Warning:
This blog post starts unpleasant but ends happy, so bear with me on this first bit. Or skip down a ways if you don’t want to read the depressing part…

Argue.
Over the past few weeks, I have been feeling like every time I open my mouth, I have to argue with someone. Over stupid things that should not require any energy. At work. With Ty. With Jay. I really do not like to argue. Most of you know that I love watching reality TV for the drama, but I don’t love drama in my own life. And this arguing all of the time was a bit too dramatic for me. Especially when I felt like every argument I was involved in was a losing battle, even though to me the right answer was obvious. Grrr.

For example, Ty refuses to do anything that I ask him to do unless I push and push and push, and them I usually have to get support from Jay before Ty does what I ask. Like brush your teeth. Wash your hands. Go to the bathroom because I know you have to and if you don’t you will pee yourself. And then 5 minutes later I am putting pee filled undies in the wash. Grrrr.

I say all of this knowing full well that Ty had been struggling a bit lately, and he seems to be missing home, even though he doesn’t quite articulate that. He has been looking at old pictures on the iPad a lot, and he will say things like “when we go back to the unites states…” So I do feel awful for him, but in the moments I forget this and frustration triumphs empathy.

Wednesday night we were finalizing our packing and it was becoming quite clear (to me) that our stuff was not going to fit in the previously planned 3 carry on bags. Good lord, of course it won’t. We are the family that had to buy the super big mamma-jamma Cadillac Escalade ESV when Ty was born because we filled it to the top every time we went somewhere. So I suggested that maybe we need to check a bag. Oh, the horror. What a terrible idea. We would then have to wait for our bags. And you know that could take 2 hours. So after failing to convince anyone else that checked was the way to go, and continuing to discuss stuffing more crap into the already full bags, I hit a breaking point. I might have raised my voice and said something about being tired of arguing with everyone about everything, and then I might have gone up to my room and shed a few tears and nearly hyperventilated. Ugh. Poor Riley has now seen Aunt Nicole at her finest. I hate that I made things even a little awkward for him. 😦

Big Dipper.
Jay ended up transferring stuff from the carry-on to the checked bag, which was stuffed full by the time we were finished packing. When we all went to bed, unfortunately Jay and I had a lot to talk about. He was upset with me for making Riley uncomfortable, and I was upset with him for being so stubborn about the damned check bag. Well, after a couple minutes of talking it out, I quickly realized that there was a hell of a lot more going on in my brain than I thought. The dreaded Big Dipper may have had an attack in my emotions. I blurted out all sorts of things that I didn’t even know were bothering me that much. I miss meeting the girls for dinner and drinks. I miss going to the farm for a weekend. I miss sitting by the fire at Kirk and Sherry’s house in Farragut. I miss bonfires with family and friends. All of that was choked out in between massive sobs.

I am not writing this bit to make anyone uncomfortable, so I apologize if I did. I said at the start I would be honest about everything in this experience – the good, the bad, and the ugly. I hope that episode was as ugly as it gets.

After that little therapy session with my husband, who really didn’t say much to pull that out of me other than, “we aren’t done talking”, I felt quite a bit better. He still seems to be taking all of this stuff in stride. Hopefully he will get through this whole experience “dipper-free”. Despite feeling down for the moment, I don’t want to focus on a countdown to when we move back to the US. There are still a lot of things I want to see and do, so I remain optimistic about our time left down under.

Happy.
We woke the next morning at 4:00 to catch our flight to Cairns. It is pronounced “cans” by the locals. Ty was so excited to go on vacation that he came into our room fully dressed and ready to roll. It was time for vacation!!!

Ty has a history of getting motion sickness, so as we were boarding the plane, he swallowed his first pill. After the first 10 minutes or so of flight I could tell he was feeling something, but he curled up on my lap and fell asleep. He made it the whole way without getting sick! Yay!

After we landed, we picked up our checked bag and stroller and headed out to meet our shuttle to the rental car company. So that was kind of annoying…I think Jay knows now that I will pay extra for convenience. What seemed like forever later, we got to our car, and then another forever later Jay and the car guy got both car seats buckled in, and we were off.

The drive from Cairns to Port Douglas was breathtaking. Thankfully Ty fell asleep after asking every minute for the first 20 minutes “how many more minutes?”, otherwise I am certain he would have been puking (to be continued…). We were on a windy road along the coast – Coral Sea on one side, mountains full of rainforests on the other side. A.Maz.Ing.

We made it to our holiday apartment – Mandalay – and got checked in. Beautiful place. 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a giant walk-in closet off the master that fit Lily’s portacot perfectly. We were on the ground floor, with a huge outdoor patio area overlooking the pool and the bush separating us from 4 Mile Beach.

Sand Balls.
Riley and I walked over to the beach for a quick peak. There was a nice short path right out our back patio to the surf. The beach really wasn’t that exciting to me – I guess I am spoiled by the Gold Coast beaches. The mountains in the background were beautiful, though. We were out there at low ride, and we noticed millions of these little sand balls all over, usually surrounding a small hole in the sand. When we got back to the apartment we googled it. Little crabs eat microscopic goodies from in between the grains of sand, then ball up the stuff that had been cleaned and throw it over their shoulder. Would be cool to see them in action!

Port Douglas.
We walked into town (a pretty quick 10 minute walk) and did some window shopping, got the lay of the land. Port Douglas reminded me of a mixture of Key West and Breckenridge. Lots of cute shops, fancy sidewalk restaurants, and a few souvenir shops. We had a yummy dinner then decided to call it a night.

