central Park on our Honeymoon. Oh, how I could travel to America every year and not get sick of it. If only! {sigh... day dreaming off into the distance!} LOL. This woodgrain PP was one of the first "real" scrapbooking papers I bought (OMG, about 10 years ago!) and I've had it in my "discard" pile for a while. Where do you discard old papers to? I have no idea, so they just sit in a plastic bag on my shelves. Well I was going through that bag the other day and resurrected this one and a couple of other papers! What's old is new again, hooray! The green scalloped paper edge is from a free packet I got with my last 2peas order, score! And the white & green shaped journal spot is from Yvette's free stuff. Cool! I love the sweet little kaisercraft tree rub-on off to the side too, and I love the chipboard butterfly! Ok, so this is a pretty simple page but I love lots about it, so that's cool! Yvette inspired me on this page with her awesome "collections" of PP scraps that she layers and they amazingly go together so well! It inspired me to think outside the box when layering papers, cos different patterns and colours can go together so well! Thanks for the Inpsiration Yvette!!
:) C

Morning quick-post.

Hi Y'all!
I'm up early this morning, I'm fighting the flu and was soooo sweaty when I woke up. Ew! Plus my heart was racing cos my sugar was too low, not my favourite way to wake up! Anywho, I've eaten my fruit toast and I've got a spare minute so I thought I'd take the chance to do a quick post, hooray! I've got a couple more Honeymoon pages to share. I've actually been doing a fair bit of scrappin lately, but for some reason I haven't taken pics of the pages yet, so these 2 pages I actually did a little while ago.
Ha, using up more of my giant Disney stash! Hooray {cheering!}. I bought heaps of Disney scrappin stuff when I went to America in 2006. I visited both Disneyland and Disney World on that trip so I imagined I'd be scrappin a lot (2 words for you Yvette!) of pages. But I didn't really scrap that many so I hardly put a dent in my supplies! Hence, heaps left over. I loved our personalised Mickey Ears. Mine even had a "Just Married" patch on the front with Cinderella and Prince Charming on it! So sweet! I had some fun journalling "in the round" on the journal spot too, and I have to say thats not the easiest thing to do!
Then the next page is of reaching one of our goals- finding the Wall St Bull in NY. For non-NY'ers it was quite challenging when all we knew was that it was in the financial district! We were momentarily sidetracked by the NY Stock Exchange and a Hotdog stand, but we asked around and just kept walking in the direction we were heading and found it! It was being mobbed by a bunch of camera crazed tourists like us so we had to wait our turn then quickly run in, snap the pics and run out again! {giggles} It was fun! Then Will decided he'd sit under the bull's butt and I decided it looked as though he'd been pooped out so was a totally scrapworthy pic. LOL!!
Off to our clean-up day at AJ's today! Looking forward to it! Plus I baked Pear & Walnut Upside down Gingerbread cake to celebrate her new-found creative space (hopefully!) so Yum!!
:) C

I have been Scrappin! I promise!

Wow, it's been like 2 weeks since I posted a Scrapbooking page! It must be cos there is just so much other fun stuff happening at the moment! It turns out July/Aug has been quite busy :) And it's getting more busy with the election this weekend coming (are you not sick of the annoying ads on TV and getting mountains of flyers in the mailbox? Stop cutting down those trees, I'm not even reading them! Stick to one form of advertising and I'd be happy!!) plus I'm going to AJ's tomorrow for a "Challenge" day- we are getting down and dirty in her Sewing Room to help her get organised and be able to be more creative in a super dooper Sewing Space! I'm really looking forward to it {clapping hands!} Then we're off to Canberra in 2 weeks to visit the fabulous super scrapper Yvette, who I get heaps of inspiration from and whose style I just love... and who also happens to be my sister! Lucky me! Plus Willy hasn't been to Canberra before, so we'll be doing lots of touristy stuff which will be FUN! Did I just hear an ad for Sea World that said this year is the "International Year of Fun"? Isn't that every year?! I think so {wink!}
Here's a page I did of our visit to NY and our trip to the Statue of Liberty! It's been forever since I did a double page LO, but I had so many pics I wanted to include and I didn't want to make them tiny. It was fun to do a double! Plus I haven't really done a cardstock BG on a page for a while either so that was fun to work with too.
Then here we are again at the snow at The Grand Canyon on our Honeymoon. Oh so much fun! Time to use up some more of those old Snow Themed scrappin supplies that I've had forever {nervous laugh}. We need to make a trip to the snow sometime just so I can use them all up! Hehehe {giggles}. We just LOVED the snow, as you can imagine and had snow much fun {lame!}. There are heaps of old supplies on this page too which makes me uber happy to be using up! Hooray!
Time for me to go bake a cake, hooray for night shifts, gives me plenty of time to bake during the day!
:) C

Hooray for Saturday!

