Wicked

Last night I was lucky enough to go with Ashleigh up to the Pantagas Theater in LA and see Wicked! This is a show that I've been dying to see for ages! My mom saw it with my dad while I was over in Australia and I was so jealous! My mom was nice enough to take Nathan...(my sister's youngest) for the night so we could have some sister bonding! He is just so cute! We went up and had some dinner at CPK and walked around looking at all the strange people LA attracts (us not included of course!). We enjoyed their Christmas decorations and I was a little picture happy. I think I embarrassed Ashleigh a little but hey what are little sisters for?!?!?!We hurried back to the theater to grab out tickets and find our seats! Right before the show began this couple came and sat down right next to me. No one other than Sarah will really care but it just so happened to be Pink! That's right, I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit star struck because we sat next to each other for 2.5hrs!!!!!!!!! Anyway it was an excellat show and I definitely recommend it to everyone! Afterwards we had to find a Cheesecake Factory for our dessert! Luckily we were in LA because only there would one be open until midnight!!! (Ash lucked out because after she took me clear across LA in party hopping traffic driving a stick it was a good thing they still had a slice of their white-choc rasperberry truffle cheesecake left :) We pulled over next to the temple to enjoy our calorie splurge :)

It was a great evening and I just really enjoy being able to spend time with my sister! The hardest thing about being over in Australia was not being able to pick up the phone and hear her voice on the other end as often as I wanted! I couldn't ask for a better sister!!!! :) Love ya Ash!

Disneyland!

There is nothing that makes a visit home better than a visit to Disneyland! My sister and her kids are lucky enough to have season passes to Disneyland. I'm just lucky enough to have a mom do anything to try and bribe me to stay in CA :) I can't get over how old the boys are getting! Ryan and Tyler are 5yrs old and love hearing about all the kangaroos I saw in Australia! Nathan on the other hand had a difficult time remember who Aunt Z was.....to my defense he is only 18 months! After heaps of effort from everyone we're now buds again! He couldn't get enough of hugging both Ashleigh and I at the same time while we were in the Peter Pan ride...I think people were getting a little suspicious ;)

I had so much fun with them! Disneyland truly is the happiest place on earth!!!! :)

Here is us on the tea cups....Ash and I had so much fun we did it twice!!!! The boys were really into spinning it super fast! Nathan just sat there and laughed!It wouldn't be a trip to Disneyland without waiting (in possibly the longest line all day) to say hi to Pooh Bear and Tigger!

We finished our evening off by watching the Christmas Parade while eating our $7 cheese pizza! Geez they certaintly know how to rip you off there but it didn't take away from our awesome day! We had so much fun riding the rides, spending time together and admiring the lights! Tyler wanted to take me on It's a Small World so he could show me the Australia section! I think I have them hooked on wanting to go and visit there someday :)

I'm home!!!!

So I'm home...it's been a long time coming but I finally arrived! I left Sydney taking off staring at the beautiful blue ocean glistening in the sunlight and landed in LA to the smog and cold :( Yea I am having a hard time adjusting out of my 4 month holiday! But anyway I couldn't miss Thanksgiving!!!! Sadly we didn't get a group picture of everyone but no worries cuz I snagged one of the table :) It was fun this year because we had everyone at our house!!! We finally filled our table! The next morning we took Christmas card photos! Here is a picture of Roger (my oldest brother) and I in our matching outfits. That's all you get to see because the photos have to be a surprise! This year he picture will be good though because my parents are in it!!! :)

I've been able to keep myself busy by playing!!! I'm just clearly not ready to be responsible and settle down! I went down to San Diego to visit Lyndsgrove and her family because she was spending Thanksgiving with her inlaws down there.

After hanging out with Lynds (I haven't seen her since he 4th of July and even that was for only 15min) I headed downtown for a night of fun and laughter! Bobby got hooked up with being the manager to John Lovitz Comedy Club so he invited me, Anna, Ash (her bf) and Calvin down. We ate dinner and then headed over for the show. It was hilarous!!! They got a room at the Hard Rock but I didn't spend the night...church was early the next morning but I definitely checked it out...it's pretty sweet! Thanks Bobby!!!! ...see ya this weekend???

Here is Anna, me and Bobby at dinner and then me putting eyeliner on Calvin because he is Asian and we waned to make his eyes stand out more ;) Then last but not least the whole gang in the Hard Rock Lobby!!!!!

Currumbin!

Australia just has beaches along their entire eastern coast! It's become my goal to visit as many as I can before I go home, hoping to soak up a bit of color along the way but so far not so good.

This is us hanging out at Currumbin in the Gold Coast. I made a new friend named Allyssa! She is a hard core surfer and let me take one of her extra boards out....geez I'm getting so good! (haha yea right!) But yea she didn't have money for gas one day so she sold one of her surf boards.....she is hilarious! We were able to rally up a good group of kids for some surf, sun and beach soccer!

