Catching Up

It's been awhile since I've updated our blog (minus the Australia trip) and there's good reason for that --- not much has been going on. Nonetheless, here's the latest news from around here... however mundane.

Kolby had to start back to work this year a week before my classes started so I was able to go on a fun mini-vacation with three of my best friends. My friend Laura is now at grad school in Colorado so Katie, Jessica and myself drove back with her and then skied for a couple days before having to get back home. We've been friends since 8th grade and there's nothing in the world like hanging out with those girls.

Jess, Laura, Me, Katie

Last Tuesday was my last first day of school and it was bittersweet. I've been in school for 19 years straight so I'll be happy to FINALLY be done, but at the same time --- I love school and I'm good at it, and the thought of entering the real world and (hopefully) starting a real job is scary because I don't know if I'll love it OR be good at it. I guess I've got to grow up sometime.

Kolby is still loving teaching and is very often commended for being great at it. The kids (or adolescents, I guess) really look up to him and it makes them so much more interested in what he has to say. His latest funny story from school was that a student came up to his desk and upon seeing the framed picture of us, commented "woah Mr. Kerr, your wife's really young... she's like 22!", implying that he had robbed the cradle. Kolby replied to her, "how do you know that I'm not 22?" and received a very puzzled look. Apparently he has them fooled into thinking he's much older than he really is.

Today I FINALLY started the write-up for my thesis. Even though I have been working steadily on my research for over a year now, I had yet to put pen to paper on the actual thing. My oral defense will be coming up in early March and it is quite likely that I will implode from the stress of trying to write a graduate thesis paper in a matter of weeks. My research is all empirical (i.e. I am doing completely new research by running statistical analyses on a dataset from Bangladesh) and it took me much longer than expected to get everything ready and output some meaningful results. The other day I received a copy of a previous student's paper and just about died when I saw that it was sixty pages long. OH. MY. WORD. In lighter thesis news, I had to write an acknowledgements page --- thanking my advisor for his guidance, thanking the econ dept for financing part of my trip to Ghana, etc. --- and I seriously debated including a shout out to Maya. OK, maybe not seriously, but I'm home alone all day long working on my research and I don't know what I would do if Maya wasn't here keeping me company. I mean, who wouldn't be grateful for this little cheerleader:

I'll end this less-than-riveting post with a quote:
Kolby, to his parents on the phone last night: "you know that sweater that you got Emily for Christmas... the blue one... well she tried it on and it was too small around her arms... do you have the receipt?"
Thanks, honey. Heaven forbid you had just said it didn't fit.

Home Alone

There is an unfamiliar voice emanating from our blog this week as I appear to be the only one left around here to do the writing. Maya is willing, but the opposable thumb dilemma persists.

Truth be told, Emily has left me. Personally I thought I could make things last at least a couple of years, but she's packed a bag and headed north. She claims that she is only going skiing in Colorado for a couple days with some of her friends, but time will tell.

After two of my five days alone, I'd say I am faring admirably. To give you a proper perspective on my current state, I will provide a few comparable movie images:

Cast Away--think scraggly beard, abandoned clothing, spear fishing, and talking to inanimate sporting equipment.

Home Alone--at first frightened and hesitant, then dancing wildly to Frank Sinatra tunes before being forced to defend the family home from bad guys using comical booby traps.

The Great Escape--think mainly of 'the cooler': a defeated, dashing Steve McQueen endlessly thumping his baseball against the wall as if to say, 'I will not let this break me.'

As you might have guessed, I've already long since passed my breaking point, else you would never have seen this post.

Graciously, Emily left me a frozen lasagna and some gift cards to various places around town, which I have bartered with the natives for beads, tobacco leaves, and maize. Unfortunately, she selfishly did not hand pack lunches for me to take to school as she usually does. In my rush today, I made it out the door with a cup of applesauce and a snack pack of pudding.

Have a great week everyone. If you don't hear from me in a while, you can assume I have been gruesomely dispatched by Emily upon her return to our now markedly untidy abode.

Kolby

Webb Family Vacation -- Australia

Our family had the most A-M-A-Z-I-N-G time on our trip to Australia. We saw wild koalas and kangaroos, went scuba-diving on the Great Barrier Reef, spent Christmas at the beach, learned how to surf on Bondi Beach, went sailing on the Sydney harbor, celebrated New Years watching the fireworks over the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge, and kicked 2009 off to a wild start by skydiving over the outback. Best of all, we spent two weeks enjoying uninterrupted time as a family!