Hi Y'all! Happy Saturday!
I'm just munching on a piece of toasted Apple & Pecan loaf that I made yesterday. Confession time... I bought another sweet cook book {cringing guiltily!} But you know I love baking!! This one is the Complete Magnolia Bakery Cook Book. Remember my page from our Honeymoon of having a Magnolia Cupcake in NY? It's a super famous Cupcake shop and the original owners have put out a cookbook. The loaf was sooooo simple to make and I had all the stuff in the cupboard (well, except the fresh apples, so I used a can of pie apple which worked excellently!) I just cut a piece off and toasted it in the sandwich press and the outside went all crispy & delicious and the inside was YUMMO! Will loved it too which is awesome, I like trying to find sweet things that he actually enjoys and doesn't just eat mechanically cos it's there. LOL!
It's time for some more Honeymoon shares, cos that's all I seem to be scrappin lately! I guess I did have a few thousand pics to choose from {wink!} I wanted to take a pic on the giant "L" from CALIFORNIA which is outside California Adventure Park at Disneyland. We got another white-girl-asian-guy couple who were also trying to take the pic cos his surname was Lim to take the pic for us, then we took their pic. I laughed. It was a humourous co-incidence. It is also funny that the beginning of CALIFORNIA is my new initials C.A.L. Will took a pic of me with those 3 letters but it was blurry so I'll spare you that. See the giant Scallop circle on the LO- look hard, you probably missed it first time {laughing at own ridiculous joke}, Yvette gave that to me years ago, look I used it!! {Patting self on back}. Yay me!!
How would you like another honeymoon page? Ok just one more.... This was our super expensive breakfast at the Pool Cafe at the Bellagio, the $60 breakfast that was worth every penny! Check out the size of my Blueberry Ricotta pancakes! OH SO GOOD! I loved it cos everything was labelled Bellagio- from the butter patties, the orange juice cup to the sugars! Plus the outlook on to the magnificent Mediterranean style sculptured gardens was divine! It made me feel like a real spoilt bride to get to have a luxurious breakfast at my most favourite casino on the strip! Oh it was a true indulgence!
I hope you're having a creative weekend! Now I'm getting back to my desk... or do I feel like another piece of Apple & Pecan loaf? Would you like one too??
:) C

A Desert of Scrappin.

Hi y'all! Hope you had a good weekend! I went Paintballing yesterday with Willy and a bunch of our work friends. Happy to report that I am not bruised! Hooray! I have a scrape on my hand where I was hit a glancing blow with a paintball, but other than that I am unscathed. Hooray! Last time I played Paintball I had a bruise on my thigh the size of a mandarin for MONTHS. I kid you not, months. It coincided with being diagnosed with Diabetes so I'm going to blame that. We played at Delta Force fields at Appin and it was awesome, they are only new so all the gear was cool and in excellent condition. E.G. it didn't stink at all! LOL! I love hanging out and doing fun stuff with our work friends, they're an awesome bunch!
Anywho.... Here is a fun little page I did of Will and I road-tripping through Arizona :) We loved hiring the car and cruising through the desert from Vegas to the Grand Canyon, it felt so free! I drove first, until Will got confidence with travelling on the wrong side of the road, then he took the wheel. We cranked the radio and gathered a fun playlist of our fave "Road Trip Songs" which Will has now burnt onto a CD for me ;) I love listening to them cos they bring back those fun memories of our Honeymoon road trip! I was so happy to finally use the Cowboy boot paper I bought in the US the last time I was there (yeah, 4 years later... get out of my stash!!!) and a pretty floral Crate Paper PP I got when I still worked at Fantastia... now thats at least 5 yrs old! {sigh} it's good to use up the stash. Especially cos I've got a new stash arriving from 2peas this week. Hooray {cheering!} I'll update you on that when it arrives!
So, I'm off to do some more fun creative stuff! Have a great week!
:) C

