Adventures "down under"

Yet another update from the Hutchinsons! Kev actually goes back to work tomorrow so it will be the end of our "vacation" - I think he is actually excited to get his career going here in Australia.

Thursday: We spent a good portion of the day at Kev's friend Jessica's apartment here in Sydney. She used to work for AMEX and quit to stay home with her kids. Kevin talked to her quite a bit, but had never met her. Her family is actually moving to Syngapore so they are leaving in a few months. They have a little girl that is a bit younger than Madi and a baby that is 1 1/2 years old. Madi and Jasmine had a ball together playing Barbies. Cooper was mad that they didn't have any boys at their house - does that surprise anyone? They did have a Thomas track though, so he was in heaven. They were even nice to let him borrow it so that he would have something to do in the serviced apartment. They also let us borrow several DVDs - but the DVD remote is broken and they have come to fix it twice (hopefully tomorrow it will be fixed for good).

Friday: Kevin actually went into work for a few hours for a meeting that he couldn't miss. Then we ventured on the trains and in the rain to the Immigration Office to get our Visa's stamped into our Passports. We had to wait about 45 minutes for our number to be called - you can imagine how the kids did with that. We were in a big room with nothing to do and lots of people from all over the world. The kids Visa's are still just temporary, so we have to go back and get theirs stamped, but luckily Kev can go in their behalf so we don't have to do that again. We then went out to find China Town, which was not that spectacular (this is of course my opinion). We then found Darling Harbor Park on our way home - it has a playground!!!!! The nice thing is that it is really close to our apartment - I think I will be spending lots of time there with the kids while Kev is at work.

Saturday: We decided to head over to the Sydney Aquarium to get out of the apartment. It was so cool!

The kids loved it! Here are some of the picture of the cool things that we saw.

PLATYPUS - MY FAVORITE!! I have always loved the platypus since we saw one last time Kev and I visited Australia. The platypus is a mammal which lays it's legs. The platypus is actually a protected animal in Australia. The close their eyes under the water and use their bills to search the floor bottom of streams and rivers for food. We didn't know this until our trip to the aquarium, but the platypus spends more time on land than in the water and they burrow into stream beds.

We also saw a huge croc. Apparently there are no alligators in Australia - but there are lots of crocodiles. They had a huge sign about the difference between "freshies" and "salties" (you know fresh and salt water crocs). They like to abbreviate everything and shorten it here.

The seals were so cute and playful. We watched them for a long time. They were swimming around and fighting with each other. There were two that were playing "king of the hill" on a wooden deck. We got to go underneath and see the seals swimming above us. We were in a huge tube of glass.

The next place we stopped was the ocean tank. Here again you got to go underneath the tank and walk through some glass tubes. However, this time imagine if you will sharks, stinging rays, turtles, etc. swimming over your head and all around you. The scariest thing was the sharks - I can't believe that people swim with them. It was a bit eerie to have them swim right at you and above you. Coop liked the sharks best.

The sting ray was sitting above us just as we entered the glass tube. There were so many different sharks - apparently there are more sharks than JAWS :)

There were also many, many tanks of all different types of fish. They even had signs up to tell kids to find Nemo's friends in the tanks. They have really capitalized on Nemo here. All in all we had a wonderful afternoon at the aquarium.

After the aquarium we decided to venture over to the park again. This time there was no rain, but lots of kids. We only stayed a short time because Rylee started crying and we needed to go home and feed her.

Sunday: today we got up early to head off for church. Although there is a ward that meets here in the city we decided to attend the ward that meets in the area where we are looking at houses. Church started at 9:30, but we left the apartment at 8:00 to catch the train and walk to church from the train station. The ward was very friendly and the kids had fun in primary. Although the Church may be the same throughout the world - the wards are much smaller outside of Utah. We will have to see this week where we end up. The ward boundaries are very large - as you can imagine - so there is a good chance we will end up in this ward. We then walked back to the train station after church and there was an announcement that they were fixing something on the line and the train would be delayed at least 30 mins. We then just hang out in the apartment Sunday night. We had left overs for dinner - that is one thing that will be missed is Cooper dinners on Sunday nights - it is quieter however!!!! LOL!!!

That's it for now. Hopefully you are all enjoying this back at home. We miss you so much, but are excited to be here all the same!!