The Webb Family

Front: Me, Mom, Remy (sister-in-law)

Back: Kolby, Russell (younger brother), Dad, Brad (older brother)

Kangaroo Island

Our trip started with a visit to Kangaroo Island, a very small island off the southern coast of Australia known for its diverse wildlife and natural beauty.

Admiral's Arch, an ancient limestone formation

Cape du Coudic, home to an active colony of New Zealand fur seal

Remarkable Rocks, natural granite formations

Once again our family's luck with finding wildlife struck again (we were very, very lucky to see all of the "big five" on our trip to Africa) and we found a mama koala and her little baby up in a eucalyptus tree. We watched them for awhile and the mama eventually decided to change trees--- take a look at the progression below--- it was awesome to watch and was probably the cutest thing I have ever seen!

A wallabie A koala bottom A male koala climbing (and then sitting in) a tree. Doesn't his fur look strange up close? A kangaroo and her (big) baby... they were very intent on keeping an eye on us.
Kolby and I getting a closer look at some wild kangaroos we happened upon.

A little joey hopping over to his mom to nurseSome pelicans

Seal Bay, home to the bulls, cows, and pups of the Australian sea-lion colony

Russell getting ready to sandboard at Little Sahara, a bizarrely huge sand dune in the middle of nowhere on the island. My mom is standing at the bottom (on the far right of the photo), just to give you some perspective. It was kind of like snowboarding (or sledding if you went down sitting on the board like I did) except you end up with sand in your ears and a sunburn. Still quite fun, though!

We went to a wildlife park (basically a really casual zoo) and Kolby fulfilled his childhood dream of hugging a koala. It was a BIG DAY for him. There were multiple times when I realized he was missing and eventually found him back in the koala habitat. One time I walked up and heard him whispering to the koala "shhh... shhh....shhh" as he stroked it back to sleep. It was a highlight of the trip for sure-- those koalas are just as cuddly and cute as they look!

We also got to pet and feed a lot of kangaroos, which was really neat. They weren't big like the wild ones we had seen, but they were fun to hang out with.
We also saw a kangaroo with her albino baby. At one point they were both standing and the baby got scared, hopped head first into the mama's pouch, and then had to wiggle its way inside. It was probably the grossest thing I'd ever seen. It was like watching a kangaroo give birth... backwards.
The whole family, overlooking the North Coast beaches.

Kolby and I at "Double Beach", a beach where one cove was nothing but big rocks and the other was nothing but white sand.

As we were driving back to the airport, Kolby spotted this guy up in a tree on the side of the road. He took this picture out of the window after we had pulled over. Unbelievably cute!

Great Barrier Reef

Next we headed to Palm Cove, a quaint little beach town on the northeast coast of Australia near the Great Barrier Reef. We spent five days there, including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We went scuba-diving one day and the rest we spent just relaxing by the pool, walking along the beach, enjoying the boardwalk of shops and restaurants, and just hanging out together.

The family on Christmas Day

About to board the catamaran that took us out to the Great Barrier Reef for a full day of scuba-diving (we went on three dives, each at different locations along the reef). Do you think this family supports Two-Five? We're all seven sporting a Two-Five shirt (Brad's awesome company - www.25cloth.com - buy a shirt.. change a life!).

Ready to hit the water

Kolby and I at a depth of about 60 feet Mom petting a HUGE grouper that followed us around on our entire second dive (Kolby is in the background)

The fish and coral were absolutly beautiful! I didn't spend too much time trying to take pictures because I wanted to just enjoy the dives and I knew the pictures wouldn't do the scenery justice... which they don't... but here are the ones I took:

We saw three white-tip reef sharks (Kolby and Brad saw a fourth) that were about about 5' long! Something about scuba-diving makes you feel invincible so none of us were scared to see them, they were surprisingly cool to come across. The first picture below is one that I took (even though it was just a few meters away and we could see it perfectly clear, my camera's flash couldn't reach it so the picture is bad), and the second is just one off the Internet to show you what they actually looked like.

A giant clam --- we saw some that were almost 4' wide!

Just hanging out at the Great Barrier Reef

Here is a video of the whole family underwater--- can you tell who is who?

We're really glad that we were all able able to get scuba-certified this past summer and everyone did even better in the ocean than in our practice dives at the pool and lake (i.e. Mom didn't look like a wounded turtle trying to swim and Russell didn't accidentally let too much air into his BCD and dangerously rocket to the surface). We had a ton of fun together underwater and Kolby commented on how remarkably strange it was to have that many Webbs in one place and hear nothing but silence!