Baking & Scrapping... the perfect mix :)

Mornin!
Ooohh, Thursday, it's the downhill slide to the weekend! Hooray!
Today I am baking up a storm for Mum and Dad's 40th Anniversary Cocktail Party this Saturday night. I can't believe Mum and Dad have been married for 40 years! Surely it was only a couple of years ago that we had their 20th Anniversary party! I remember that quite well, though I must have only been 8. I remember Mum gave us all a silver charm for our charm bracelets for helping her organise the dinner. It was a crown for "Kingman" :) Here's an old fave family pic of us! I see a little bit too much Liberty Lawn Mum!!
This Anniversary Mum and Dad are having a Cocktail Party with their friends this Sat night and a family lunch at a Winery at Bowral on Sunday. Should be fun!! At the moment I have my second lot of Mud Cake Petit Fours in the oven! YAY! Betty Beaters is gonna get a workout again this week {wink}
Here's another page from our Honeymoon, this time from DC. I wanted to use these pics but didn't want to say "here we are in front of the Capitol building" cos that's too generic and a bit obvious! So I thought I'd point out that we are "that kind of tourist". The kind that pose superstar-style in front of major attractions, take self-taken pics and have a ridiculously fun time! I love travelling and travelling with Will is so much fun! He's so willing for me to drag him around anywhere I'd like to go with no whinging, thanks Willy!
:) C

Food Glorious Food... pages. :)

Hi!
Stuck at home again cos my car went back to the mechanics cos they broke my central locking when they did my service on Tuesday. Argh!! They don't even know when it will be done so I tried hanging around near by, then went up to the shopping centre, then got bored so finally walked home but they still haven't called. Hope it's done in time for me to drive to work! Otherwise I gotta get walking again {sigh!} so much exercise! I suppose it's good training for the City2Surf Marathon this year (only 4 weeks to go!). I should probably embrace this forced exercise, ok... {embracing....} hmm... that's much better! LOL!
So to combat the forced exercise I'll post some pages of delicious foods we ate on our Honeymoon! I was looking through all the pages I've done of our Honeymoon and there are quite a few on food! {giggles}. I do love trying lots of different foods when we travel :) it's so much part of the fun!
These Pumpkin Waffles with Pecans, Cranberries, Spiced butter, Maple Syrup and fresh fruit were sooooo good we actually went to Penelope's in NY twice for breakfast so I could indulge in their deliciousness again! Ohhh sooo good! If you visit NY make sure you visit Penelope's for breakfast, it's a cute little cafe that feels a bit like Grandma's kitchen with mismatched wooden furniture, wooden panelling on the walls and polished scuffed floor boards. It was so cute! It's on 30th and Lexington, go visit! We got a Waffle Iron for our wedding and there is a recipe for Spiced Pumpkin Waffles, I reckon I'll have to put them on my to-do list, maybe this weekend! (What was that I said earlier about the City2Surf? Never mind...) This was my fave breakfast of the whole honeymoon- only closely followed by the breakfast at Bellagio- their Blueberry pancakes were fantastic, and PLATE SIZE!! {mmm... day dreaming of Honeymoon breakfasts}
Then we visited Shake Shack in Maddison Square Park in NY on the recommendation of Sarah from 30-something-drama-queen and also cos I read so many awesome reviews on the net on how spectacular the shakes were and how mind blowing their Burger sauce was. We lined up for AN HOUR! Yes, it was a Sunday, but an hour??! We figured it had to be worth it (or at least we were hoping above all hopes that we hadn't wasted an hour of precious NY time! LOL!) Well the shakes were unbelieveable. We each had the Black & White shake which was Vanilla shake with thick chocolate fudge whipped through and hamburgers and fries. Their crinkly fries were YUM! I hardly got any sauce on my burger though {frowny} so I can't really comment on how awesome it was, but the bun was soooft, like a steamed Fillet O' Fish bun! SO GOOD! It was worth it after all {happy dance!}. The line was even longer after we'd finished our meal- those people must have waited about 1.5hrs! Unbelievable! Oh... lucky it's Thursday night, eating out night, at work, I feel like a burger now!
:) C

