Back in Oz

Our first week back in Sydney has been great. We’ve had lots of time to swim, run, paddle and work out and also spent lots of time relaxing, studying and watching the Olympics. We had a great time back home, but it’s so nice to finally relax, unpack and be in one place for a while.

We thought we’d be disappointed having to watch the Gold medal GAME in Sydney (and not in Canada), but it ended up being a really neat experience. One of our favourite pubs in Sydney (James Squire, which has been featured in the blog several times already) decided that they would host/air all the Canadian hockey games during the Olympics. This meant that yesterday morning they opened the bar in Darling Harbour at 6:30 am for everyone to get settled before the 7:15 am start. Brent and I had to get up at 5:15am in the pitch black in order to get there in time!
The pub was serving breakfast, beer and had the game on about 10 different TVs (including 2 giant screens). The pub was packed- and we almost felt like we were in Canada until we walked out of the bar around 11am and the harbour was deserted.

You may have also noticed that I cut my hair off since I’ve been back here. I went to get a cheap haircut in Penrith when I first got back and it ended up looking like a mullet, so I decided to go back (to a different place) a few days later and chop it all off. I haven’t had short hair since I was 10 so it feels a bit weird, but it’s probably better than a mullet (and not bad in the hot weather, either).

We’ve also already had a few visitors out here this year. Brent’s lifesaving friends from home- Mark, Kathleen and their new baby, Fiona were in Sydney for the past month staying with Alphabet, so we managed to get in a visit with them before they headed back to Canada.
The only other excitement we’ve really had since we’ve been back was finding a Red-back spider on our patio right outside our back door while we were sweeping! This is one of the many scary and poisonous spiders living in Australia- but I really didn’t think they were living so close to us (about 5 feet from the end of our bed!)!

Vegas and Vancouver - February 2010

Brent and I have finally made it back to Australia. We’d been gone for almost 3 months, so it’s a bit weird to be back. The weather was an awful 38 degrees when we arrived, which didn’t make for a nice train ride (with all our luggage) home to Penrith, but we made it!

We spent 3 nights in Vegas on our way to Sydney this time. If we haven’t told you already, we actually saved $600 on our flights by going through Vegas (as opposed to going straight through Vancouver to Sydney). We decided it might be a good opportunity to see Vegas (especially since Brent had never been there and I hadn’t been since I was 14).

We didn’t have much planned for our 3 days there, but ended up doing a lot of walking around, relaxing by the pool and seeing some free shows.

The highlight was definitely going to see the Cirque du Soleil 'O' at Bellagio. We had never seen a Cirque show before and this one involved synchronized swimming, fire, high diving, contortionists, and acrobats. It was absolutely amazing.

We tried to visit as many hotels as we could while we were there. We were staying at Excalibur (one of the cheaper hotels on the strip), so it was easy to walk around and take advantage of all the other hotels as well.

We ate at New York, New York, and MGM grand, we ‘gambled’ at Paris, Excalibur, and Bellagio and we walked around the Luxor, Planet Hollywood and Caesar’s Palace.
When I say we ‘gambled’, this mostly involved putting in one-dollar bills to slot machines or pokies. We also went to some complimentary gambling lessons to learn to play roulette, blackjack and craps. Brent played a short round of craps after we learned to play and turned his $10 into $35- so we quickly cashed out and left the table! His $35 probably didn’t seem like much to the guy beside him who was betting hundreds of dollars on each roll, but it was a lot to us! : ) We did surprisingly well on the slot machines too! The last dollar I put in as we were leaving won me an instant $75.00. And, in total, from our few dollars that we put into the slots, we walked away with over $140 in winnings!! Unfortunately, within a few hours of getting home I managed to put Brent's passport in the laundry which will probably cost all our winnings to replace. : ( boooo to me.
Although Vegas is really not ‘our kind of place’, we actually ended up having a great time.
Our layover in Vancouver was much shorter (only about 12 hours), but was pretty fun too. The city was insane. I’ve never seen so many people in one place before. When we arrived, we took the Canada line train into the city to see the flame and try to get our hands on some Olympic tickets.

There were sooooooooo many people everywhere and it took more than an hour waiting in line just to catch a train back to the airport.

We didn't get our hands on any tickets either- the cheapest ones available from scalpers were about $1000 per ticket for the mens prelims curling. Ha.
It was a long trip back to Sydney this time, but was a fun way to break the trip up and see some sites. Too bad I didn’t have a traveling partner for my first 2.5 years of school in Australia. : (

Tour of Ontario 2010

We spent about 5 weeks in Ontario this year for our summer holiday. We were traveling around Ontario for almost the entire time, trying to visit as many family and friends as we could.


We spent some time in Collingwood with Dad and Norma and a few of our friends from medical school in Sydney (Heather, Mark and Amy all from Ontario). We had a great weekend of skiing and snowshoeing and some really fun dinners. I can’t say I was overly impressed with the skiing after spending the previous month in Whistler, but the weather was great and we had good time anyway!The scenic caves in Collingwood
Hot Chocolate and Baileys :)
The boys and their scotch
Jagerbombs for everyone!
After our weekend in Collingwood, we headed up to Sudbury via Powassan (to see Brent’s grandparents).