You've got Jeremy, Mike (Dan's bro, yea they look nothing alike!) Fil, Allyssa, me, Kell, and JT. Thanks to the nice old lady that took our pic for us! Oh and how could we not take a picture of the 3 amigos living in the Hadley's Happy Household?!?!?

Halloween!

Ok....don't be mad but the kind people of Brisbane were able to get me to dress up for Halloween this year! And by dress up I mean hair and make-up dress up!!! I didn't really have a choice, it was weird because for the first time my free agency was definitely taken away from me and this is what I turned into...Kellie, Filipa Eliza (Tim Glen's sister) and myself dressed up as vampires (I've started them on Twilight) and we went to Movie World which is very similar as Knott's Scary Farm!

It was quite the evening with vampires even coming from the slumber of haning upside down and out of the tress ....

...to suck people's blood and just enjoy walking amongst the living (hehe I'm such a dork!)

As you can tell we spent more time standing in the lines than on the rides. I contribute this to the fact that Movie World was obviously the spot for all the cool kids to be on Halloween and so we were forced to take none other than heaps of silly photos....we truly enjoyed ourselves :) We also scored a free bag of candy that they were only handing out to little kids and apparently people visiting from the states!

Sunday Drives :)

Kellie, Michelle and I decided to take a drive one Sunday in between conference sessions (yea apparently it takes awhile for the recording to get down under). We enjoyed the tempting view of the beach down by Rainbow!










This is me at the Queensland/New South Wales border. As you can see I'm a little torn between which one I like better! On one hand you have the "Sunshine State" where my dear friend Kellie lives and on the other side you have Sarah my best riding buddy! I think I'll just stick with whomever I'm with at the moment :) You know me, I'm a lover not a fighter!

After the beach and conference we continued our drive up to O'Reily's. We went for a "bush walk" in heels and Sunday dress :) It was really pretty though! We were walking on sketchy bridge things and then we climbed up this fig tree to catch the sunset (barely made it, geez it's a good thing we went to church). The climb up the fig tree might have been the hardest thing I've ever done! I have a small heel on the bottom of my shoes and I had to carry the camera up this very very steep ladder! That smile is because I'm nearly at the top and passed my camera safely to Kellie!

At times I felt like I was going to die getting up the tree but as you can tell it was all worth the view! Geez the things I do for a good sunset :)

Ahh Crickey!!!!!

Ahh crickey I'm loving Australia!!!! I've been on holiday since the middle of July and as much as I miss my family and friends I wouldn't trade ANY of the experiences I've had abroad! In fact I'm lovin it so much that I've extended my stay down under! For those of you wondering why I didn't come home last week, this is kinda why! I will without a doubt be home (in California) for Thanksgiving. I can be a bad daughter, sister and friend but never a bad American ;) Hope you guys are all doing well!!! I love checking your blogs and staying in touch that way so keep it up!!! See you in a couple weeks!

Girls' Weekend!

Kellie and I arrived back from China and headed to Broadbeach on the Gold Coast for a girls' weekend full of waxing, girl talk, and SUN...or so we hoped! On our way out there it rained but no worries the second we checked in it stopped and this beautiful rainbow appeared :) We couldn't help but be lame and take heaps of pictures!!!

This is the view from our balcony the next morning...as you can tell it turned into a lovely weekend! We took a short walk to the beach....

Came home and got ready for a girl's night out on the town!!!! That just consisted of dinner and a movie :) hahaha yes we actually took photos in the movie theater!!!!

You've got Chelsea and Tania on the left side of the dinner table and then me, Kellie and Michelle on the right!

It was just fun to actually get away with the girls and have no dramas!

Utah girls......why do we suck and can't get our act together?!??! The girls in Brisbane are totally showing us up! And don't say it's because some are married and most have kids because Chelsea is married and Michelle has TWO kids! We don't have to go far just somewhere different. We only drove 1 hour away and were able to have heaps of fun!!!!!

Hong Kong

We left Dave, Yolanda and brother in China so that we would be able to spend a day in Hong Kong. They would have come with us but Yolanda doesn't have the right visa so we ventured on our own instead :) I was seriously impressed with us getting through costums and across the borders without anyone that speaks even the slightest bit of Chinese or Kantanese!

Hong Kong is an awesome city!!! I loved it! It feels like China but you can definitely feel the British influence there in their degree of cleanliness! We arrived to our very own whole in the walls! Cheapest hotel I've ever stayed at but I'd never go back even if you paid me! Kellie found short and curlies in her bed....by that point I was too scared to look closely and our room was so small that we could barely fit our luggage inside with us!!! It made for a good laugh though!
Here is Lynn and I in our closets! She is such a saint it even comes out in photos!!! And then I couldn't resist with this photo of Mandy! :) I'm pretty sure she is laughing at how small our rooms are!!!

