In the meantime, here's what's been happening with the Leslie-Peterson family in 2012.
January. Having just procured a new rental to move to (our first home was being sold), we spent most of our holiday break packing up for the transition, but found time over the new year period to visit Jindabyne--a town that in Aussie winters passes for their version of, say, Dillon, CO. Higher altitude and beautiful lakes. Mika wanted to climb Australia's highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, which stands at 2228m above sea level, just so she could say she did, so off we went. Here we are, having scaled the summit.
Almost immediately post-house-move, Kirsten's Dad arrived from the US for his first-ever visit to Australia. We took off for a Grand Road Trip to Melbourne to, among other things, see the Australian Open Tennis Tournament. Dad was a great car passenger, eschewing technology such as GPSs for the old-fashioned map and providing interesting details of our trip along the way, while never once asking to take the wheel, which I know was a sacrifice for him. :) We were taken good care of by our friends, the Parker-Simmons family who lent us the use of their "beach shack" (their term, not mine) on the Mornington Peninsula for the duration of our stay.
Mika with styling sun protection and KP at the Open.
Mika managed to brow-beat a signature from Novak Djokovic, the eventual winner of the tournament on one of those over-sized autograph balls. Ebay profits were discussed, but not followed-up on. :)
After our day at the Open, Dan, KP, and Dad walked to a yonder cafe on the Yarra River. A thoroughly enjoyable day.
Road Trip #2 was to Darling Harbor, Sydney for a long weekend. We toured the Sydney Opera House and sailed the harbor on a tall-masted ship.
Mika and KP were allowed to climb into the rigging of the ship (for a fee, of course)...great views!
February. The month brought Dad's departure back to the US and back to school for Mika. Bummers, both of them. It also brought, on the bright side, Mika's 13th birthday, which we celebrated with a Masterchef inspired cooking competition party.
Here are the members of Mika's team enjoying a well-deserved break from their cooking duties on Mika's birthday present, a trampoline.
Note the tape across the kitchen island, separating the teams, who both performed well beyond the expectations of judges (that would be Dan and KP). We had the foresight to including clean-up of the kitchen as part of the judging criteria and I kid you not when I say that the kitchen has never been so clean. Got to love those Aussie girls!!
With March came the official arrival of fall--a phenomenon I just can't get used to. I still reflexively think that March is spring and September is fall, darn it! Work for KP was shifting into high pre-Olympic gear, while Dan was increasingly finding his footing with promotions and added responsibilities at his work.
April. Easter brought a visit from the Parker-Simmons clan who were able to wring just about every ounce of fun there is to have in Canberra. Susie, Jeff, KP and Dan made a point of hiking all of our local mountains/hills, we museumed, toured local nature preserves, and ate well. Risk was also played. :) All freaking weekend!
Later in the month, we took a shortish family vacation to the Sunshine Coast hamlet of Noosa, about 2 hours north of Brisbane. After what turned out to have been one of the rainiest summers Canberra has had in recent memory (complete with significant local flooding), it was great to have some warm and sunny beach time. Mika and KP had our first surfing lessons, which was great fun--more than I expected! So much so that we rented boards for a second afternoon of extra training. Speaking only for myself--Mika was much more successful at this--it took me so freakin' long to get up on the board that by the time I did, I could have waded through the surf faster than the board was travelling. Thank god the pics are stills and not video...
May. Fall was in full-force now. Mika's semester school load included a class in cooking. She'd always been interesting in cooking anything that was sweet, but has honed her skills in savory dishes as well. Here she is showcasing a frittata which Dan and KP had to grade as part of her assignment. Extremely delicious!
June brought the start of KP's summer (as in European summer, that is) travels with sports. She spent two weeks with the Australian Olympic Rowing team in Lucerne, Switzerland. Befriended by the lone female coach for the team (who happens to be Canadian and thus we bonded over mutual issues of family transitions to a different country), KP had a wonderful time both personally and professionally, getting to know the team and enjoying touring the area on off-time.
On the heels of one of KP's trips, she was able to swing a day in Shanghai before heading back to Canberra to visit with Toni Barton, a friend of ours from Colorado Springs. Toni's family had spent the previous year living in Shanghai, so it was a great way to see the city through the eyes of a pseudo native. We walked a lot and booked in for some wonderful and cheap massages!
July-August. Big trip for Mika and Dan to Borneo for a friendly soccer tournament featuring Mika's soccer team. See the earlier blog entry written by Mika for more details of this exciting trip. Dan enjoyed the trip as well, since the girls all entertained themselves almost constantly, he had lots of good adult time with other parents along for the trip.
July also heralded KP's pre-Olympic and Olympic trip to Italy and London with the Australian Women's Water Polo Team and Rowing Team. The Australian Institute of Sport has built their own European Training Center in the northern Italian town of Varese. Both teams conveniently (for KP) staged their pre-Olympic training camps there, so she was able to spend time with both teams at the same time. It was busy, but in a beautiful setting complete with nightly runs to yonder gelato shop, not much to complain about! :) The picture below is from a cable car going up the side of the mountain overlooking the town of Porto Ceresio.
After two weeks in Italy, we headed to London. The Australian Olympic Committee issued standard gear for all to wear upon their arrival to London, and I must say that it was pretty awe inspiring to arrive as part of the Australian Rowing Team, who number over 50 in total.
KP spent the first week of the Olympics with the Rowing Team, housed in a satellite village about 30 miles from London, since their venue was the Eton rowing course. Since their competition commenced the day after Opening Ceremonies, the rowing team elected not to travel to London for the Big Show, but staged our own mini-Opening Ceremony in our own digs. Here is KP dressed to the nines in the team's official opening ceremony gear. With her was the other American on the team, the coach of the men's eight.
