Leaving on a jet plane...

Hi everyone! Melissa here, Amy asked me to post on her blog because she didn't get time to. She is now flying to New Zealand after a few airport dramas (like having TOO MUCH STUFF!).

So I really don't know what I am meant to write...on Tuesday night we had a small going away party for Amy. (Should I meantion everyone who came.....I don't know! Blogging is hard. I'll just put some pictures)

Here are some people who were at the party. From the left: Peter, James, Matt, Melissa, Amy, Steph, Laura and Amelia. Chris was there too. We basically watched DVD's of Amy's photos all night. Haha, it was fun.

On Wednesday (A.K.A Amys last full day) Cheryl, Melissa and Amy went to St Kilda, walked along the pier and ate ice cream (for a change) But the monumental occassion of the day was that we got a civilised picture of Amy and Melissa!! Here it is!!

And there is a picture of Melissa, Cheryl and Amy.

To conclude, a giant, some what scary face...(its an amusement park, and its the picture below :P)
Bye bye, Amy. Miss you already. The house feels empty... :(

A Cow

Here's a cow! We saw it, and couldn't resist taking a photo. Hahaha.

There was a little girl who kept walking up and touching the cow, and Melissa kept mooing. The little girl, at one point in time, told her mom that "That cow over there is really scary!!" She then proceeded to come back over to the cow again. And Melissa mooed again. It was really funny :)

How many kids can you fit in a tree?

Clever title for the post, huh? Chris came up with it :)

We couldn't resist ourselves. Here we are, chilling out in the tree ;)


Heh. Here are Chris and I!


I like this picture, but it came out a little bit blurry. That's okay, though... it's still a good photo :)


Ah! The rosellas. Okay, so there were a bunch of birds flying around... and I saw some actually land on people's shoulders. A couple of kids were holding bird food in their hands, and the birds were eating out of their hands... so I was excited when a man offered me some bird food :) And then, the birds came. Very quickly, too!


They're pretty, aren't they? I was a little scratched up on my arms, because the rosellas had somewhat sharp claws, but I don't really care. I had fun holding them.

Return to Healesville

Today, Matt, Melissa, Cheryl and I met up with Lynne and the kids in Healesville, in a place called Badger Creek. We ate lunch there, then took a walk on the trails that went through the forest. It was a nice day :)


Here we all are, hanging out on a bridge. Woohoo!!!


I like this photo :) That's Laura with me, by the way. (We're still on the bridge.)


Watch out, Chris might punch you. I always knew he was a little crazy... (just kidding, Chris.) Apparently, the leeches liked Chris and Matt (and Melissa). They each found one on their legs. I was wearing pants and shoes, so I didn't need to really think about them. (Hooray!!) But we didn't worry about them very much (the leeches, I mean). They came off easily, and it really wasn't a big deal. Still, I'm glad that I wore pants and shoes :D


Let's have a collective "Awwwwwww....."

More faces... basically, just goofy pictures.

After I finished packing, Melissa and I just chilled out on the couch and goofed around a little bit. The following pictures are the results of our endeavors to be spontaneous. (Which means that we're just being silly ;P)


I think we both blinked during this photo. Haha.


Ahh, priceless. Heh.

The best chocolate shakes in the WORLD

Yesterday, Monday, we (meaning Matt, Melissa, Cheryl and I) went to Warrandyte to a place called "Thyme on the Terrace." It's this cute little restaurant, that just so happens to have awesome food... we've been there three times during my stay :) Foccacias rock.


Here is a picture of THE BEST CHOCOLATE SHAKE IN THE WORLD. (Mwahahaha.) They are soooooooooo good!!!! I wish I could take them home with me. Mmmmmmmmmmmm...............


And here I am, drinking the best chocolate shake IN THE WORLD. Again, hahaha. They are just soooo good!!!!!

After lunch, we came back home. I packed both of my suitcases :( They are both very, very overweight. (Oy...) I'm kind of worried about it, but... we'll see what happens.

More of church, and some faces as well.

Okay, so I took my camera with me again this past Sunday. Here is a good picture of my YSA class.

