Sydney for the Weekend

Well, it was awesome, cool, fantastic in the words of Clarissa. And it was... We went to Manly Beach and discovered we'd left our "bathers" (Australian for bathing suits) at the hotel and since it was 35 C, we bought new. Miranda found a cute bikini, but we had to bathe her in sunscreen before she put it on to make sure we didn't miss any spots. Our swim time ended just as the bluebottle jellyfish started washing onto shore, and we decided to head back for lunch and the hotel. We had a nice dinner watching the sunset over the city and harbour. The next day we saw a bit of Chinatown and went to the opera, where all the children were quite well behaved (Doug only fell asleep once!). Our last day was at the zoo, where we had a wonderful day, although a tiger did try to spray me (thank goddness there was glass between me and him and not just a fence!). We came back to Melbourne having had a wonderful but exhausting trip. Now time to get ready for school in a couple of weeks!

Happy New Year!

Well, we had a quiet New Year celebration, we walked down to Federation Square and watched the fireworks (I even got a few decent photos), and watched the dream seeds come down (messages children wrote that were lighted up and released from balloons. Clarissa's friend Elyse wrote one, so we had to catch as many as possible to look for them). The most dream seeds were caught by the roof of Flinder's Street station, to be released the next week when the winds came up. Then we wandered home to relax until midnight, at that point we went upstairs and watched some more fireworks from our pool on the 34th floor.

Christmas 2006 in Melbourne

Oops! I thought I had already posted this. Well, we're out of order (not suprising for those that know me!). Christmas this year was amazingly busy, we went to see the Myer's windows on the 23rd (a Melbourne tradition, with animated characters. This year was Mem Fox's "Wombat Divine"). We had a great dinner with our friends Ken and Claudia and childern before the window viewing (we waited in a queue for an hour to see it). The 24th we had turkey dinner with our friends Alan and Jie and Alan's mom Janette, and it was a lovely evening! In the morning it was the usual, but quieter, which was okay for a change. The girls and I indulged in some kung fu style fighting with Clarissa's new beach diggers and Miranda's gloves. Then we were off to Ken and Claudia's for a busy Christmas dinner on a the coolest Christmas in Australia on record. We didn't make it above 11 C!

Adventures during the holidays!

Well, sorry this took a little while to arrive, life seemed to get busy for a bit! Between Christmas and New Years we went to the beach a couple times (Miranda is trying to release a stranded jellyfish back to the ocean, Doug tried out cricket) and we went up to Ballarat and Soveriegn Hill, where the gold rush started in this country. Coincidently enough, a week or so before we went someone found a $150 000 AUD gold nugget with a metal detector, so there are still big finds made. Doug, Miranda and I were absorbed by gold panning, while Clarissa had a star role in the play at the theatre, and we finished it off with a good Italian dinner. We had a wonderful day and we plan to take any guests up there. I had to take a picture of the sheep in a trailer we passed on our drive after all the times I've had to read "Sheep in a Shop" and my personal favorite "Sheep in a Jeep". If you haven't read these examples of fine literature, please check out the children's section of the library, in the board books!