Once we finished marching around, the team's alternates staged what has become a tradition, creating the team's own opening ceremonies entertainment segment. In this picture, they are enacting what I can only describe as an above water synchronized swimming routine. And let me just say that other countries were really jealous of their ingenuity!!
KP's first Olympics with a non-US team was a bit surreal. Once in the main Olympic Village, she actually knew more people on the US team than on the Australian team! Here, I run into the US Women's Wrestling coach and one of the US athletes, Clarissa Chun, who would go on to win bronze.
The second week of the OIympics was with the women's water polo team, who went on to win bronze after a heart-stopping series of games that added years to my life. Here is the team in the locker room, celebrating their victory before ascending the medal podium. Australians know how to celebrate a win...they had enough booze to also cheerfully share some with the US team who had won the gold medal!
And finally, for those Wallace and Gromit fans out there...one of the cheese selections in the Village cafeteria (look sharp at label on the right).
September. After a short post-Olympic respite, we enjoyed the early spring with the annual Floriade festival in Canberra (if you recall from previous blogs, the annual fest-o-flowers held yearly here) and local wildlife viewing. In the other notable sports news of the year, Mika enjoyed a successful second season with her Majura Football Club team, and was elected "Players' Player" by her teammates at the conclusion of the season.
October brought the annual migration of KP and Mika back to the US. This time, Mika detoured on her own to Colorado to catch up with the Putz family AND act as a ringer foreign player on Grace Putz's soccer team for a tournament in Vail, CO. Here is a picture of Grace and Mika...
Meanwhile, KP was attending a professional conference in Atlanta, GA, then both KP and Mika flew to NJ to join up with the rest of the Peterson-Ward clan for a week of family vacation. We took the train into NYC for a few days with Aunt Laura Larson and Uncle Jack Cage, visiting Times Square (several times for both night and day viewing), the Statue of Liberty, the 9/11 Memorial, and buying literally pounds of US-unique candy to keep Mika in sugared-up heaven for, well, a few weeks at least.
Once back in NJ, we had some great family visiting time with Mika's grandfather, cousins Tucker and Cooper as well as her Aunt Zoe and Uncle Todd. We got in our autumn season "fix" with a visit to the local corn maze which KP had thought would be a bit of hokey country fun, but ended up taking almost an hour of bewildering twists and turns to extricate ourselves from!!
November brought real signs of spring to Canberra, and some beautiful flowers to our yard. We also heralded the long-awaited arrival of chickens to our backyard coop! It is all the rage in Australia to have your own "chooks" as they are called here, along with the nutritional value of locally sourced eggs.
Below, Mika "welcomes" the chickens into the newly refurbished chook house in our backyard.
Within our first few weeks of chook ownership, I was happy to find our first actual egg! All were shocked and stunned. :)
December. The end of the year brought on high summer, KP's long awaited hires to complete her AIS staff team, KP's father's second trip Down Under, and the start of our Family Holiday Vacation (with Zoe, Todd and their family) to Tasmania and Torquay/Great Ocean Road area of south Australia.
Our trip started with a reprise of Dad's first road trip with us, from Canberra to Melbourne to catch the car ferry to Devonport, Tasmania. Not before, however, KP left her purse in a rest stop in Gundagai (home of the aforementioned Dog on a Tuckerbox statue, but alas, I digress). Grandpa and Dan were efficiently installed in the bucolic town of Beechworth (our intended overnight stay) while KP and Mika sped back the 120K to try to reclaim KP's purse, phone, and wallet. The holiday spirit did not disappoint, and the purse was recovered. Whew!! Below, we sit at the (I kid you not) Best Bakery in Australia, the Beechworth Bakery.
After a night in Beechworth, we continued our trek to the ferry, Spirit of Tasmamia, for our overnight voyage to Tassie.
From Devonport, we traversed the length of the state just in time to meet up with the Ward family at the Hobart airport who had jetted in from their arrival point of Melbourne. We then set up housekeeping at our Clifton Beach holiday digs, about 20 minutes outside Hobart. The house had, on one side, a lagoon, and on the other, the ocean--a beautiful location. We did our fair share of touring: Port Arthur (preserved compound that illustrates the convict past of the area), beautiful ocean vistas, surf lessons, sea-kayaking around Coles Bay, browsing the famous Salamanca Markets in Hobart, as well as the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) which had something for everyone...or not, depending on your taste for in-your-face modern art. Wonderful family meals rounded out the end of each day as well as lots of board games and hikes through the local bushland. We procured a Christmas tree and decorated it with seashells, and had a low-key celebration on the day, capped with a family-produced dinner (kids outdid themselves with both fudge and mud pie for dessert!).
Kids on Clifton Beach
Kids in leg irons at Port Arthur
Zoe doing the "pose" at the head of the Remarkable Falls
Kids being appropriately "arty" outside the MONA museum
Dan with one of our guides, Matt, during our sea kayaking adventure
The tree. And Zoe.
Boxing Day had us transitioning back to the Australian mainland, some by sea, some by air. We reconvened in the town of Torquay, the beginning of the 200+km Great Ocean Road. On the day we "did the road" or about 120K which was as much of the curves as we could collectively stomach, we found a stretch full of koalas in the trees--a rarer sight than you might think in Australia. It was our family's first in-the-wild sighting of these cool creatures. In one memorable interlude, we were all treated to the sight of one koala descending from the tree in front of us and bounding into the forest. Amazing.
And what a fitting way to end this missive! Dan thinks it's pretty narcissistic to have included so much, but KP's feeling is that there was a lot of ground to make up on. You be the judge. Happy New Year and we look forward to catching up with you all in the new year!
Cheers, Dan, Kirsten, and Mika
Oh my gosh, KP! What an amazing life and adventures you're having! You have such spirit!!! May 2013 find you all happy and healthy. :)
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