Here I am, with one of my sunday school teachers :) Attractive, no?


And here are her daughters. Hahaha. Elise and Rebeccah.

...And here is the ward choir. (Well, most of them, at least.)


I went to the Melbourne temple on Friday. It was definitely a beautiful, beautiful place :) I'm so grateful that I was able to go.

Saying good-bye was very, very tough. I'm going to miss all of these people so much!

Church Photos

So, it's about time that I started posting pictures of my sunday school class, isn't it?

Well, my class is made up of a bunch of YSA's. That was new to me, considering that we don't have a class like that in our ward back home--because there really aren't many YSA's. So, this has been a neat experience.

I can't name everyone in the picture ,_, There were a few visitors, and a couple of people are new to the class, so I don't really know their names. Sorry about that.


This is Elise, our sunday school teacher's daughter. She's very, very nice :)


And this is Erin. Melissa and I met her on my first sunday, and she's pretty much helped me with everything church-wise. I'm going to especially miss these two girls, Elise and Erin. They're great girls.


I'm not sure if I posted a picture of the temple yet, but here are two of them. I like the second one better, but that's just my preference :)


My sunday school teacher told me that he'd call the temple this week and set up an appointment for everyone to do baptisms and confirmations either Wednesday or Friday morning. I'm so excited!


It's so pretty!

Karaoke on a Saturday Night

Saturday night, we all (minus Scott) went to the Harris' for dinner. Chris and Laura have a game called "Sing Star" for the Playstation 2, and so we played that for a while. I just have a few shots of us all singing karaoke.


I think this song was "Murder on the Dance Floor," but I'm not completely sure.


This one was "Livin la Vida Loca" by Ricky Martin. Hahaha.


And here is Melissa's reaction to pretty much everything...


Haha. After dinner, Laura and I played around on her family's keyboard. Laura didn't know that a picture was being taken, I don't think :)

Rooftops and Williamstown

So when I was taking pictures from the observation deck of the Rialto, I saw tennis courts and didn't think much about it. Then I realized... they were on the roofs of buildings!


This looked more like a children's playground than anything else. I still think it's cool that it was on the top of a building, though.


Oh! Across this bay is Williamstown. Cool, huh?

The Rialto Tower

Saturday, Rob took Cheryl, Melissa, Matt and I to the Rialto in the city. It is the tallest office building in the southern hemisphere. At the Rialto, there's an observation deck--that's where we went! Melissa took a picture of me with the city in the background.


The observation deck was on the... 55th floor of the tower, 253 meters above the city. That's pretty high up! As a result, I was able to get some really nice pictures of Melbourne.


In the post titled "Williamstown," I talked about the Sandridge Bridge. Well, here is how that same bridge looks from the observation deck of the Rialto Tower.


If I were to keep going in this direction across the water, I'd eventually end up in Tasmania. Cool, no?

A Carriage Ride, Gold Panning, and Jumping

So it was a very hot day... and we took a ride in a carriage, like the ones in all of the cowboy movies. So fun!

Here are Melissa and Cheryl!


This is a picture of the carriage that we rode in. The ride was fairly short, but it was nice to see a lot of things without having to walk there :P Haha.


After the ride in the carriage, Melissa and I went panning for gold while Cheryl went into one of the shops to buy something for a friend. We had a fun time. I found a very small rock (more like a pebble) that looked like parts of it might have been painted gold, but that was pretty much it. Well, whatever the case was, Melissa and I were glad to just take off our shoes and go wading in the stream. That felt so good!
So here's Melissa, goofing off as usual :)


Here is Melissa, pretending that she found gold. Hahaha. You can see Cheryl, too :)


When we left Sovereign Hill, Melissa and I decided to go for a swim in the pool by our cottage. However, we found this jumping pillow along the way... ;)

We couldn't resist. It was a lot of fun :)

We went back to Sovereign Hill at around 9 that night, to go to a special program that they had. It was a lights and sounds show explaining the Eureka Rebellion, where a series of events led the gold miners to rise up against the British (sound familiar?). Eventually, the miners/diggers were massacred early in the morning by the British police force. It was a fantastic show, and I was very surprised to learn, after it was over, that it had lasted almost 2 hours. It was very, very nice, and I really enjoyed being at Sovereign Hill.

