Our First Visitors!

We had our first visitors land in the country two weeks ago!  Chris and Melinda are friends of ours from Kentucky.  We met Chris in our church choir and soon found out that he lived down the street from us.  He met Melinda, and the rest is history!  It was lovely to have good friends as neighbors just down the street and we miss our dinners together!

One of our first places to take visitors to see is Oakvale, where you are able to pet Koalas and feed Kangaroos.  Let's face it, it's what any visitor to Australia is excited to do.  I know when I saw my first Roo I felt like I was truly in Australia!  I think it was a good first experience, but I'll let you judge from the pictures!

Chris enticing a Wallaby

Melinda being surrounded by Roos

It's still fun for me as well!

The boys enjoy it as well - and why wouldn't they?

Will's jumper isn't just any old jumper - it is an Australia jumper, hence the green and gold.  I always thought it was odd that those are there colors in the Olympics, but, as my friend Amy pointed out, it does make them easy to identify!  On a side note, Will was cheering for Australia in the Olympics.  We tried to convince him to cheer for the USA to win gold and the Aussies to win silver, but he wouldn't budge.  However Nathan's mate, Wes (pronounced with a zed, as are all of their s) was cheering for the US instead of Australia.

Sorry about this next shot, but I didn't have time to fool with lighting and I had to get this picture!

Clearly Will is an animal person!

And since we had other adults with us, Brian and I got a picture together - a real rarity for us!

Brian also ticked off a Cockatoo

A Wallaby with her Joey - so cute!

It was fun showing other people how much fun it is where we live!

That evening we met a group of our friends at the RSL club.  It was fun introducing friends from different continents and I even got to play translator.  I think everyone had a fun evening.  Melinda commented that she and Chris felt very welcomed by everyone and that it didn't seem like that was the first time they had met.  So glad we have such wonderful people as friends here!

After church on Sunday we went out to the lighthouse and had tea.  There is a beautiful view from there that makes the food taste even better!  I didn't take any pictures there, but I'm pretty sure I've posted pictures in the past.  Melinda, I still think you should do a guest post with your pictures!

After lunch we went back and changed.  Brian kept bugging me about what I wanted to do special since it was my birthday, but I just wanted to show them around some of my favorite beaches.  We ended up taking a walk up past Barry Point on a recommendation, and boy am I glad we did.  It was a fun walk with beautiful views and lots of places to rock climb.

View of where the spit is, although it's underwater

The lighthouse in the picture above is no longer a working lighthouse.  To get there, you have to wait until low tide and then cross the sand spit to the island.  So far, timing has not worked for us to be able to cross the spit, much to Nathan's chagrin.  It was nice to get a good view of it on our walk.

Some serious waves that day

I took a lot more pictures, but I figure that's enough for one post!  We did some more exploration of the area and even a bit of shopping.  It was nice to shop with a girl, especially since I found out I needed a ball gown pronto - but more on that later.

After a few more days in Port Stephens, Chris and Melinda were off to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef - something we will be doing with my parents in about a month!  After a few days there, they flew into Sydney and we were able to meet them there.  Now on to photo editing those pictures!