keeping up with the kortlevers: spring 2016 updates.

It's finally Spring in Australia! It's so lovely when it starts getting warmer. We've had some beautiful sun-filled days, and then some very rainy ones recently. But we're from Seattle - we can take it!

a beautiful warm day by the river.

Even though we had an amazing time, our trip to the U.S. was actually pretty traumatising for Arden, and it took about an entire month for her to recover and return to any semblance of a routine. The first few weeks back in Melbourne were pretty rough - but I'm happy to report that she's finally back to her happy, inquisitive self. Just in time for some pretty fun milestones - clapping, waving, dancing... and finally crawling, as of a week ago!

It's been two months since we've posted updates (!), so here's what we've been up to recently:

I've been training for a 10k in October and a 5k in November. Last year when I was pregnant I really missed my favourite city races, so I'm happy to be back on the running bandwagon this year! My sister-in-law Saralyn gave us her old B.O.B. jogging stroller, which Arden and I use a few times a week for morning jogs around the neighbourhood.

Arden thinks mommy is sweaty.

The Rio Olympics were fun to watch and follow. It's always kind of refreshing to watch the Olympics from not-America, as it's a different experience (more coverage on Australian-dominated sports, like sailing and pentathlon-ing!). Arden and I even attended a welcome home parade for the Australian Olympic Team. We got to see some medals up close, hear some inspiring speeches from athletes, and we even made a cameo on the news while the people in front of us got interviewed!

Ben took this photo of us on the afternoon news!

Ben celebrated his first Australian Father's Day this month! It's pretty funny that Mother's Day is the same date in the U.S. and Australia, but Father's Day is different. I believe it's because of the plethora of Australian holidays in mid-June, so the country decided to pick a less-celebrated time of the year to devote to Aussie Dads. We celebrated by going out for brunch, and Arden and I gave Ben a few little presents - like this onesie I made.

We recently visited the Jurassic World exhibit at the Melbourne Museum. Saralyn actually recommended it to us from her visit in May, when she took her 6-year old son and then-6-month old Arden. It was a short exhibit, but super cool! The animatronic dinosaurs were very realistic. Arden thankfully slept through the entire thing (I'm pretty sure she slept through it the first time around - I guess she finds dinosaurs to be pretty boring!).

There's an actual street in the city called Arden Street (fun fact: Arden is actually about to become the name of a whole precinct in the near future!) and I wanted to take some nice photographs of the street signs. I plan on framing a few of them to decorate Arden's room, whenever we have a house. We spent a weekend afternoon walking along the street, and then back to our house via the beautiful Capital City Trail.

Last week was the Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as the Mooncake Festival). We dressed Arden in her little Chinese outfit from her Ahma, and took some photos and videos of her playing with mini-mooncakes. How adorable is our little half-Chinese mooncake?

I recently took Arden to the aquarium for the first time, for a playgroup event. She got to see penguins, sting-rays, sharks, fish, seahorses, an enormous saltwater crocodile that glared menacingly at us, and a lot of rambunctious children running around. I think she was pretty impressed.

And finally, this past weekend we took a trip to Silvan, Victoria for "Dutch Weekend" at the Tesselaar Tulip Festival! Ben is half-Dutch, which makes Arden a quarter... and I lived nine of my years in Grand Rapids, Michigan which means I have a lot of respect for tulips, windmills, wooden shoes and very tall people. Which we saw plenty of, as well as awesome sculptures, fun entertainment, great food, and beautiful weather.