Ballarat and Sovereign Hill

Last Thursday morning, Melissa, Cheryl and I went on an overnight trip to the city of Ballarat, a place where there was a huge gold rush in the 1850s. It was an awesome place! Here is the cottage that we stayed at.


We went to Sovereign Hill, which is a cool place where the people that work there dress up in the gold rush period clothing, and the entire area was made to look as though it were a town built in the 1850's. It was really cool! Melissa and I actually had our picture taken here--we dressed up in period clothing as well. It was so fun!!


As I said before, the people that work at Sovereign Hill dress up and go about their lives as though they lived in the period. These men were singing and playing instruments, so I took a picture of them. Haha.


There were a lot of little shops at Sovereign Hill, each one different. Here's the inside of one of them.


I just thought this photo was funny because you have the people in period dress, and then Melissa. Haha.

Thursday at Ballarat was HOT. Someone said that it was 42 degrees, which translates to 107.6 degrees fahrenheit. Dude, that's hot!! We still had fun, though. It was just... really, really warm.

A Huntsman, and the Exhibition Building

Wow, it's 1 AM. Oy, I'm tired! Okay, I'll just finish up here.

This is a Huntsman Spider. Apparently they don't really bite people, but they're big and hairy and just... big. So not fun. They're about as big as my camera. Luckily--knock on wood--I haven't seen one of these inside the house or the car. I don't know what I'd do if I did. *the shuddering occurs*


When we came home from Phillip Island, it was past midnight. A big spider was sitting on the door, waiting for us--Cheryl thinks it was this one. She whacked it with her flip-flop, and then Melissa squashed it under her shoe when it hadn't died. We were all too tired to really care about it much, though.


The Exhibition Building, which was right next to the museum, is in this photo. I liked this building, simply because it has that certain British, old-fashioned and yet regal feel to it. I thought it was pretty :)


Here we all are--Roger took the photo, so that he wouldn't have to be in it. Haha.


The museum was a lot of fun :) I like to hang out with Laura and Chris, so that was an added bonus. We sat in a park after we left the museum (that's where we are in the photo). It was a really nice day.

Tomorrow, Cheryl, Melissa and I are going to Ballarat. There's a place there called Sovereign Hill that we're going to visit. I'm excited to go! I'll make sure to take lots of pictures.

Good night, everyone~! 14 days until I get back on the plane.

Day at the Museum

There's a movie coming out called "Night at the Museum" that looks pretty interesting. Anyway, that was so not my point...

Today, Cheryl and I went to the Melbourne Museum with Roger, Lynne and the kids (Melissa was at Matt's house). The museum was neat--we started out with a forest exhibit. We were walking around in the forest, and we found a skink--a real, live one. Pretty cool, dude! It was really close to the path that we were walking on, and so I got a good photo of it :)


On to some stuffed animals.

These were actual animals that had been stuffed after they died--here is a kangaroo at it's full height. It was probably about six feet tall. I wouldn't want to be chased by one of these--that would hurt if it caught me! (Kangaroos tend to attack, you see.)


So this is the kind of penguin that I was talking about in my last post. They're really small, and cute :) This one is stuffed, of course.


Here, we have a blue-ringed octopus. These are deadly. As in if you touch them, you'll die if you don't get to a hospital fast enough. They're really small. They look pretty cool, though. Too bad they're venemous, hmm?


Oh, and I got to see dinosaur bones! That excited me. Haha. (Just because I don't remember ever seeing dinosaur bones in a museum before.) I wouldn't want to be in the way of the dinosaur that's crawling down the steps. No, no, no! I am so glad that dinosaurs aren't alive today--I mean, I wouldn't want to be dinner for one! (But they're still pretty fascinating to learn about.)


Oh, and I forgot to mention... yesterday, when we were driving to see the Penguin Parade, we saw a wallaby on the side of the road! It ran away when Melissa tried to get a picture of it, though. Oh well. It was so cool!!

