Photos from a family wedding

Two weekends ago (I know, I've been very slack on the update-my-blog front) we went to a family friend's wedding.

Carwyn & Phillipa (Pip) got married at a church in North Rocks (Parramatta) and had their reception at this beautiful restaurant near Rhodes.

It was my first time being invited to a wedding, and it had been a stressful week with uni, so Mum & I decided to treat ourselves to getting our hair and makeup done for the occasion.

It took me a while to decide which dress I was going to wear (even down to the wire in that after I had my hair done, I still hadn't made a decision!) but I eventually chose this red dress I bought for $40 at TJ Maxx in LA while I was in America recently. Does that ruin it, telling you it was only $40? Well, it was $40 American, so that's more like $60 here! Haha. The shoes were only $40 too, I got them at the same place. Turns out the bad economy is good for international travellers!

Anyway, here are some photos. I've had a lot of fun playing around and editing them to make them look pretty.

Photos from America!!!

At long last, here are some photos from The America Trip.

If you kept up with out Coast to Coast Girls blog, hopefully you would have seen some of the photos I uploaded to Twitter so you will have some idea of what we were up to.

Did I mention I had a really great time? I think you can tell from my happy face in the photos...




Our first day was spent exploring Hollywood. We literally got off the plane, got on our coach for the day and drove to the Walk of Fame. We only had an hour to explore, and there was so much to see! It didn't help that we were all a little jet-lagged and groggy from the 14 hour flight!

Here we are waiting for our coach to arrive (it was an hour late, and LA was not the sunny California we had pictured, so we're tired, cold and a little grumpy in this photo!)




My first impressions of Hollywood were that it was actually really dirty, and I couldn't believe this is where they hold the Oscars! There were lots of dodgy looking t-shirt shops, and a few nicer looking shopping centres. We spent a while in Hollywood & Highland Shopping Centre, which was nice, but a bit out of our price range.

We also walked along the street (again, so disgusting!) but there was a lot of construction and so it wasn't very nice or particularly scenic. I was quite disappointed.

Mann's Chinese Theater & the Walk of Fame itself were pretty cool to see though.


Marilyn Monroe's star


Rod Stewart's star

Somehow, the group of girls I was with got so caught up in shopping and taking photos that we missed the Hollywood sign! We did see it as the coach drove further past the street!

The rest of the day was spent driving through LA, on our way to San Diego.

We finally got to San Diego around dinner time. For dinner that night, we went to International House of Pancakes (IHOP) which is pretty iconic in America. This is all I remember eating when I went to America as a kid! So I was pretty excited to eat there again after so long (and they still have the Funny Face pancakes I had when I was younger!)

First dinner in America (at IHOP!)



Dinner was interesting... it was our first introduction to American food. We found out you can't just order 1 pancake, all meals come with a minimum of 4.

Here's Brooke with both her and my meal. Ridiculous!





IHOP was just down the road from our hotel, so after dinner it was a quick trip to the hotel. We found our rooms and settled in for the night. Well, that was after we ran around to the others' rooms going "Which room have you got? Who's in here with you?" It was a little like school camp, really!





The next day we went to Sea World, our first theme park of the trip. It was so cold that day! We really thought we'd get "sunny California" weather.


We spent the day going around the park, looking at the exhibits, seeing shows and going on the few rides that were there.

The group at Sea World

The shows were the best part of Sea World.




We got absolutely drenched at the first one we went to because we had seats in the front row and the whales like to splash!



Some of our group paid extra to get closer to the animals, which is how I got these great close up shots!





The Shamu Rocks show was at night, and had lots of neon lights, music, and fireworks at the end!



That night, we got to have dinner with one of the stars, Quirky!


He swam around in the huge pool while we had a banquet style dinner. Luckily we weren't sitting too close, unlike others, who got splashed when he decided to show off!

The next day we went to Legoland...



Some of the teenagers weren't sure they wanted to go here, but it was actually really cool! They had heaps of rides, and different "lands" that all had different exhibits.


Unfortunately I got sick this day, so my group spent the first few hours looking after me while I sprawled myself out on whatever table or bench was available. Eventually we found a pharmacy at Legoland (who knew?) but it still wasn't very fun for me for the first part of the day.

Legoland... us with the "mini-land" of NYC.

This one speaks for itself...

There were so many things to look at:

President Obama's inauguration


They even got the First Lady's outfit right!



This was life-size!


A little piece of Aus, in Legoland

I had to take a photo of this, it was so cool! It moved to the music!


I'll blog with some more photos later...

It's my birthday soon...

I've been a bit neglectful of this blog lately- between the jetlag and now having the flu, I've been trying to rest! If you know me at all, you will know this is pretty hard for me to do... I don't do the whole "sitting still" thing very well!

But this week, I haven't been to dancing, haven't been to violin, haven't been to PAC and haven't been to uni. I'm just trying to get well, because there's only 2 weeks of this uni semester left and then after a bit of a break, I have exams.
How much does it suck that I have exams scattered throughout the week of my birthday (which is in a month)? My 21st birthday, as a matter of fact. I have my Abnormal Psych exam on the 15th June, my birthday on the 17th, Developmental Psych exam on the 19th (starting at 5.30pm- what the?!!) and then my final exam, Stats, on the 23rd.

