It's Hot in the Red Centre

That's how they spell 'center' of here ya'll --> centre.

Anywho, best friend Dougie Phresh Albright came and visited us. Unfortunately, he too had flight problems and got stranded in Sydney because Qantas is dumb. He finally arrived and the Frobii parents, me, Hyatt and Doug all traveled to Dookie for a tour of the farms and dinner. I have no pictures of that, sorry.

Hyatt's parents departed and Hyatt, Dougie Phresh and I flew to Alice Springs for the roadtrip of a lifetime - p.s. we almost missed our flight, barely got our bags checked with about 1 minute to spare.

Unfortunately, Doug's luggage didn't make it but Qantas (who suck) gave him this nice pack of pajamas.

Arrival at the Alice Springs airport - happy and not yet really hot.

We HAD to play golf on another continent - it was awesome. Doug helped me with my long game

Our caddy who finally learned how to NOT drive on the greens.

After a short time in Alice we headed towards King's Canyon - via this road. Five hours of no pavement with Hyatt driving. I'll hold my tongue.

Wild horses aka brumbys were everywhere

Some of the beautiful secenery at King's Canyon

The initial climb at King's Canyon - very steep. Doug and I wanted to die.

Looking out over the vast Red Centre

He tried to pick me up for this picture - both Doug and I yelled 'No! What are you doing?!'

A little entertainment and gambling - nothing like bidding with

tea and sugar packets (Doug won btw).

Gorgeous sunset

First night at Alice Spring resort - the chefs.

K-S-U alumni in front of Ayers Rock/Uluru

It's a big freakin' rock in the middle of nowhere, literally.

Very dark red rock during sunset with some loser guy in my shot.

After an amazing time at Uluru (we climbed it, yea!) we headed to Coober Pedy where there is an abundance of opal mines and underground hotels but there is a shortage of water.

The entrance to our hotel - underground.

Hallway in underground hotel

Our cozy little room - we stayed pretty cool but the air got kind of stale since there's no windows.

Left Coober Pedy and it's 40 degree heat (that's 110 F) and went to the Barossa Valley, where we did some damage at Penfold's Winery. I discovered I really, really like dessert wine.

So that was our trip in a nutshell - it was RIDICULOUSLY hot the entire trip although it did rain occasionally. I took a ton of pictures of Uluru and King's Canyon so if you want to see them, look me up on thefacebook. Also, we visited a farm the last few days but Hyatt is going to blog about that (get excited)!

Until Hyatt blogs,

~ Buzzard ~

First Wedded Thanksgiving

Yesterday was our first Thanksgiving as a married couple - I guess you could say it was eventful, while definitely memorable.

We spent this entire week helping with a research project at Dookie that dealt with nutrition and physiology in pigs. This is what we did on Thanksgiving:

We took blood samples from 32 pigs every 5 minutes for 6 hours. It was mind-numbing at times but most of our Australian friends were there so that was fun.

For Thankgiving dinner, there was no turkey, stuffing or mashed potatoes. However, after a few sad looks and a pouty lip, I got Hyatt to drive to town and get me some charchoal chicken, chips and gravy. Roasted poultry with gravy; can't go wrong. Dinner with friends and Hyatt was a pretty nice Thanksgiving after all.

You're probably wondering what I"m thankful for (a lot) but I wrote it on another blog so please read here if you're interested in all the blessings I'm thankful for this year.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. To my family: I can't wait to see you all in less than three weeks for the Ohio gang and five weeks for the Kansas gang. Love you all!

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~

Four out of five ain't bad

Briefly have internet today, for about 10 minutes, so I wanted to update you on the going-ons of FroBuzz.

During primary and middle school, I was taught that there were 4 oceans; Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic and Indian, and until the year 2000 that was the norm. Easy peasy.

Science decided to change things up a bit and add a whole ‘nother ocean – I don’t really know if ‘adding’ is the correct term but whatevs. So in 2000ish, the water south of Tasmania that stretches down to surround Antarctica was declared the Southern Ocean. It’s cold. It’s really big. I got to ride a ship through it this past weekend while looking for seals, whales and dolphins.

That's us on the boat with the Southern Ocean in the background.

2500 miles straight south and you'll run into Antarctica

So I can officially check off 4/5 oceans that I’ve swam (Atl., Pac.), stood (Ind.) or boated (Sou.) in. Success.

More posts about Tassie to come later – Hyatt’s parents and Hyatt and I had an amazing time exploring the beauty of Tasmania.

Currently in the outback around Alice Springs – if you look up ‘middle of nowhere’ in the dictionary it will say Alice Springs/Uluru/Coober Pedy. For realz.

Until I have internet access again, hopefully in the next 9 days,

~ Buzzard ~

Victory is Mine!

Not sure if you're aware of this but Hyatt and I are pretty big Scrabble fanatics. You also probably know that Hyatt generally dominates this competition because he is annoyingly smart.
HOWEVER, about once or twice every year I manage to scrape up a win. This year a win occurred on October 2 and I won by 39 points.

Hyatt was pouty. Go figure.