Phillip Island

This past Tuesday, Cheryl, Melissa and I went to Phillip Island. We met up with Cheryl's brother Ross and his family (from Christmas), and we all--including some of Judy's relatives--went to Woolamai Beach. It was an awesome beach.

This picture was meant to be of the flags, not of the people (I don't know who they are). The lifeguards on the beach move the flags along as the currents and tides change, to show people where it's safe to swim. Cheryl said that since they started using the flags, nobody that's been swimming between them has drowned. It's a great method.

Here are a few of the lifeguards. I think there were six. Anyway, it was pretty awesome. I didn't take as many pictures as I would normally, simply because Melissa and I (and Cheryl, too!) went "swimming" (that means wading in waist-deep and letting the waves push us around), and we also used a couple of boogie boards. It was really fun!


We went back to the house that Ross and Judy and their family rented for the week, and had dinner with them. There was a loud noise of birds chirping, and I managed to take a few photos of these Ghalas. They were doing acrobatics on the telephone wires--hanging upside-down, or simply by their beaks and whatnot. It was fun to watch them. (Click on the photo and it will get bigger.)


After we left Ross and Judy, we went to see the Penguine Parade.

Okay, this takes a little bit of explaining.

First off, I didn't take pictures of the penguins, because that wasn't allowed. (Otherwise, I would have.)

On this particular beach that we drove to, these Tiny Penguins (that's their official name, although everyone calls them Fairy Penguins) walk off of the beach at sunrise, and come out of the ocean at sunset (which is when we came to watch them). The penguins are blue-ish, and about 33 centimeters tall--that's just over one foot. They're really small.

Anyway, this became a huge tourist attraction when more attention was given to it. To help you understand, I shall say this: we made sure to leave Ross and Judy's at about 7, so that we would have a parking spot. The people that sat to the left of us were French, the people that sat to the right of us were Chinese, and the people that sat in front of us were Japanese. Others that we noticed were from Indonesia and other distant places. People literally come from all over the world, and watch these penguins come out of the ocean and waddle up to their burrows.

The penguins started coming up at around 9 o'clock, and we watched them until after 10. It was so cool! They started coming up in groups of 7 or 8 to start with, and towards the end they came out in groups of 15-20. It was awesome to watch them scurry up the beach, trying to avoid seagulls--the birds tried to scare them and make them run back into the ocean, with hopes that the penguins would up-chuck the fish that they caught so that the seagulls could get a free meal. I remember one group in particular that was comprised of, perhaps, 15 or so penguins. They made it halfway up the beach then got scared by a seagull, turned around and ran back for the water.

Yes. So anyway, this is us goofing off and wasting time while we waited for the penguins to come. Here are Melissa and Cheryl:


And here are Melissa and I. The beach that the penguins walked up is in the background.


The place was packed with people who came to see the penguins. It was kind of cool, but really noisy :P However, we did get to see some of the penguins up really closely. It was awesome!

More Beach

So Chris decided to climb the rock... and then Laura did, too :) Here is Laura, pretending to be her brother. (Haha, Laura.)


Just for a scale... this is how it looked with my camera not on zoom.


And here I am. I managed to put sunscreen everywhere.... except my neck ,_, As a result of my forgetfulness, my skin is currently peeling around my neck because of sunburn. Well, at least it wasn't worse :P And it feels alright anyway. I've been extra careful to remember to put on that sunscreen!

I searched through the rock pools, and I found some tiny starfish (4 of them, to be exact) and about a billion snails. And some red anemones. We had a fun time at the beach--eventually, we all (minus Cheryl and Lynne) went into the water and got totally soaked. That was awesome :)

Bushranger's Bay

On Friday, I went to the beach with Melissa, Cheryl, Roger and Lynne and the kids, and Matt and his sister Steph. We went to one of the Harris' favorite beaches, which I do believe was called Bushranger's Beach. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) (Edit: It's Bushranger's Bay, not beach.)

To get to this particular beach, we had to walk through the bush about 2.6 kilometers, which translates to... about 1.5 miles. It was a long walk for a really hot day, and the flies were absolutely crazy. It was pretty scenery though, and I could see how it'd be a pleasant walk if it wasn't in the 90s :)

Anyway, here's a picture of the path. Melissa and Steph are in front, and I managed to get Chris in the photo as well.