Honeymoonin'

Good Morning and Happy Monday! I hope it's the beginning of a super fun week. After all, it is EOFY (End Of Financial Year) and I remember what a rush/push/hectic/stressful time that can be from my days working in Insurance all those moons ago {looking whistfully at the sky with chin sitting on hand... actually no, it wasn't a career I was contemplating!} But in Pathology EOFY means absolutely nothing, so it's pretty much a normal week for me :) I can't believe we are really on the downhill slide to Christmas though, man that's gone so fast!
I love these pics of Will and I doing our "Happy Tourist" jump in front of the Capitol Building in Washington DC! It was so much fun!! I wanted to do a page that would capture our sillyness, enthusiasm and all the giggling we were doing, and I think this really busy floral paper conveys that mood pretty well! I love this crazy paper and have been wanting to get it out of my stash and into my album. Hooray!!
Don't work too hard for EOFY!!
:) C

A bit of Chilly scrappin.....

..........cos Baby it's COLD OUTSIDE!! Oh man has it gotten cold this last week especially. When I finish work after midnight it's a quick run to the car and I've gotta turn on all the de-misters cos the windows are so foggy! Will is still wearing shorts and a t-shirt though, it's those strong Asian genes {wink!!} I've even got a wheat bag sitting here at the computer with me to keep warm!!
However, it's not quite as cold as when we were at the Grand Canyon and it SNOWED!! YAY!! SnoW!! Can you tell I was just a little bit excited {clapping hands together!}. It was the first time Will had seen snow and we had such a hoot taking pics in the snow and freezing out butts off! It was fun tasting the snowflakes too... they do taste really fresh at the Grand Canyon!
It was also fun making the page cos I dug out all my snow themed scrappin supplies! I found this snowflake metal square that I've had for absolutely donkey's years and the cute little mitten and ear warmer stickers I've been keeping for a snow page.. HOORAY!! I got to use them!! And some snow themed paper too, to top it all off :)
I hope you're having a fun long weekend!!
:) C

Honeymoon fun :)

Just a quickie page from NY! This one is rather boldly coloured, so you might need your sunnies! The story: I really wanted a street donut from a cart on our walk around lower Manhattan but Will told me not to cos I'd probably get salmonella, then he spotted this Hotdog Stand on Wall St and it was Game On! What the?! In fact, Will was so hungry he ate 2 of these delicious $2 hotdogs with sauerkraut, ketchup & mustard! We didn't get sick {wink!} and they were fantastic! I wanted to scrap the pics in the same bold colours of the Hotdog stand, I hope it's not all too much! LOL!

I did go back for that donut BTW, and it was mighty FINE!!

:) C

How about some Honeymoon shares?!

I've already gotten into the swing of Scrappin some Honeymoon pages! I know I have to do it while the holiday vibe is still with me, before work saps out all the happiness and wonderful memories {giggles} no not really... well, maybe a little bit.
I started out with one of my fave pics from our Honeymoon, one I took on my phone and texted to Felicity. I didn't want to just journal "here we are at the Statue of Liberty" cos that's kinda obvious so I wrote how excited I was to come home and find this pic in a frame on our dining table! Felicity had printed it, framed it and put it on the table with a note to say there was fresh bread and milk to help with the jetlag.. AND had blown up red, black and white balloons and filled our lounge room with them! It was so awesome to come home and still feel like we were super special! Thank you so much Felicity!! I have been hoarding this apple paper for about 3 years waiting for the perfect page.. there is no more perfect place to use it than for a page on the "Big Apple"! The glitter button was a RAK from Yvette during her recent "glitter everything in sight" phase- thank you {wink!}

Have you heard of Magnolia Bakery? They are the most famous Cupcake bakery in NY, and I was pleased to get a chance to indulge in a Banana Cupcake with Chocolate Caramel Buttercream frosting. It was delicious! I didn't see any celebrities there though {sigh!} In fact, the only "celebrity" (I use that lightly) we saw on the whole trip was one of the guys off the Thredbo ad, he's now on a Maccas ad, and he was sitting across from us on the plane back to Australia! Bummer! We did see Jerry Springer and Steve Martin on the big screen at our baseball game, does that count? When they put Jerry on the big screen, our whole section started chanting "Jerry! Jerry!" All we needed was a bitch fight between a midgit and a trailer park ho with no front teeth, and we would have really felt like we were on the set of the show! LOL! Back to the page... isn't the cupcake sticker the cutest? It's Martha Stewart, but I did accent it with some of my long-hoarded stash like the flower lace cardstock, the journal spot and the tab sticker! Oh I love to use up my stash! Well, I have to anyway seeing as I bought like 40 papers in the US! How can you turn them down when some were 65c??!

