December 24: Christmas Eve 3

And finally time for bed after making sure that we left out some traditional refreshments for santa - a bottle of ginger beer and a mango, and some spinach for Rudolf.  Bit of a change from the usual mince pies and carrots this year - hope they like it!

December 24: Christmas Eve 2

 

 

....followed by the Christmas carol concert at St Matthews Church on the Corso, which is so popular that they have to put on three separate shows at 3, 4:30 and 6pm. We queued for about 45 mins and only just made it in, but it was worth it!  the concert included live camels, a biblical petting zoo and a star wars stage show with a real live Wookie!  WOW!

December 24: Christmas Eve 1

Christmas eve began with the traditional coffee at Barefoot and Christmas treats from Zumbo's next door....

December 23: Santa's Little Helper

Nick broke up early for Christmas and spent the day with Daisy trying out his Christmas present.  They cycled up-to North head and then back through Manly to the playground in Queenscliff which was jam-packed with other little kids who's parents were also trying to get them to run off some steam so that they would fall asleep and give them some time to wrap christmas presents!  Despite being very tired Daisy insisted on helping with wrapping Gem's presents.  Surprisingly, we ran out of tape.

December 18: Shelly Breakfast

Sunday morning breakfast at Shelly today with some friends and their little 'uns.  Because of the overcast weather we thought we may have the beach to ourselves but we weren't aware of the ocean swim race.  We were wondering why there were so many people who were willing to go for a swim on what was a unseasonably cold morning - turns out that most of them weren't willing but had volunteered to take part before checking the weather forecast. We watched from the beach with our sausage sarnies - nice.

December 11: Christmas Party

Today we visited friends for an 'orphans christmas party'.  Garry (a colleague from MBMO) and his partner Sophie made lunch for a group of us who don't have our own families here in Australia.  The food and company were amazing and their house was pretty special too. A converted cottage and stable block with an old recording studio as an office and a tree growing through the centre of the dining room!  It was full of things which they'd collected during their time together and made us all feel very envious and perhaps a bit homesick for all the things we left behind (including families!).

December 07: Christmas Concert

Today was Daisy's first christmas concert at nursery.  We were a bit worried beforehand as the agenda suggested a 2 hour show but luckily for everyone the babies and toddlers went first and were then excused to play and meet Father Christmas.  Despite Daisy being one of the star performers in all the rehearsals (according to the staff) she forgot all the words and actions and sat at the end of the row smiling and waving at us!  She wasn't too excited about meeting Santa either and just wanted to run around after Holly and play in the sand.  Santa's going to have to up his game for next year we think.

November 22: Meet the neighbours

Ok so it's not that big and definitely not dangerous but it's a lot more interesting than the garden spiders that we're used to!  It's a St Andrews cross spider.  They lie in the middle of their webs waiting for flies - very useful for highlighting where the webs are so that we can avoid walking into them (it happens a lot).

November 27: New Barbecue

.....and having a garden means that we can now buy a barbecue - woohoo!

November 22: Moving out

Today we handed back the keys to our first home in Sydney.  Daisy carried out the final inspection and checked the mailbox for spiders one last time.  We're looking forward to moving into our new home which doesn't have anywhere near as good views as we've been used to but does have a small garden........

November 20: Daisy meets Poppy

November 19: Our new house

Picked up the keys to our new house today and spent the rest of the weekend moving our few possessions up the hill into little Manly, and cleaning our old apartment.

November 13: Sculpture by the sea

Today we hired a car and drove over to Bondi to visit the annual 'Sculpture by the sea' exhibition along the cliff walk from Bondi to Tamarama.  The exhibition is very popular and as it's only held over the course of a couple of weeks it was really busy so it was a bit of a struggle pushing the buggy around the narrow cliff path.  It was definitely worth the effort as there were some really interesting & fun pieces including the giant tent peg, the 'frame yourself' picture frame and magnificent stag overlooking the beach.
After our long walk we returned to Bondi for lunch before driving across town to Ikea to buy some bits for our new house.  Doesn't matter where you go in the world Ikea is always the same - except for the meatballs which we're sure were Kangaroo?

November 12: Bob Barker

Today we travelled into the City to visit the Sea Shepherd ship 'Bob Barker' which was moored for a short time in Circular Quay.  The Bob Barker is undergoing some minor repairs at the moment before heading down to the antarctic to meet the Japanese whaling fleet.  Unfortunately we were too late for the guided tour, but had a chat with a few of the crew members and bought some merchandise which nick sampled later that evening!

If you didn't know Sea Shepherd are a marine conservation organisation, with a fleet of ships named after high profile supporters of the organisation (Steve Irwin, Brigitte Bardot, Bob Barker).

Follow this link to find out more about Sea Shepherd http://www.seashepherd.org/

November 11: Remembrance Day

Flowers at the cenotaph on St Martin's place.

November 7: DJ Durham-Jones?