Final Aussie Post

Today is Connor's 14th birthday and we had a GREAT Day. We took a large catamaran for an hour ride out to the Great Barrier Reef and a small island off a coral cay. The scenery was just beautiful-- like out of the picture books-- blue sky, beautiful blue and green water and pristine white sand on the beaches.

We spent the day snorkling at the reef. We saw so many brightly colored fish-- parrot fish, butterfly fish, and angel fish-- and those were only the ones we recognized. We also saw giant sea turtles and Giant Clams that were three feet across. We felt like we were swimming in Mark's fish tank-- although Connor adds "with better fish!!". He thinks Uncle Mark needs to get working on that!!

At one point Caitlin, Connor and I were actually swimming with a Giant Sea Turtle for about 15 minutes or so. Sean and Connor saw two huge fish. If we were in the Carribean Sean would have said one of them was a barracuda- not sure what is that large over here.

Shannon did great-- you would never know that she had just fractured her arm a little less than a month ago. I think the turtles were her favorite. We were all sad to leave the reef but had a fun sail back to Port Douglas complete with a live guitarist singing Australian folk songs.

All in all a great birthday for Connor and one I know he will remember. We are heading off to his birthday dinner at Mango Jam-- his favoriite restaraunt we have eaten at this week. I am sure we will crash early after our day of snorkling.

We hope to bring some of our Aussie lingo back with us-- our favorites-- "mate", "no worries" and "no drama." We suspect these may work their way in the Singapore Murray vernacular. Tomorrow our great Australian Adventure comes to an end as we fly back to Singapore. We are thankful for our fabulous three weeks Down Under.

We are sending lots of positive healing thoughts to Nancy who had hip replacement surgery this week. I am going to attempt to continue these e-mail updates once we return to Singapore although on a less frequent(maybe every few weeks) basis.

Thanks to all who have responded to our e-mails over the three weeks. It really helped bring a bit of family to us here in Australia. It made spending the holidays away from you all a little bit easier although we all missed seeing everyone. Signing off from Down Under. Deb, Sean, Caitlin, Connor and Shannon