Gold Coast Pt. II

Dinner at Hard Rock

At the Beach in Surfers Paradise

Entrance to the beach

Driving a Hummer at the arcade

Chilling by the pool after a long morning of swimming

Easter Bunny

Easter Egg

Well, vacation is over and back to work tomorrow. Boo to that. At least it’s another short week though. Having both Monday and Friday as a holiday here in Australia has been pretty nice. Overall the trip was a lot of fun. We didn’t have the weather we were hoping for, but we took full advantage of the time the sun was out. Hopefully the weather in Cairns is nicer or the reef and rainforest trips are going to s-u-c-k. Right now if I spell out words instead of saying them Ethan can’t learn them and use them at an inappropriate time and get me in trouble.

Anyway, yesterday w got up pretty early again… right around 6:00. Early for me, Jim… not that ridiculous time you get up each and every day. And, despite residing at an address not our own… and I guess that’d be two times removed not our own since our real address is 10000+ miles away, the Easter Bunny was able to find our room. Ethan had a quick Easter Egg hunt where he and Kari sneaked around the room finding eggs. It was pretty funny to watch Ethan try and mimic Kari’s movements. Anyway, he found all his eggs and then found his basket that contained a bunch of goodies Grandma Smith had brought over on her trip. So far his favorite toys appear to be the squirt gun and tractor. Trying to explain to him that the squirt gun is an outside toy only is turning out to be quite a treat. Perhaps on our next visit to the Smith farm the gun will have to mistakenly get packed in Ethan’s stuff so he can run around shooting grandma’s stuff. : ) He is currently sleeping with his tractor though… hopefully he doesn’t roll over on it though. Speaking of sleeping(another smooth segue courtesy of Joel), with Ethan being in the same room the last couple nights it has come to my attention he sometimes snores. And its not a cute little snore… he’s got some force behind them. He’s no Ben, but give him a few years.

After the hunt we decided instead of spending the amount equal to some country’s GDP on breakfast that we would instead walk down to McDonald’s to have a much more economical and nutritious meal. Nothing says Easter morning breakfast like a trip to McDonalds after all. I had some Sausage McMuffins, Ethan had 0 bites of his hot cakes and breakfast snob Kari got a crossaint and fancy coffee from a café that was open.

After a lovely morning stroll back to the hotel in the drizzle we went and found the Easter Bunny and had a quick picture with him before putting on our suits and hitting the pool. As we were walking to the room the sun was shining brightly… as we were walking to the pool the sun pulled a Jimmy Hoffa and disappeared on us. And since the sun isn’t buried under several feet of concrete somewhere in the New York area we only had to spend a few chilly minutes in the pool before it reappeared and then stayed out for the most part for the next 90 minutes. We another round of ‘Dunk Daddy’. Ethan really appears to enjoy that and really gets into it. For whatever reason the first time we played I put my forehead against his and we got into a stare off and then he dunks me and yells ‘DUNK!’… that continued and it was pretty funny how serious he got. Every time Kari would laugh he’d shoot her a look like this isn’t a time to mess around mom. Eventually we made our way to the mini water park and rode the slide a couple times before the bucket from above got us and at that point Ethan had had enough. He doesn’t like to get splashed… I’m not sure he understands where its coming from yet and it kind of scares him. After a few minutes in the hot tub to warm up we headed back to the room for nap time.

After naps we decided to head into town to see what it had to offer. We had to shower after the pool and Ethan took his first shower with me. At first he wasn’t all that excited about it but after a while he got used to the water coming from above and had a great time. After getting ready we hopped on the bus and off we went. The area was packed with tourists and shops and cars and it was all pretty overwhelming after spending 4 pretty quiet days at our somewhat secluded resort. We found ourselves a sweet magnet to take home and got Ethan a water bottle with his name on it. At one point I thought we were going up an escalator to more shops and instead we walked into the most chaotic space I’ve ever been in my life. It was by far the largest arcade I had ever seen and I couldn’t believe how elaborate every single game was. Almost all of them had seats you sat in with motion devices involved. Ethan had a great time running from machine to machine checking everything out.

After that it was time for dinner and since we couldn’t make it to Hooters as was the original plan we settled on the Hard Rock Café. Thankfully we still found some Buffalo Wings there and had a pretty enjoyable meal. Ethan was a little ornery but overall pretty well behaved. At one point he was shoveling ketchup into his mouth as fast as he could. We tried to get some video of it so you can experience a meal with Ethan, but it didn’t work out. We still got some footage that I’ll try and upload at a later date.

After dinner we headed back, packed and just relaxed the rest of the night. We got up this morning, had the ‘good breakfast’ at the hotel before hopping on a bus back to the airport. Ethan and I spent a lot of time looking out the windows watching the planes take off and land. He really enjoyed that. The flight back was pretty uneventful. Ethan was a little ornery at the end but he was an angel compared to the kid who cried every 2 minutes. Its called Benadryl people… if your kid is that much of a pain in the arse drug him so the rest of us can fly in peace. After a relatively quick train ride home we were back in the apartment and ready for naps. Though I have to say Kari and I ran the most efficient unpacking session I’ve ever been involved in. Everything was unpacked and laundry was started within 15 minutes of being home.

I’ve got a couple of videos to share. Using my uber-awesome(as the kids say) video editing skills I took a bunch of clips for SeaWorld and combined them into one. So, that’s the first video and the second is Ethan on the slide and then sprinting away. Enjoy!