This beach was really rocky, but I had a lot of fun looking at all of the little rock pools that were there. The massive rock in this picture was pretty awesome to look at, too. You can see a bunch of the tide pools here.


There was a great view on the beach :) I really liked taking pictures.


Here are Laura and Chris, walking on rock. There wasn't sand right there--it was all rock. And it was pretty cool, too.


Chris climbed one of the big rocks, like in the second picture of this post. Here he is, "holding it up."

Tower and Trolleys

As promised, here is that picture of the tower we climbed. I count... 8 flights of stairs :) The view was great, though!

After the "tower adventure," we all drove to Healesville (the place where I saw the koalas and kangaroos the first time around). The Harris' and I went for a ride on the trolley that they had there. It was a great ride :) Here are Laura and Roger.


And here's Chris!


The trolley went through a tunnel--it was a lot cooler in the tunnel than it was outside. (Wednesday was a warm day, you see.) This tunnel was made in the late 1800s, and the trolley driver thinks that the tunnel itself is 7 bricks thick (or something along those lines). That would take a long time to build!

((The side of Chris' head is in the picture.))


The trolley ride was probably about 30 minutes long, I think. Laura was kind enough to take a picture with me :) It was fun!


Next post: Bushranger's Beach

Rainforests and Towers

So last Wednesday, Melissa, Cheryl and I met up with Roger, Lynne, Laura and Christopher at Warburton. We went for a walk into an old growth rainforest--it was great!

This is a picture of a structure that we all stood on, so that we were about level with the tree canopies...

And this is the view from the top of that structure. (I think we have established that Amy has something of a liking for tree ferns, hmm?) Some of these ferns were HUGE! It was awesome!


We went to a different place and climbed up a tower (I'll upload a picture of it in the next post), and this was the view from the top. In the distance is Mt. Dandenong--it's on the left side of the picture, and is pretty much the furthest land mass that the camera captured. (You can see it very well in the photo.)


Here are Laura and Chris, hanging out on top of the tower. They're awesome kids :)


And here are Lynne and Roger. I think this is a good picture of them.


Next post: Towers and Trolleys.

Williamstown

This last Saturday, Cheryl took me into the city to go on a boat across the bay to Williamstown. (Melissa was sick, and she really didn't want to go.) I took some nice pictures from the boat on the return trip; on the trip to Williamstown, the boat's windows wouldn't open--and therefore, all of my pictures would've had a glare in them. (We caught a different boat on the way home, you see.)

Williamstown was a quaint little place to visit. It was a really nice trip! Cheryl and I walked around and just enjoyed the day :) We had some gelati, too, which was pretty awesome.

Anyway, I should explain the pictures. This first one is a scene of the city. In a recent post titled "Bush Fires," I talked about how some days were smoky. Saturday was one of those days (it wasn't very bad, though); Cheryl reckons that the smoke came from fires that are burning deep in the bush. Anyway, you can kind of get a glimpse as to what I mean when I say that a day was "smoky."


This is what the underside of a bridge looks like, just in case you've never seen one before :) I liked the old-fashioned European feel of this bridge.


This bridge is the Sandridge bridge. There are figures standing on top of it; they represent the different people from different countries that come to Australia. (Australia has a very diverse population.) It was pretty neat to look at.


Here's one of the figures up close. The pink things in it spun when the wind blew. It looked pretty cool!


Here are Cheryl and I (not a very good picture, I admit). We were inside the boat at the time of this photo.

Warburton

Ah!!! I just found out that I'm coming back to Warburton tomorrow!!!!!! :D YAY!!!!!!!!!!! That makes me happy :)

OKAY. Anyway...

The wednesday after Christmas, Melissa, Cheryl and I went for a drive to a place called Warburton. Haha. It kind of reminded me of Seaside, only minus the ocean. (Meaning that it was a cute, small town.) We went for a walk along the Yarra River, which goes through the middle of Melbourne. I took some great pictures of the scenery.


