Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas to you! The excitement of four little kids on Christmas morning is hard to beat. This year, our oldest came and woke us at 3:30 am because he couldn't sleep. Ha! Back to bed with you was my response. Funny enough, when I woke up about 6:45, all was quiet in the house. Santa had come and the kids were still sleeping. It was a mere few minutes before they were all awake and the present frenzy had begun! Lots of toys and treats were had, and then we carried on with what seems to be one of the laziest days of the year. We sit around in our pjs playing with all our new toys. This year, there was one difference- we all went for a swim to play with our new toys! We ended our fabulous day with shrimp on the barbie, ham, veggies and banoffee pie for dessert. Yum Yum! Hope you had (or have since it is not yet light in America as I post) a very wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve has come and gone in our house. We had a wonderful time as always. We spent the day making Christmas goodies - peanut butter balls, Happy Birthday Jesus cake (with some special cupcakes for Santa), and more. Then we went to the evening family service at church before heading home for our traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner. After dinner, it was time for birthday cake and then one present before bed. The kids seem to have figured out now that the one present always seems to be new Christmas pjs. Now, to bed to wait for Santa...

Ready for church - it is still so strange to go to Christmas Services in a sundress instead of a scarf!

Silly little girls posing for me

All ready to celebrate Jesus' birthday and welcome Santa

The first present of Christmas - new pjs

All ready for bed... I hope Santa comes tonight!

Fun with Gia and Boppa

Tea at Gunner's Barracks

Zoo time

View at the zoo

Yum Cha in China Town

Riding the carousel in Darling Harbour

Fun, Fun, Fun!

Surfer Dudes

This past week was our first week of summer vacation. Seeing as we live in Australia, we thought a little surfing was in order. The two big kids took lessons for four morning this week and became little surfer dudes. They did amazing! Both of them caught on quickly and were standing up catching waves. While it was lots of fun, it was lots of hard work too. They were both exhausted after fighting waves all morning. We had very calm and quiet afternoons after such hard work! Enjoy the pictures and videos of their surfing. Oh, and please excuse all the screaming in the background. Myself and the other "mums" just could not help ourselves!

The little ones had a ball playing on the beach every morning too!

Speech Day

An Aussie tradition here at the end of the school year is Speech Day. This is kind of like the end of year show. For Prep school, it included a few boring speeches from the board, principal, etc. and then some darling singing and dancing from the kids. Here is a video from M's performance yesterday. Poor quality but we did what we could!




This morning I am off to Darling Harbour to the Convention Centre to watch A's speech day. Sadly, I hear it will be torture. Once you reach year 3, it is only speeches and the same ones year after year no less. To make matters worse, A's class does not even do speeches. Thank goodness for the Kindle for iphone app... it should really help those 2 1/2 hours pass for me. And thank you to my Aussie friends who told me the real story about Speech Day!

Thanksgiving in the Summer

Our first Thanksgiving in Australia has come and gone. It was strange but nice. It was a hot day and felt a bit more like the 4th of July as far as holidays go. Although it was very different than our past Thanksgivings, we enjoyed it.

We hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for some local friends here on Friday night with all the fixins'. I had another American friend who helped and thank goodness! My Aussie oven could not handle Thanksgiving. Fortunately she has a big oven and was able to fit a turkey while I took care of the rest. Thanks to my American pack mules (you know who you are) we were able to enjoy pumpkin pie and even green bean casserole with derky onions on top! It was delicious!

On Saturday we celebrated Thanksgiving in a big way! We went to the beach with about 60 other Americans and enjoyed another traditional spread. There was more food than we knew what to do with and it was a wonderful afternoon. Again, not your traditional Thanksgiving but what a way to celebrate in Oz. Thanks Jenny for organizing it all and making a great day for all of us!

Check out this spread! What a view for our turkey dinner!