Catch you later, I think I'm going to go create now!

:) C

Our last & most "Magical" honeymoon stop....

Our last stop… DISNEYLAND! Oh I love Disneyland. In fact, if you ask Will he will attest to the fact that as we were walking from our hotel to the gate for the first time I was jumping out of my skin with excitement just like a 5 year old, I could hardly contain it! I was listing all the rides I wanted to go on, how I wanted to chase all the characters to get a pic with them, how I was going to eat a Mickey-head shaped pretzel etc etc! As soon as we entered the park I let the Magic of Disney overwhelm me J Unfortunately for Will he had a little too much “Magic” overwhelm him on the Space Mountain ride and was quite ill afterwards {sigh!} oh no!! It is one of my favourite rides and Will proclaimed he would “NEVER” go on that ride again. {Insert travel diary excerpt for this day: Dear Diary, my Husband is a pussy…”} We did get some classic pics on the rides though, for example Will’s scared face on Space Mountain while I have my arms up in defiance of this fast-paced, indoor, dark rollercoaster, his death grip on the front of our “log” on Splash Mountain while squeezing his eyes tight shut and letting out a huge “aaaahhhh” while I give it 2 thumbs up! LOL! It made for some hilarious belly laughs when we got off the ride and saw the pics! I tried to get Will to go on every ride with me at least once, but after seeing his face on the Teacups (who knew a grown guy could get sick on the Teacups??!!) I gave in and started going on the rides on my own {sad face}. But as soon as we got on the water rides Will gained some bravery and ended up enjoying himself so it wasn’t a total disaster. Which was good considering we had another 4 days at Disneyland! He loved the log ride in the end (good job for facing his fears I’d say!) and we both LOVED the Grizzly River Rapids, a “donut-shaped” raft rapid ride, at California Adventure Park, which is the second park Disney owns right across the way from Disneyland. We were at DL Mon, Tues, Weds, Fri, Sat and my tip is go on Tues/Weds cos they were by far the quietest days for us- in fact on Wednesday we only waited about 10 mins for the rides which is awesome! Mon/Fri was full of school groups, I counted over 20 separate groups (they always have team T-shirts so they’re easy to spot) on Friday, and they crowd on the big rides all together so the ride looks empty then all of a sudden there is 30 people in front of you, then their friends come along and cut in line as well {argh!} so go Wednesday!
On Thurs we went on a bus tour around LA. It was so cool to see places we recognise from TV & movies, like the Hollywood Sign, LA Ink, those amazing freeway exit “spaghetti” systems, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and the Walk of Fame at Hollywood. Will had fun picking out his idols like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan {giggles} I chose Charlize Theron and took a pic standing on Celine Dion (not a fan)! We ate lunch at the LA Farmer’s Market and were surrounded by people talking about the movie they are in and one guy was pitching a movie idea to another guy at the table next to ours! How Hollywood is that?!
One thing we didn’t like about LA was Venice Beach. It was really really windy on this day and so the normal cool street vendors weren’t there and so we got to see the bones of Venice Beach without all the frills. I have never seen so many homeless people in my whole life, and they are all really young. We must have seen about 50 homeless teenagers as soon as we got off the bus. The shops are all either shut and totally covered in graffiti or are selling medical marijuana and trying to solicit you off the sidewalk. It was so gross! We stayed near to the bus cos we didn’t want to get mugged! It really felt like that. It was like getting off the bus on the Redfern side of Surry Hills. Will is considering getting an STI by touching this payphone, gross!
Thankfully, it was back to Disneyland for another 2 days to calm our sensibilities! We had gotten Mickey Ears earlier in the week and so wore them all around the parks during our visit! They have these new style ones where you can choose the base, the ears and the patch separately and they put them all together for you! I got a “Just Married” patch with Cinderella and Prince Charming on it and got “Mrs Lam” embroidered on the back which was awesomely cool! Will got a black hat with silver ears and “Willy” on the back ;) It was cool cos the DL workers are trained to interact with you so whenever we got on a ride they’d always say “Congratulations!”, we felt special!!
We had such an awesome “Adventure Honeymoon!”, thanks for sharing it with me!
:) C

A surprise awaited at the Grand Canyon!