We spent about 5 days in Sudbury and had a great time there too. I did some studying, we celebrated the McLeod Christmas, Erin and Chris came up for a few days, and we saw Craig, Rebecca and their new baby boy, Ewan a few times. We also took a family trip up to Harry’s hunt camp on Manitoulin Island since they are thinking of selling it soon. It’s an amazing place. We saw Bridal Veil Falls, lots of deer and a pheasant while we were up there and Harry made some great BBQ’d burgers for lunch.Craig and Rebecca with their new baby, Ewan
McLeod Christmas
The Hunt Camp on Manitoulin Island
Brent's tree stand
Chris and Erin
BBQ Lunch
Inside the Hunt Camp
On our way back to Toronto, we visited Betty, Floyd and all the dogs in Innisfil and Floyd cooked up a great meal for us. After that, we headed straight to Dan Cohen’s 30th birthday party in North Toronto. He’s a classmate from Sydney who is from Thornhill, and apparently played hockey with Dom when he was young.All the "Aussies" at the party.

The next day, Brent’s Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Al organized a really nice Sunday lunch family party so that we’d be able to visit with his Aunts, Uncles and cousins in Hamilton. It was really nice to see everyone there too.

In Toronto, we had a great dinner at the Keg and went to see ‘Jersey Boys’ (xmas gift to us from Dad and Norma). We spent some time with Amelia (and saw her new apartment), visited Kirsty’s new house, spent an evening with some beach lifeguards and watching Jon Berrie’s open mic, had dinner with Brent’s Toronto EMS friends, saw Brooke and Mark (classmates from Sydney), watched Avatar with Mom, bought a new car from Richard, and managed to squeeze in a few last minute visits with Fitzy, Radford and my cousin Mark. Phew. Dinner at Amelia's new place.
Jersey boys
I also organized a surprise engagement party for my friend Sarah (and her fiancé, Peter) at the Green Eggplant in the beaches which turned out to be a really fun evening too.The next weekend we headed to London for a night to see Jules. We spent the first afternoon in Western’s new sports complex, which is really an incredible place. I WISH I had access to a gym like that (for free) in Sydney! Wow. Jules and her roommates took us out to dinner that night to an all-you-can-eat Sushi place in downtown London. I think we definitely got our moneys worth there- and frankly have no idea how they stay in business. After dinner, Brent decided to try to party ‘undergrad’ style with Jules, but I was too scared about our 6am departure the next morning, so I was the ‘responsible’ one : ).

The next morning we left London and headed to Sarnia for Madeleine’s 8am hockey game. We, of course, got there 15 minutes late and missed her breakaway goal, but we were still glad to see the rest of the game. We spent the morning visiting with Terry, Fraser and Madeleine, watched one of Alex’s hockey games and visited Sammy at Tim Hortons!Sammy working at Timmy's.
Watching Alex's hockey game
Brent and Maddy after her game.
We had to leave Sarnia by about noon to pick up Mom in Windsor by 2pm. We spent the rest of the weekend in Windsor visiting with Nana and Nono. Brent made them an amazing dinner on the Saturday night and Nono showed us old pictures of his family. We also got to see Dan, Kim, Jackie, Britt, Robert, Laura and Thomas while we were there. Another great weekend!

We spent a few more days in Collingwood and Honey Harbour before heading to Ottawa for our last long weekend in Canada. One of my best friends (Heather Bell), who was my roommate at McGill is getting married in June this year and asked me to be her maid of honour. Her and Andrew (her fiancé) just moved to Ottawa, so it was a great excuse to head over there and visit with Granny, Grandpa, and Adele, Uncle Buck, Andy and Derek too.Collingwood
Frozen Georgian Bay
Visiting Mom's cottages at Honey Harbour- and skating on the lake!
Skating at Honey Harbour
Skating on Georgian Bay.
Mom's new place.
Lunch at the cottage.
Brent and I planned a BACHELORETTE weekend for Heather AND Andrew and invited about 20 other McGill swimmers to come (including Jamie too, of course). We had a great weekend. Jamie planned a show on the Friday night, so we got to see him and the Sonic Avenues play. The girls went out for a nice dinner at Fat Tuesdays (with dueling pianos) before the show and the boys watched the Habs play (Dom’s first game as a Hab, actually) and then the Olympic opening ceremonies. On Saturday we went for a skate on the canal before a Scavenger Hunt/Pub Crawl/Trivia Game that we had organized.


Jamie's/the Sonic Avenues LP Release Party.














The final team scores (below).




We also spent the few days before the weekend shopping for Heather’s wedding dress (which was a success!), playing squash and visiting with Granny and Grandpa.


Winterlude in Ottawa


The Rideau Canal

Heather's wedding dress!
Visiting Granny and Grandpa
We got back to Toronto late on Valentine’s Day, saw Mom and Richard off to Nicaragua the next morning, and visited with Dad, Norma and a few friends before we heading back to Australia a few days later.

It was definitely a busy holiday, but we were glad to be able to visit with so many of our family and friends while we were home.