And, for your enjoyment... ducks! There were no shortage of ducks. Haha.


Here are some more shots of the pretty scenery. It was really peaceful to walk around here :)


Talk about ferns... look at all of them!


I don't know if you can see the picture really well, or if you remember my third or fourth post... but I'm almost positive that these trees were what I was looking at when I was flying from Sydney to Melbourne. They're gorgeous :)

Christmas Night, and a Possum

Christmas night, we went to Lynne and Roger's house for dinner and a family get-together. Lynne is in the middle of this picture; I should get a better picture of her...

There were a few family friends, as well as some cousins that I'd never met before. (This means that there were a lot of names for me to remember, and I have forgotten them since last Monday :P)

Here are Laura and Christopher, passing out presents to everyone. I gave Lynne and Roger's family an Oregon calendar; pretty standard, I know, but I wanted them to have something from my home :) Laura and Chris got a LOT of candy from my family.


Here are Rob and Scott. They look like they're enjoying themselves, no? ;)


Here's Roger! I think it's funny that I have a better picture of him than I do Lynne, simply because I've spent more time with Lynne. Go figure :)


Laura took me on a tour of their backyard. High up in one of the trees was a wooden dog house-looking structure. She told me that possums could be found there. So I stood on the tips of my toes and tried to aim my camera just right, and... voila! Here is an Australian possum:

Matt Santa

Okay, so I said in an earlier post that Matt dressed up like Santa. Well... now I have pictures to show off! :)

Melissa had a little too much fun with this Santa stuff... haha.


And here we are, taking a picture with Santa Clause! :D Hooray! About the fairy wings... Matt told us to come to his house dressed "Christmassy," but we didn't really have anything "Christmassy" to wear. So we dressed up like angels. (Note the halos.) And that was totally not what he meant. Haha. Oh well!


This is Matt's sister, Steph. She's quite cute, and she snorts when she laughs ;) I wonder if she'll ever read this... hehe.

Christmas Eve

Okay, so here are some pictures of our happenings on Christmas Eve, while at Matt's house.

Firstly, we have Matt's brother James. James and his friend Chris were mixing random ingredients into their drinks, then downing them as quickly as they could. It was amusing to watch. They put powdered citric acid, lemon juice, jelly mix (jelly is the equivalent of Jello), and I think soda in this round. That's why James' face is all messed up :P Haha.

Matt, Melissa and I also played... Jenga! Oh, a fun game. Melissa took the next couple of pictures. (And yes, I'm wearing fairy wings. I'll explain that in the next post.)


Oh, bummer... Matt made the tower fall :P Heh. Melissa was the only one who DIDN'T make a tower fall. And she'd never played before! Hah. I guess she's just really good at it :)


And, here we have Melissa. Matt kept trying to make her laugh, so that her hands would move and cause the tower to crumble. Fun!


These people are John and Tina, Matt's parents. They're nice people :) I like them. Tina made chicken wings and also made a special marinade for them... they were so good! But her marinade is a secret recipe, apparently ;) Hmm....

December 23rd

So, I've finally decided to post pictures of Christmas :P Sorry it took so long.

I'll begin with the Saturday before Christmas. We, meaning all of the Taylors plus Matt and I, went to Cheryl's brother Ross' house. (And now, this is where pictures of Cheryl finally start to emerge!)

Matt took a picture of all of us, and here it is! From left to right, starting in the back row: James [Judy and Ross' son], Judy [Ross' wife], Cheryl, me, Rob, Ross. In the front row: Melissa, Pop (Cheryl's dad), Scott (Melissa's brother), Elise (James' sister), and Nan (Cheryl's mom).

Melissa stole my camera and took a picture of everyone at the table (we ate lunch together).


Here are Cheryl and Ross. I can't remember what they were talking about, but they were doing some funny things... *haha*


Here's James. He thinks he's hot stuff :D Hahaha. He's 12 years old.


And, last but not least, here are Elise and Scott. Elise is 7 years old, and Scott just turned 21.


We had a lot of fun, and I took a lot of pictures :)

Next post: Christmas Eve!