We set off for the Grand Canyon, with me at the wheel of our cool Pontiac G6, to see one of the 7 wonders of the natural world. We had no idea an awesome surprise awaited us! We passed through Kingman which was pretty cool for me! Though I had just signed over my name at our Wedding {wink!}, we passed semi-desert with red red sand, miles and miles of no trees, tiny scrubby shrubs, tumbleweed (who knew it was actually a real thing and not just in Western Movies!) and as we got closer and closer to the town of Williams there started to be trees and... oh my gosh... there was snow on the top of the hills and in the forested areas! What?! I hadn't even thought that there might be snow around!

Once we got to our hotel at Tusayan, we dumped our stuff and headed out to the car again for the trip to the Canyon. I was a bit perplexed by how slow the rain was falling and I said to Will, it looks like snow" but I tried to catch it and once it landed it was like rain. I was confused! But once we got in the car and started driving it really started snowing!! We made a few stops along the drive to Grandview lookout and when we stopped at this cool one with the amazing hoo-doo in the background the snow was coming thick and heavy! Would you believe it was the FIRST TIME WILL HAD EVER SEEN SNOW IN HIS ENTIRE LIFE!! What a cool thing to be on our honeymoon, seeing snow for the first time, and for there to be enough that it was sitting all over Will's jumper, in his eyebrows, in his hair! Oh it was so exciting! Oh, and it was FREEZING also!! We had so much fun playing in the falling snow! Tasting it, having it fall in your eyes and catch on your eyelashes, cuddling up inside our jumpers cos it was so so cold! In fact I had to wear a jacket of Will's that he bought in Washington cos I didn't even have a weatherproof jacket cos I didn't think it would be that cold! Oh it was exciting! I haven't experienced falling snow since 2003 in Tasmania so I was loving it too! Will had to drive super slow between the lookouts cos the snow was falling hard and the visibility was really bad! It was such a cool adventure :)

We headed toward Grandview lookout which was the first lookout at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Once we got there, the snow stopped falling, the clouds parted and the sun shone on the canyon off in the distance! WOW! It looked just like a hollywood backdrop! I wouldn't have been surprised if some stage hands walked past, picked up the view and walked off with it! But no, it was real! It was so beautiful, the colours of the canyon were superb- lots of pinks, oranges and reds, it was just awesome! You know what the best thing about it was- it felt like a real adventure travelling in the snow (especially for 2 summer-loving Aussies!) and we had the lookouts pretty much to ourselves, there was hardly any other tourists braving the weather! But what a gorgeous view they missed out on!

We chatted with one guy at Grandview who said they'd seen a bunch of Elk on their way to the lookout so we got back on the road and went Elk hunting (with our cameras at least!) We got one!! Just as we entered the area of the Grand Canyon Village an Elk took a walk across the road and we had to give way to him! He even stopped on the other side and did the whole "Northern Exposure head-turn pose!" We ended up seeing 4 Elk in the end which was cool :)

On our way back to Vegas the next day we stopped off at Hoover Dam to take some pics. We could even see a MASSIVE fish in the water which got Will excited. I think he was missing his fishing rod a lot! We saw 2 turtles kissing too which I named Charlotte and Will {giggles} . They are building a ginormous bridge right over the top of the river near Hoover Dam, they were just starting when I visited in 2006 and it's still not done! The traffic crawls over the Dam wall, and Buses and trucks aren't allowed on it at all which made Will wonder if it was gonna crack and spash into the water as we drove over LOL! It didn't. We didn't walk over it cos there was shopping to be done in Vegas {belly laugh!} and we wanted to get on our way!

All in all our trip to the Grand Canyon was absolutley fantastic! We loved hiring the car and cruising the long, arrow straight roads of Arizona with the radio cranked, chatting and singing along. It was so much fun!

:) C