It kinda sucks because I'm not the only one with such a sucky exam schedule. Most of my friends have their uni exams at the same time, so I'm postponing any birthday celebrations until the weekend of the 27th June. It's only 10 days later, so I figure it's not too long to wait.

It took me a while to decide what I'm going to do for my birthday this year. I guess I felt a bit of pressure to have a big "party" seeing as it's my 21st, but the thing is... I don't really like partying and drinking and clubbing and all that. I'd much rather just hang out with my friends and do something much more low key.

So, with that in mind, I am celebrating my birthday here: https://www.thetearoom.com.au/
I'm having a tea party! Or a high tea. Whatever you'd like to call it.

The Tea Room is in the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney's CBD, and it's one of Sydney's oldest buildings. I've always loved the QVB (one year at school I did a Design & Technology research project on the architecture!) and so I'm pretty excited to have my birthday there. I'm going to take all my girlfriends, and we'll all get dressed up in our pretty frocks and have a very elegant afternoon tea. Because we're classy like that!

I'm Baaaack!

OK, so I technically got back on Friday, but with jetlag and the time change, I'm pretty sure I was just on autopilot this weekend. I'm not doing too badly with the jetlag, I just wake up really early in the morning here (when it's the middle of the day in NYC) and fall asleep really early at night (when it's in the wee hours in NYC)!

Let me just say it once: New York was A - MAZING!!!
LA was really great, but NYC was fantastic. So want to go back.


Unfortunately, life gets in the way. I get back home and think, I should probably check my uni email etc etc and find that for some reason, I totally missed the fact that I had Part 2 of an assignment due on 1st May (the day that I got back).
How I missed it I have no idea because I'm usually so on top of things like that. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I've been working frantically to get it done by Monday. That's the earliest I'll be able to hand it in, so I'll get 30% deducted off my mark (10% lost per day, and Saturdays and Sundays count). At least it's not a total disaster. (I only realised that after the crying).

Oh yeah, and the manager from hell is back at JW. And this time, she's OUR store manager. Seriously, the woman is evil. She's already made the girls cry. One of them resigned and when she received her resignation letter, Manager said "Woo Hoo!" to her face. Some people have no people skills. Seriously. I'm kinda scared to go back to work. But apparently she's taken care of that for me, because neither I nor the other girl who goes to uni have any shifts for the next whole fortnight! It's like she's trying to punish us for not having as flexible a schedule as she'd like. A few of the girls are already talking about transferring to other stores, and I'm entertaining the thought too, I must admit. I love working at JW and I love the store and the customers but I don't know if it's worth the stress having her as my manager.

Leavin' on a jet plane

This is it! The day I've been counting down til... leaving for America!

We have to be at the airport at 7am this morning... our flight leaves at 10.20am.
I'm just about to go get in my purple people eater outfit uniform.
At least I'll be able to find the rest of the group easily at the airport!

I'm all packed... seriously stuffed suitcase! Trying to leave room for shopping overseas, but... we'll see how that goes.


Anyway, this is my au revoir to all of you... I probably won't be updating this blog much, but head on over to http://coasttocoastgirls.blogspot.com/ where Haylee, Claryse & I will be updating from LA and NY.
I've added my twitter updates to that blog so you don't have to go to and from this blog and that one.

Look out for more posts as we embark on our adventure...

1...

It's official... one day to go!

In a little over 12 hours, I'll be driving in to the airport, meeting up with my other 40 odd purple people eaters and leavin' on a jet plane.

We've been planning for so long it seems surreal to think that this is all going to happen tomorrow. I'm pumped though! I woke up at 6:42am this morning (and I rarely wake up before 7am) and I had adrenaline pumping through my veins like crazy.

I am a little scared about the flight... it's been a while since I've been on such a long flight... but I'll have my good friend Valium to help me with that. Here's hoping I don't pass out in the aisle.


I'm almost finished packing- have I mentioned how much I love packing? Not.
Ugh. I hate having to limit my options. I know I'll have the opportunity to do lots of shopping when I get there, but what if I don't like any of the clothes there? Or what if it's randomly really hot or really cold? This is why I need to take lots of options.

2...

Yeah, I'm procrastinating. I'm still working on those 2 wretched assignments I've been talking about for ... what, a week, now? Yeah. So no progress on the packing.

That's what everyone asks me. "No! I'm not packed yet!"

I've still got oh, a day and a bit. Heaps of time.
Especially cos I'll be home all day tomorrow waiting for the delivery of my new iPhone! (if Blogger had sparkly font, I'd use that right about now.)

Tres excited. (But it better show up! We've had a few delivery issues. I think Dad had words with the phone company. But he always pleads the fifth when I ask him stuff like that. I bet he used his "business voice". That's the secret, I reckon. Sound important. And authoritative.)