New Years Eve 2011, Philadelphia

New Year's Eve, 2010 (or is it 2011?) was spent in church. Oh, but that's just where we started. My awesome aunt and new uncle thoughtfully planned and paid for a huge family party for NYE. The best part was watching them get MARRIED first! I love this church - it's the same one I was baptized in nearly 30 years ago.

It's a good thing we all prayed first since it got a bit rowdy. There may have been some overly animated singing along to Sweet Caroline and someone could've lost a tooth with all the fist pumping during the Journey number (I couldn't even hear the real singer during the chorus) but all their friends and us family had a great time ringing in 2011 with the newly married couple.

Back to Blogging - Tasmania!

No, we didn't go back. Oprah went though. She must've read my posts last fall and been totally jealous.

I am going to try to blog again though. Slowly. So here are some photos from Tasmania. We wanted to go wine tasting in Tassie but we thought 9am was a little early to start (amateurs, I'm sure some of you are calling us). Instead we headed to a nature preserve near the wine country outside of Hobart. We thought we'd see some cute animals but were EXCITED to see a sign at entry about kangaroo feeding at 11am. They gave us some food and set us loose.

We saw a bunch of other animals native to Australia first, including the above Tasmanian Devils. They were definitely devilish-looking and fighting over a twig.

I finally spotted a kangaroo freely hopping around and was so excited that I ran right up, spending a lot of time petting it and thinking this was my one big chance. Little did I know that we would turn a corner and walk right into a GIGANTIC kangaroo pen. HUGE. There were probably 60-80 kangaroos just hanging around, snoozing, playing, etc and a few other people who were feeding them the snacks from right inside the cage. We walked in and while Mark didn't want to feed them (he was convinced at least one would be rabid. He was wrong.), I went for it. I fed and pet the tall aggressive ones and the little joeys. It was such a fun detour and definitely worth postponing the wine.

Eventually, we got hungry and were ready for some wine and lunch. After quiches in a tiny Tasmanian town's cafe, we hit our first vineyard. Writing this three months later, I can't remember any of the names (and am too lazy to get up and check the bottle labels) but they were all pretty good. The whites were especially tasty and we brought back some Pinot Gris and Champagne that has never been exported out of Tasmania. Very yummy.