Hanging Up The Boots

Tomorrow we leave the Gold Coast and travel back home to Las Vegas. I can't believe how fast it all went. Our family has changed on this trip. All for the good. Australia has been so great for us and I have learned a lot. I have appreciation of The Lolos even more. I feel really lucky to be able to go back to school full time for the next two years with the support of my family. I am sad to leave this easy life but I'm excited for my next journey. I am hanging up my Stomp boots for good. It has been an amazing 15 years.

Nainoa has grown up so much here physically and mentally. He is such a little dude. His memory is unbelievable. He loves doing Stomp around the house. It's so funny how much he notices different things in the show then tries to recreate it. He loves to swim with his swimmers. Nainoa's favorite thing to do is jump in to the pool and fully submerge himself. He loves to sing, dance, play the guitar, drums and whatever instrument he is exposed too. It's amazing how much he has changed. He also has been challenging two year old too. Tantrums, pushing, spitting, snatching toys and no sharing when playing with others his size has also developed while he has been here. That's a whole other post to write about it. He's better with older kids. Sigh...yes the terrible twos are in full effect here.

Wish us luck on our flight. We are flying our of here at 11 am in the morning. So basically Nainoa will be up for the whole flight. Then we land and get to experience Tuesday all over again. Back to reality.

Sydney

We had an opportunity to fly to Sydney to perform at the Helpmann Awards. It was so surreal being in Sydney and to top it off we got to perform at the Sydney Opera House. All day we kept on saying, "P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney Australia." What an amazing city. I can't believe we only have 12 more days here in the Goldcoast. I'll be sad to leave but ready to start my new journey.

Beach! Beach! Beach!

With only 5 more weeks to go we have been trying to take advantage of going living so close to the beach. In 5 weeks time we will be in 110 degree desert weather with no beach around. Nainoa loves being here and has grown so much with all these new experiences. He is talking so much. People can't believe it when I tell them he is just two years old.
Thins he's been saying lately.

Mommy what are you doing?

Mommy come sit with me please.

Daddy got frustrated with the dishes.

Have a good show!!!

Come on let's go!

I want to go to work too! (Usually with tears streaming down as we are leaving for work)

I want to run Mommy.

Things he has been doing lately.

He loves to pretend cook. He likes to put his animals in a bowl and make cake, pancakes or mac n cheese.

He loves to help wash the dishes or help me cook.

He loves to color on everything BUT paper.

He loves loves loves to jump. He especially loves to jump off of things like stairs, buckets, the bed or piles of sand.

Here are some of snap shots of our time at the beach.

Whale Watching

We took Nainoa whale watching a couple of weeks ago. I was a bit nervous to see how he would do. Would he get sick? Will he jump off the boat??? He did great. The boat was huge and we spent a lot of time inside because it was cold and windy. We saw a ton of whales. Nainoa loved coaxing the whales to jump!

Mooloolaba

A couple weeks a go we went to up to Mooloolaba to do a school workshop for our friend's kids. Our old props guy, Will, now lives in Oz with his wife, Michele, and 3 beautiful children, Kierra, Ryder and Jay, in this cute little town on the Gold Coast. We spent two nights and two glorious days hanging out at the beach, eating fish and "cheps", watching the NBA finals, and just hanging out family style. Nainoa just loves the Wilson kids. I love watching him play with them because he is just so happy.

Mooloolaba beach playground.

Nainoa loved their turtle named Chase.

Brekky.

Nainoa loves Jay.

The kids playing pipes.

Beautiful park near their house.

We saw turtles and dolphins!

Bath time with the twinsies.

Brisbane Business

Twice in one week we drove up to Brisbane (Ivan drove not me. He is an excellent driver on the wrong side of the rode). On Tuesday we went to see Yo Gabba Gabba. Nainoa loves Yo Gabba Gabba. He was so excited to go see the show but of course after the hour drive and hour wait he then turns and says to me, "I wanna go home!" HUH?? We are FRONT ROW at Yo Gabba. Nainoa gets up and starts running down the aisle toward the exit. This is not happening right now. After much distraction, hence the Muno doll, the show finally started and he was totally stoked.






Thursday we went to see Walking With Dinosaurs. We started to prep Nainoa on how the dino show might be loud. We practiced putting his hands over his ears so he wouldn't get scared. We looked at the trailer a bunch of times. I would say, "K...what do we do when the dinosaur roars and it's too loud?" He then would cover his ears. I was a little nervous on how Nainoa would react to these huuuge, life size, amazingly real looking dinosaurs. He did awesome. Didn't cry. Wasn't scared at all. He did cover his ears a few times in the beginning but then he just got used to it. When the T-Rex came on stage he yelled, "T-REX!!!!!" at the top of his lungs. If this show is ever near you you must go.

Family that Stomps Together Stays Together

A few weeks ago we had a request to do an family interview to help promote the show. I was really excited to have a all of our pictures in the newspapers. I kept thinking how cool it will be when Nainoa gets older and looks back at his photo in the paper.

On our way to work. Juice in one hand and mini broom in the other.

Here are the photos we took for the article.

Here's our newspaper article!

Burleigh and Kirra Beach

We have been trying to take advantage of living close to so many beautiful beaches here in the Gold Coast. These pictures don't do these beaches justice. Nainoa loves being at the beach and so do we. Boy, I can really get use to this.

Burleigh Beach is a great surf beach with an awesome playground.
We took a bus ride to here so we 9 can watch Daddy surf.

At home 9 will take a long pillow under his arm and pretend he
is carrying a surf board under his arm like his Daddy.

"Where's Daddy and Uncle RJ go?"

We rented a car on our day off and took a drive to
another famous surf spot, Kirra Beach.

There was miles and miles of sand that just called
for Nainoa to run as far as he could.

What a beautiful sight.

I often wonder if Nainoa will remember this amazing time when
we lived here in the Gold Coast. At least I'll have these photos to show him.

Kangaroos and Koalas

Before Tutu left we took the whole family to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. We all wanted to see some koalas and kangaroos since we were in Australia. We had a great day walking around and seeing all the animals not to mention some cool aboriginal dancers. Before we left for Oz Nainoa watched some scene of a Crocodile Dundee movie with Lolo that got him obsessed with the aborigines. He kept saying, "painted on the face here, here, here." He was so excited to see them perform. The dancers were totally awesome and now Nainoa is obsessed with digeridoos.

Don't worry Uncle Dan this isn't a real crocodile.

Soft koalas.

Momma and baby roo too!

Up close and personal with Rudy the Roo.

Nainoa all star strucked standing next to a real aboriginal dancer!

All by ourselves :(

It's official. Ivan and I are all by ourselves for the next 10 weeks. I know how spoiled we are in Vegas. I kneel before my friends who do it without their families. This is the first time we experience how real families do the juggle. I am actually looking forward to the challenge. We have a great babysitter and awesome cast mates who are willing to babysit Nainoa.

We were lucky by having Aunty Gloria here for the first two weeks then Tutu for the following two weeks. They were both such a huge help to us. Thank you so much! We miss you both a lot.

Auntie gLo's photo shoot

Kisses!

Tutu and Nainoa trying to find Daddy surfing in the water.

Naptime!

Tutu's last day :(