Once we arrived and got adjusted we went walking through the city! One of my favorite things to do when I'm on holiday over seas is to take their trains! I don't know why but I love doing this! I think it's because we don't have trains where I come from...Trax does NOT count!!! Anyway we played around with that and took a bus ride up to the top of this mountain/viewing area! It was spectacular! Hong Kong at night has some of the coolest lights! It reminded me of Tokoyo! I'd post a picture but my camera was stuffed at this point and Kellie's batteries had died so we used Mandy's new camera she bought in China instead....yea piece of rubbish! We took a "tram" down though. I was expecting a Snowbird kinda tram....very wrong!!!!

The next morning we walked around the city some more and did some good cheap brand name shopping! We wanted to find the temple so we looked online and found the address, it was perfect because it was right near the shopping streets...or so we thought! We must have walked around for over an hour looking for a good angle ontop of a massive building! Everyone kept saying "Oh I know what you're looking for, yea it's about a 5-10min walk and you'll see it on your left hand side!" ...WRONG!!! Before I started swearing up a storm out of frustration I hailed a taxi...another thing I really enjoying doing on holiday. Our taxi cab driver took us on the freeway, not to rip us off but because that's truly how far away it was! Definitely worth the trouble though, it's a beautiful temple, as they all are! It was a Monday so it was closed but we still enjoyed our view! :) This first picture just gives you an idea of how tall this temple really is!

China!

After saying good bye to Sarah in Sydney, I flew up to start another part of my adventure with Kellie in the Gold Coast. First we went to China with her mum and sis Mandy. We met up with their oldest bro Dave and his gf Yolanda. The picture to the left is how our adventure started....the toilets were disgusting! This was in the airport and sadly we didn't see a toilet this nice for 2 weeks!!!! Most of them didn't even have their own toilet papter...you had to bring your own!!! The other picture just shows my love for my mom and Chinamen :)

These pictures were taken outside of Dave's apartment near a government building. The lights in this center were amazing! We had so much fun taking picture after picture!!! To the left is Yolanda, me, Kellie and Mandy. To the right is Lynn, Susan, Yolanda, Dave, Bob, brother, Kellie, myself and Mandy. In China you call your brothers and sisters just that, not their names! Bob and Susan were a nice American couple also teaching English over there with Dave that Kellie and I stayed with so it wasn't so cramped in their apartments!

Next was the food!!!! Half the time Yolanda and Dave wouldn't tell us what we were eating! I think this was their way of getting us to stay adventerous! The most extreme thing we ate that we knew about was the linning of a pig's stomach. A bit chewy but not bad, I had seconds! Below is a picture of me eating spicy noodles! I had quite the audience! Oh and if you can notice that chicken has a head and legs...yeah they don't bother cutting any of that stuff off for you! :)

We did an amazing hike to this unbelievable view. I don't even really remember without looking in my journal as to where we were! It was the hike from hell though. We were rushing the sunset and just trying to not melt away! It was really hard not to stop and take pictures. Yolanda didn't bring the right shoes for this intense hike so she was carried up half way...I wish I was that smart!!!

Unfortunately the pictures just don't do this justice at all but here are some anyway....

One of my favorite things about China was how cheap everything was over there! We were able to get full body massages that lasted over an hour and once we converted everything it only cost up $4!!!! You just walk into this hotel looking thing and these girls come in and massage you. It was pretty painful and at one point I thought I saw tears in Kellie's eyes but afterwards it felt really nice, especially after a long day of shopping!!! We also walked into this hair salon at 10pm and they washed our hair and gave us head massages and then styled our hair afterwards....they cleaned our ears....3 cue-tips for EACH ear! It was nuts!!! I've never been so pampered for so cheap! Who needs the La Costa Spa Snelgrove!?!?!?! Our head massages cost us $3!!!!

Here is a picture of Kellie and I with rice fields behind us :) We pulled off the road to breathe for a second (their driving is absolutely nuts and I thought I was going to die just 5 min before when our driver came to a complete stop on the freeway on a blind turn!!!) and also to admire the view. My family, especially my brother Roger, gave me a hard time for going to China. He kept saying that he would look for me in the rice fields while he watched Survivor so it was a must!

We also went to this relly cool ancient village. We took about 100 pictures this day so I picked one to show you. It was crazy though cuz we only were allowed to walk through half of the village cuz people lived in the other half still!!!!!

Here is my final China picture! It's crazy how far our money went!! About 100 of their dollars was about $20US dollars so I felt RICH!!! It was great!! As you can tell I was a bit stoked over this new discovery :)

There are seriously heaps of photos that we took but I couldn't be bothered to post anymore...sorry but you're all welcome to have a look at my scap book when I finish :) I'm such a nerd!!!
Oh and I just previewed this post and it comes out crap compared to how it's looking now but once again, I couldn't be bothered to fix it...sorry!