Happy belated birthday to MEEEEE!

While my past year was exciting, this year, instead of doing my normal year-in-review, I want to talk about what we TRIED to do for my birthday.

Steve's mom came to visit in late Feb/early Mar. We tried to cram as many day trips as we could on weekends because we didn't have enough time to do a lot during the work week. Weekend trips included...

...wine tasting at the Hunter Valley,

...going to the Sydney zoo, and

...visiting Melbourne.


In amongst out outings, we found some time to have a small birthday celebration. Steve's mom made tourtiere pie and chocolate bread pudding for the three of us and our friends Pattee and Niel. :) Since our kitchen is poorly equipped, she had to buy massive tin foil BUCKETS to use as baking dishes. This forced her to make twice as much food as we needed. Intending to have almost half the food as leftovers, she went ahead and made a fantastic meal.

Steve dished up and no one realised what was happening until we were all stuffed with our plates still half-full. He split up all that food in 5 equal parts, not thinking that the plan was to have food leftover. Somehow, we still managed to polish our plates and have most of the dessert.


We've heard that the Blue Mountains are fantastic and we were waiting for an opportunity to go for ourselves. As it happens, the only day that we had available was my actual birthday. Because it's a few hours' drive away and we were going to try and cram the trip into one day, we decided to take a bus tour. I had the pleasure of waking up at 5am on my birthday to catch the bus. En route, we stopped at a wildlife conservatory. We got to pet kangaroos and koalas, which was really neat.


We had braced ourselves for a wet trip. The forecast was rain for the entire day. We prepped ourselves by buying ponchos so we would be able to do the hikes/walks without worrying about balancing with an umbrella. What we weren't prepared for was nothing. Well, that's unfair. We did see something...and lots of it...

...fog fog fog fog fog. It was everywhere. To add insult to injury, we prepaid extra to dine in the 360 rotating restaurant for the pleasure of having lunch with "mountain" views.

The "Three Sisters" (rock formations) and the "Blue Mountains" (blue from the way light reflects off the oil given off by the eucalyptus trees) were hidden the entire time. This is what people see on a clear day. Since there was no point going to look-outs, we were told we could take a short 10min walk and at least see one of the mountians' many waterfalls. It took close to 20min each way because we tried to tip toe around the muddy track. We got excited when we caught our first glimpse.

Then, we turned the corner, and oh my goodness it was soooooo...

...WEAK! They should rename that to the "Katoomba Trickle". The only cool thing we got to do was ride the steepest railway in the world but the ride only lasted a few seconds and we didn't get to see much looking out.

We tried to salvage her remaining weekend in Aus with a quick trip to Melbourne. Steve was there for business so he was at meetings while I kept his mom entertained with shopping. Before leaving us to our own devices, he made sure I had my phone with me(he asks me this out of habit anytime we split up when we're out, but it was particularly important this time because his mom was having issues with her tooth and we were in a straunge city). We were out shopping for at least an hour. We stopped at a convenience store beside the hotel to grab some snacks. While we were waiting in line, I decided to check my phone. I had 2 missed texts and 18 missed calls from Steve within a 13 minute time span. I went to check the texts first and they read:
"Emergency. Please call asap!"
"I asked you to have your phone ready!"

Totally freaked out, I called him back right away but there was no answer. I kept calling and calling, hoping that he wasn't in so much trouble that he couldn't even answer his phone. When I finally got a hold of him, he told me "never mind". Not satisfied with that, I pushed him to tell me what the emergency was. He insisted that it didn't matter anymore. When I kept on asking, he finally yelled "I asked you to have your phone ready!" I calmly told him that he did not and reminded him that he simply asked if I had my phone on me. After we got off the phone, I confirmed with his mom that he never asked me to "have my phone ready".

As it turns out, he was in a line-up that his mom and I passed by while shopping. We didn't know what the commotion was and didn't care enough to cross the street to find out. Unlike me, he asked the people in line what they were waiting for. Jamie Oliver was in town promoting his new cookbook. The first x number of people who buy a copy can have it signed by him and get a picture taken with him. On the spur of the moment, Steve thought that this would make a great bday present for me. So he lined up and when he got close to the end, he called me so I could go meet him to get my picture with Jamie. In the end, Steve really said it best:

One Jamie Oliver cook book for your wife’s birthday - $79

Standing in line to get Jamie Oliver cook book signed for your wife - an hour of your life that you can never get back

Calling your wife to get her butt over to the book store so she can get her pic taken with Jamie Oliver - 25 phone calls to voicemail over a 30 min. period while standing in line

Having to get YOUR picture with the chef your wife loves, because she cannot get her butt over to the book store in time for the picture - priceless, but not really worth it.