Here he is brooding over his next move after I rocked his world with my first two plays.

And a picture of the board with my BA plays highlighted:

and here is ecstatic me :)

Oh and here is the link to the Family Guy inspired title of this post.

Until tomorrow,
~ Brandi ~

Marriage Revelation #13

I'm certain I've had more than 13 revelations since we've been married, but 13 is my favorite number so it seemed fitting.

This is not only a revelation about our marriage, but about myself which affects our marriage. It runs full circle - get it?

I was clicking away on the wonderful world of Pinterest (if you don't know what Pinterest is, I'll invite you. No one should be deprived of pinning) and saw this list:

I read it and suddenly realized aloud - "I'm an introvert." Holy crap. It took me 25 years to figure this out about MYSELF. So many things that Hyatt and I get into teensy arguments about stem from these personality characteristics.

I've always known Hyatt was an extrovert but I kind of thought I was too because I'm very outgoing and loud around my friends and family but once I saw all of those pieces of information together in one list - it made it very clear to me why Hyatt and I get frustrated with each other. Hyatt is the first extrovert I've ever been in a relationship with (and definitely the only one I've married) so it's safe to say we have some personality clashes.

I promptly emailed him this list and told him that A) this would explain so much for him B) understanding and committing these traits to memory would help us grow as a couple and C) if he avoided doing these things, we'd argue less and be happy more.

I guess that goes to show that we never stop learning about ourselves or each other. Many thanks to Pinterest for helping me discover my inner introvert!

Until tomorrow,

~ Buzzard ~

p.s. just before I posted this, Hyatt told me he 'was glad I'm coming out." Cripes.

I am the Queen

of packing.

Self-proclaimed.

But seriously, I would challenge anyone to beat me in packing two tons of stuff into two large suitcases. I'll win. **Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for how much the suitcases weigh when I'm through. They'll probably be heavy. You've been warned.**

I showed off my packing skills to my mama when I was preparing to come back to Australia a few weeks ago.

Everything in the above six pictures had to fit into one large suitcase, one medium suitcase, one small roller carry-on and a computer bag/personal item.

I succeeded in getting almost everything in - and I'll explain a few quick tips on how to do so.

Roll your clothes - this saves bookoo room. You can fit 5 pair of pants in to half the space if they're rolled. Added bonus: you can better see what you've packed if it's folded and not stacked.

Fill shoes/boots with items. I usually use socks but since I was bringing back goodies for my hubsy I decided to put spice jars in my tennies...

and Jell-O and gravy mix in my boots.

This is my favorite recent purchase. A pretty turquoise bag from Ripcurl that Hyatt bought me while we were in Cairns. It's got so many books, movies, papers and mags in it, among various technological devices, that it weighed about 25 pounds.

I put pliable materials between layers of clothing. This suitcase held all my jeans, research papers, all of the pictured food and some more shoes and boots.

Almost of the stuff made its way back to Australia. I had to leave some of the things from the first picture (Victoria's Secret body spray, extra bottle of hairspray, bottle of Dolce & Gabbana light blue) and some of the food from the third picture behind (Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce) because they were sending me way over the weight limit.

Hyatt was thrilled to get about 10 lbs of candy, a ton of Crystal Light, his favorite kind of Hamburger Helper (stroganoff) and mac n' cheese. I think he may have been happier to see all his goodies than he was to see me!

Until next time,

~ FroBuzz ~

Great Barrier Reef Trip #2

Most people don't get to see the Great Barrier Reef in their lifetime and this can be attributed to several things:
1 - Australia is way the hell far away from any other landmass except Antartica and Indonesia. There's a lot of water between us and the states, check it.

2. Most people aren't too keen on swimming with the fishes - ya know, da big ones.  We didn't see any sharks while snorkeling but we did see a few smaller ones while scuba diving. The big ones gotta eat something. Small sharks = dinner for big sharks.

3. It's bloody expensive to get across all that water.

4. They don't have the travel bug and are content to stay on their home continent - which is totally fine. There are many times that I wish I was on my home continent.

5. Did I mention it's a helluva long way over here?!

So, very blessed to have taken back to back trips to the GBR. This time it was with Lenny, Candace and Jenny.  We didn't roadtrip this time but rather flew there and back so that we had more time in paradise.

Our room deluxe huge suite was flippin awesome - look.

I"m not kidding when I say paradise. Look at all the cool stuff we did while we were up there:

Went to the oldest rainforest on the planet - The Daintree Rainforest. We took a monorail to get there (I'm petrified of suspended heights) and a somewhat antique railway to get down.

Jenny and I were very excited to hold koalas - it was the highlight of our day!

We also went on a snorkeling/scuba trip. This was our ship

Catching some rays

Lots and lots of fish.

Perhaps one of the most spectacular sites during their visit were the things we saw on the Great Ocean Road.  The London Bride, 12 Apostles (there are only really 6 or 7), koalas in trees, a gorgeous lighthouse and sunset over the ocean.

All in all - wonderful trip. So glad we got to see our friend if only for a short time.

Another post tomorrow - promise!

Until next time,

~ Buzzard ~