GBR.
Friday morning we woke up and were all excited for our day trip to the Great Barrier Reef. We ate breakfast and walked to the marina to meet our ship – the Quiksilver. The boat was a giant silver catamaran. Super cool. Ty and I both popped our motion sickness pill and we headed out to sea. If you have never been on a cat, it is a funny feeling. It totally rocks back and forth to the waves. I could feel every movement, and I could tell that Ty did too. I kept telling him to stare at the horizon. I don’t think I took my eyes off the horizon for the entire hour long boat ride. Ty eventually fell asleep (thank god) and yay!!! Didn’t puke!!

The Quiksilver has a permanent 2 level dock in the middle of the ocean, just on the edge of the Reef. We tied off and riley, Lily and I ate lunch while Jay and Ty headed off to snorkel. They donned their super sweet wetsuits and were just about to go down the steps to the snorkel platform, when ugh. Ty freaked out. He didn’t want to go in. So, back they came. Ty sat and ate lunch with me and Lily while Jay and Riley went out to snorkel. I didn’t see Riley for the next 2 hours. :). He was in charge of the underwater camera and did a great job at getting some awesome shots. I will have to download and share those when we get home.

I tried everything in my power to talk Ty through his fears, even bribing him with a stuffed Nemo when we get back to shore if he tries to get in the water. When Jay came back, it was my turn to go. Ty wasn’t ready, so I went out by myself. Wow. So I have always thought it would be awesome to go to the Great Barrier Reef, but I never thought that I would ever actually get to go see it. Wow. So amazing. So peaceful. So beautiful. I don’t think I saw any really unusual fish (no sea turtles), but it didn’t matter. It was so cool to be staring into an underwater world, out in the open sea, rarely coming across any other snorkelers. What an amazing opportunity. One that I will remember my entire lifetime.

I came back to the platform and talked to Ty, trying to get him excited about going in. We talked to one of the lifeguards and he somehow convinced Ty to give it a go. We quickly put on his wetsuit, put on the snorkel, and went down the steps to the platform. Ty got his shorts wet and didn’t want to go down another step. The lifeguard told him to just put his goggles on and put his face in right there on the platform. There were tons of fish right there. He stuck his face in the water for 2 seconds and panicked. Ran back up the steps, and started ripping off his wetsuit. So that was the end of that. Ty was at the Great Barrier Reef – one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, and he snorkeled for 2 seconds. This will be a story told for the rest of his life…

Jay went back out, and Ty, Lily and I went down to the underwater observatory, which was pretty cool. There was an anemone not far from the viewing area, and it was full of Nemos, so that was fun to watch. Interesting fact about Nemo fish…the female is the dominant fish in the family. Only one female per anemone. Only one dominant male and heaps of other males around. If the female dies, the dominant male actually turns into a female. No joke. This is what the ships marine biologist told us. Imagine how the movie would have ended if the writers stayed true to nature….crazy.

Jay came back so I could have one more turn out in the water. While I was out to sea, jay took the kids out on a submarine. I can’t believe he did it by himself, and that Ty didn’t puke. They got to see some more cool fish, and hopefully Ty will remember that experience.

On the ride back, we were a bit more chatty with the people that were sharing our table. It was a group of 3 girls and a guy from Hong Kong. They loved Ty. They have him treats, took a million pictures of him, and showed him some fun magic tricks. They kept him thoroughly entertained on the ride home.

We got back to land just before 5:00, conveniently just in time to watch a nearby bar “feed” George the giant groper. The dude brought out a huge tub of dead fish and tried to bait the groper over. The plan was for him to jump up and eat a bunch of fish tied into the end of a rope. Unfortunately a stingray crashed the party and the groper, who we just barely saw swim by, left the huge meal behind. Dang. Would have been cool to see.

We went back to the apartment, quickly showered and changed, and walked back to town to get dinner. We ate at an Italian restaurant, which thankfully was really fast because both kids were pretty much done for the day.

Karunda.
Saturday morning we drove back down to Cairns to catch an old steam train up to the top of the mountain to a town called Karunda. It’s a good thing we left a few minutes early because on the ride back down the coast, Ty’s medicine hadn’t quite kicked in and we had to pull over to puke. Thankfully he had a bag from the airplane and caught it all. Poor Riley nearly gagged himself, so we got out of the car as quickly as possible. He happened to pick a beautiful spot to hurl, so as soon as he found his legs, he wanted to run on the beach. He and I went down the path to the beach and found a bunch of seashells. When I felt like the ocean air had swept away his yuckiness, we got back in the car and rolled on.

We got to the bottom of the gondola shop and were supposed to catch a bus to the train station. The problem was that there were a bunch of buses, and none of them seemed to be ours, and there was nobody other than the clueless bus drivers around to help. Oh, the things I would do to make that so much better if I were in charge… So we finally got on a bus and basically had to sprint to the bathroom and back to catch the train. But we made it!!! The commentary the whole way up the mountain was quite depressing, telling us all about how many men died while building the tracks. But the view was amazing. We went right in front of some spectacular waterfalls. Ty and Lily seemed to get bored pretty quickly, but I am glad we did it. Pretty cool way to travel up the mountain.

Kuranda is a neat little mountain town – more like what I was hoping that Mt Tambourine would be like. Lots of little shops, handmade crafts, Australian stuff, and a few restaurants. We ate at a random German restaurant tucked back in a corner. Delicious brats, sauerkraut, and potato salad. Yum.

We wandered around town for a bit and then caught a gondola back down the mountain. Ok. This was seriously cool. The views were spectacular. One of the coolest rides ever.

Ty slept the whole way back to Port Douglas, so no more puking. They dropped me off in town so that I could do some shopping (didn’t buy a single thing) and them we are dinner at yet another fun restaurant.

I am sitting on the patio, sipping a glass of wine, listening to the waves crashing, downloading my brain onto my blog. I am certain that I forgot all sorts of things, but that is the majority of our fantastic escape to northern Queensland. My internet connection is a bit slow, so I will download all of my pictures later.