Last weekend…

my friend Anna and her husband came and stayed.  Anna and her hubby are from the UK but I originally met them when Anna did a year abroad studying at my uni in Australia.  We met through church and have been friends ever since (although I’m not very good at keeping in touch!!).

So I decided that it was my job to play tour guide.  Anna is a super organised person and already had the itinerary mapped out so I was more like the tour bus driver and she was the tour guide!  I LOVED being a tourist in my home town.  We went to the local water park that I have scandalously never been to and had an absolute blast!!  I am a little wary of water slides but I think I got over my fear.  The big ride there was the Aqua Loop.

(Pic found here with this article)

You get into a compartment and then there’s a countdown and the floor drops away and you do a massive vertical drop into a loop.  I was terrified waiting for the countdown but the ride itself was so quick that I didn’t even have time to be too scared!  If you don’t get enough momentum, then you don’t make it all the way through the loop.  I was worried that I’d get stuck!!

Then we went to Seaworld (we have one here too!) and Boy Roomie joined us.  I was very excited that we were going because… we were going to go swimming with sealions!!  We started off the day with the sealion show.  This is such a cheesy show but I absolutely adore it.


Then we fed stingrays (which was scary because they were so excited for the food that they seemingly kept trying to flop out of the tank) and we looked at sharks.



Then it was time to swim with the sealions!  We swam with two sealions and one seal.  The water was SO cold.  I couldn’t stop shivering but once I met Wendall, I instantly forgot about being cold.  I gotta admit, I was a little afraid when he got into the water and “stood” up in front of us.  He was just so huge.  330kg or 730lbs for those Americans amongst us, which Wendall technically is being a Californian sealion and all.


Not the greatest picture of me but Wendall looks a babe so I love this picture!!  I’m standing up in the water, so you definitely get an idea of how huge he is!  You’d put your arm around him and he put his flipper around you.  Then once the picture had been taken, he’d use his flipper to push you out of the shot so that the next person could take your place.  Cheeky boy!  We got to play ‘catch’ with him and pet him. 

Then there was an Australian sealion called BJ.  He was super cheeky and adorable.  He seemed about half the size of Wendall but was still a big fella.  We were able to fit a harness to him and I got to tag along beside him while he swam.  It was amazing.  Except for like I said, he was cheeky and decided to do some “dolphin style” diving.  I was so busy enjoying the experience and smiling that I got a mouthful of water.

Then there was a New Zealand seal whose name escapes me.  He was not in the mood to follow instructions and kept darting about in the water, which was breathtaking to watch.  We got out of the water and were able to pet him.  Because he normally lives in a cooler climate, he had fur on him.  I thought he felt like a wet daschund!  He did a few tricks to mimic his natural behaviour in the wild, like washing his face which was completely adorable.

Anna took a ton of photos and hopefully she’ll post them soon so I’ll probably talk about me and sealions again :)  It was such a magical experience.  I am desperate to do it again!!!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies

Taylor had a great post that I read today that jogged my memory about a post that I wanted to do myself. Why did I read her post? It only made me want to do more baking!!

I had amazing beginner's luck this week. I was procrastinating from doing my assignments and so decided to try my hand at baking. I'm normally not very good at cooking chocolate related things but this one came out great. I would repost the recipe on my blog but if you go over to the original poster's site here, you get bonus pictures of the tasty treat- and what they're *actually* supposed to look like!

I've been dying to make this for a while now. I made it a little differently to the recipe. I used a slightly smaller tin which means my brownies were a bit bigger and needed cooking for longer. I didn't use vanilla essence either. But guys- FOR REAL- these are the best brownies I've ever tasted- and I've tasted more than a few in my lifetime. This will be my new go-to recipe for brownies, not that I ever make them, simply because I thought I couldn't bake chocolate stuff. Now I can!! I also don't think I used as much cookie dough as the original recipe calls for. And worst of all, I cheated and brought storemade cookie dough. I thought, I've spent enough money on this- it's cheaper to buy the cookie dough than make it from scratch- and honestly, you can't tell.

We gobbled these down at work. We gobbled these down at home. They are super great. I cut them up into small pieces as really, they're so rich you can't eat a big slice. You can however eat several small pieces though. I have done the experiments. You can trust me.

Oh wow...

Thanks to Sarah, I just worked out how to amuse myself endlessly. I should be doing my assignment that's due in on Monday and that I haven't started yet. But then Sarah posted about her giveaway and gave a great tutorial on how to create moving pictures just like in Harry Potter. Well, which do you think is more fun to do???


This is one of my foster boys, Timmy, playing his favourite game- hiding behind the sofa and jumping out at an unsuspecting passer-by. He loved to play this game ALL. THE. TIME. And now he will be playing it on high rotation :)

Being of the PC variety, I wasn't able to follow her Mac tutorial all the way but thanks to a very quick google search, I managed to piece together how to do this, thanks to the headstart she gave me. I also had to save my .gif on a photosharing site first before I could upload it. For some reason it wouldn't upload normally like how it does on Sarah's tutorial.

And you guys, I know NOTHING about photoshop. I can't even stick people's heads onto other people's bodies. And I managed how to do this. I am properly patting myself on the back. So if I can do it, you can too! Give it a go, post it on your blog, drop Sarah a comment and you might win an awesome prize!! And just go and check out her own beautiful moving picture.