It's near the end of our April school holidays - two weeks plus 2 days off between Term 1 and Term 2. I'm trying to get caught up with news and photos on the website.

Our excitement this holiday was from the week-long visit by my cousin Karen from Michigan. Karen was able to stop in Melbourne and Cairns (Great Barrier Reef) before arriving in Perth. Whilst here the boys and I were free to show her around the Perth region (Lanette had to work a couple of the days).

The first days (Easter weekend) were filled largely by Karl's baseball tournament in a northern suburb of Perth (see Easter photos). But after that, we got into tour guide mode. On Monday we headed for the hills about 45 minutes east of us to see the friendly wild kangaroos at Serpentine Falls (see photos). We then headed north to Araluen Botanical Park which we'd never been to but have now vowed we need to get there in the spring. Even in autumn the flowers were incredible and the landscape simply beautiful (see photos). Then we rounded out the day in the hills with a drive to Mundaring Weir. "Weirs" are what they call "dams" here and this one was famous as it created a reservoir when it was built a century ago that allowed for the pumping of water 660 km inland to the goldfields and kicked off a gold digging boom.

On Lanette's Wednesday day off, we went to the nearby Marapana Wildlife Park because Karen wanted to hold a koala (see photos). Her wish came true and it was a real treat for all of us to watch. Besides the koalas, we enjoyed up close experiences with kangaroos, wombats, emus, ostriches, crocodiles, peacocks, all sorts of birds, dingoes, bandicoots, alpacas, camels, and I can't remember the rest. We actually fed the kangaroos, wombats, emus, ostriches, alpacas and birds. Everyone of us thought the wildlife park was terrific. We finished the day with a seafood dinner on the boardwalk in Mandurah (see photos).

Finally on Friday, we snuck in a quick trip down to the Margaret River region in the southwest corner of WA. It's 3-4 hours each way so it's a stretch to see and do everything in one day... but we did! We just couldn't deny Karen a chance to experience this region that travel guide publisher Lonely Planet recently listed in its top 10 regions of the world.

We hit most of our favourite spots including the sheep shearing demonstration where this time Karl and Dane were selected to help the shearer. We got our handfuls of free samples from the Margaret River Chocolate Factory. We were mesmerised again by the waves at Canal Rocks whilst the boys frolicked up and down the rock piles. We saw surfers and kit surfers at a couple of the famous surf beaches. And we showed Karen one of our favourite views of the karri trees in the Boranup Forest (see photos).

It was such a great week with Karen, re-connecting with a cousin and doing the tourist bits we don't always make time for.

After Karen's visit, we don't know of anyone else's plans to come on down and take advantage of our free room and board. Start making your plans if you haven't as we only have about 6 more school holidays left down here.

It's taken nearly two years to get around to this, but we finally had our chance to have a go at surfing in the Indian Ocean on the weekend before Easter.

See photos in our photo galleries here (login required).

My Shed Men mates have a tradition of an annual surfing competition but the weather didn't cooperate last year.

I'd better pause and explain "Shed Men"... Every fortnight about 8-10 blokes from church get together in someone's backyard or shed for fellowship, BBQ and an occasional Bible study.  These guys have been great mates for me, and I truly look forward to our chats about the bush, growing up in Australia, old cars, etc and the occasional taste of kangaroo on the barbie.

Back to the surfing story... The weather wasn't terrific this year, but good enough.  We had waves that were from 1 to 1.5 metres (5 feet) which was just fine for us beginners.  We borrowed about a dozen boards from our stock at the college.  There were maybe 8 of us old guys and then some of the Shed Men kids also came out either to watch or to have a go themselves.  (Lanette was the only female on the beach - someone had to be there to take photos!).  One of the veterans gave us a quick 1-minute demonstration on the beach and then we headed out.

I had no chance of getting up on the board.  Lanette was laughing from the start with my struggles to balance whilst just paddling out on the board.  It was still fun to get rolled in the waves and find out how long I can hold my breath, and as I was reaching exhaustion it was a thrill to ride the waves in without making an effort to get up.  I may have been sucking it in a bit to fit into my wetsuit, but at least I didn't have the gray hair of several others of us out there struggling to feel young again.

Peter was the natural.  It didn't take too long and he was getting up on his feet a few times.  No lengthy rides, but definitely some success.  Click on the photo at left to see the action sequence that starts with me and Peter and shows Peter getting up on the board.

Dane did what he could closer to the shore to show his abilities on the body board, but will need to get better at swimming before we let him out in the big surf.

It may be autumn Down Under here, but when it comes to sports, we're thinking spring and baseball and the Minnesota Twins.  The Twins opened their new stadium, Target Field, this week in Minneapolis with rave reviews both for the team's expectations and the stadium's features.

Peter and I woke early at 4:00am this past Tuesday to watch the first Twins game in their new outdoor stadium.  The game was shown live on ESPN International which we get via a satellite service similar to Dish Network in the States (much more expensive than Dish, and not nearly as good!).  We switched back and forth between watching the ESPN telecast and watching the Twins' own Fox Sports North telecast which we get online either live or archived via MLB.com.  Both commentating crews did well at telling us all about the new stadium and keeping up with the game itself.

Dane has long been saying that one of the first things he wants to do when we get back to the US is to go to Target Field to watch the Twins.  We're quite envious of those who live close enough to get there in the next two seasons before we return.

And, of course, it was great to see that the Twins opened Target Field with an exciting win over Boston.  Kubel hit the first home run in the park and Mauer did his usual contribution of 3 hits and solid catching.

Photo of the first pitch at Target Field 12 April 2010 by ajc3

Once again, Rockingham makes world news headlines... If you were watching Fox News back in the States on Thursday, America's Newsroom showed a video from Australia of a wild car chase.  A very scary aboriginal man car-jacked 3 cars whilst on a chase between Perth, Fremantle and Rockingham.  Rockingham is about 45 km from Perth and Fremantle.  When you watch the video from the police helicopter linked below, and see the man run from one car and jump into another (clip from video at right), that happened at a major intersection near our main shopping centre in Rockingham. At that time, Lanette and Dane were at a school swimming carnival just a couple of kilometres away (not at the swimming pool next to our school).

To top the story, the police caught the man eventually after he crashed the third car.  They took him to hospital in Perth, and then he managed to escape causing a huge manhunt with several suburbs going into lockdown mode until they found him.

See the video here.

Read the news story here.