G'Day, Mate

Last week I got to meet my friend Suzanne IRL (in real life). I've known her through a yahoo group (and before that, Sesame Street when they had discussion boards) since 1999!

She is from Australia (Geelong) and is an amazing person. She has a nursing background and recently earned her PhD. She has two daughters aged 15 and 11, and a little boy who's 3. She and her family (including her husband) are vacationing in the United States for a whole month. (A whole month!)

The twins and I met her at the Mandalay Bay aquarium. Brooklyn, Maya, and Cambria were there too while David worked at his conference. (Pictures of them coming soon!) We enjoyed chatting and Mason's little Aussie voice was so cute to hear.

The next day Rick drove Suzanne and Mason to our house to play. This was nice in several ways, since we were able to really talk without distraction. I loved the aquarium but it's a little hard to have more than a 10 second conversation with someone before one of us was off chasing a little one. At our house Mason got out the trains and was sorely diappointed that I couldn't find the "diesel." (I didn't want to mention that the fact that there were actually two trains in the train box was pretty good by our standards.) I made lunch and discovererd that Australians share the Brits' dislike of peanut butter and jelly. Suzanne said that cheese sandwiches or peanut butter and vegemite sandwiches are popular choices for the 10-and-under set. Yeah . . . I was fresh out of vegemite. (I promise if you click on the second vegemite link and listen to the jingle you will curse its catchiness.)

Our three boys enjoyed playing outside in our dirt backyard and crashing trucks inside.

It was a great visit and I'm so glad I got to meet her after all this time. Her husband came to pick her up and said we could stay with them if/when we visited Australia. I would love to take him up on that!