Latest happenings

Sorry for no post last week.  The past week and a half have been busy, but there haven't been any huge, amazing events.  We mainly have just been living life with its ups and downs.  The first notable event was that Aubrey finished her term of preschool soccer with Soccajoeys on Thursday, June 14th.  She has really enjoyed soccer.  However, we are going to have to cut out one of her many activities, so I think her soccer career will have to be put on hold for now.  It was hard to decide which activity to cut out at this time since she seems to enjoy everything we put her in.  The deciding factor was that soccer is the activity for which we travel the furthest.  (We ride a bus 15 minutes to get to soccer.  All the other activities are only about a 5 minute walk from our apartment.)

Aubrey waiting for them to call her name at the last session

Okay, so she covered her face, but she got an awesome medal and certificate.

The week of June 10-16 was incredibly gray, windy, and rainy.  Even though the temperatures still got into at least the mid to upper 50's during the day, everyone felt chilled.  Especially when Aubrey and I walk at least 2 miles on a weekday to/from Carter's school for drop off and pick up.  We had been enjoying all the walking until the weather got miserable and stayed that way.

So, on Saturday, June 16th, no one wanted to leave our apartment except me.  It was yet another dreary, rainy day.  Sean stayed at home with the kids and I took a bus to Manly Beach.  My main reason for going was to visit the library and spend a little alone time.  Even though it was still soggy outside, I could not resist a walk along the beach (with an umbrella, rain coat, and rain boots on, of course).

I had to blow these pics up a little bit to show that even in that yucky weather there were tons of surfers.  Every little black dot in the ocean is a surfer's head.  They just could not resist the large waves the nasty weather was bringing in.  I know it is an adreniline rush for them, but I much preferred being bundled up on the shoreline.  

Finally, on Sunday the sun came back out.  We had really, really missed it.  Plus, Carter had gotten a new bike recently and the kids had not had a chance to go bike riding since we arrived to Australia.  So, we set off across town to the best park we have found yet, Centennial Park.  We hadn't visited it since we moved to the Northern Shores of Sydney, but we had the perfect reason on this day, the park is huge and offers wide open spaces for riding bikes.  It was a fabulous day at the park. 

Aubrey demonstrating her awesome bike skills.

Carter showing off his new bike-it's almost as tall as him!  He did really well on it though!

View of them leaving me in the dust since I chose to run instead of getting a bike myself.

Everything was great, until we were leaving the park.  We were sitting at an intersection waiting to pull onto a road heading out of the park.  We were all happily tired and ready for a rest.  Then, 2 cars collided in the intersection in front of us and we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  One of the cars spun around and bumped the front of the car.  It really wasn't too bad of a bump, but it still did quite a bit of damage to the front of our 2 month old car.  Instead of the original plan of slowly driving home while the kids napped in the car, we had to wait around for an hour and a half so that we could talk to the police and get everything wrapped up.  Not a perfect end of the day, but of course, it always could have been worse.  One of those moments when we were inconvenienced, but it is a good reminder of how lucky we are.    

The sun has continued to shine this past week.  After the previous week of constant rain, I will not be taking the sun for granted any time soon.  Since we had gotten a yearly membership to the zoo, and it is so close, Aubrey and I went down for a couple of hours on Monday.  Aubrey had a chance to pet a black headed python.  I was surprised when she decided to pet the tail.  I was SHOCKED when after a minute, she decided the pet the head of the snake.  After this, I redirected her away from the snake.  There is no reason to encourage her to get friendly with snakes when we are living in a country with 11 of the 15 most deadliest snakes.

Later in the week, Carter lost his first tooth since we moved to Australia.  He was pretty excited.  He was even more excited when he found the gold $1 coin the tooth fairy left him the next morning.  She really is magic!!

The weekend is now over as it is Sunday night.  We didn't head out for any major exploring this weekend.  We were in need of a weekend of rest and relaxation and our car is in the shop being fixed from the accident.  We don't need the car to go out exploring, but it helps.  We did find a new coffee shop today that is close to us and is now on our "favorites" list.  It is called Esquires Coffee House and it is on Military Road in Mosman.  We liked the atmosphere of it as soon as we walked in.  It had good coffee and good food.  When we talked to the waitress about how much we liked it, we found out that it is the first Australian branch of a Canadian company.  At this point, we consider anything from North America as being "close to home".  

After eating lunch at the coffee shop, we headed down to the zoo for the third time in 2 weeks.  It was a beautiful day and we had no other plans.  This was the first time we WALKED the entire way there.  I am still reveling that we can walk there in about 20-30 minutes (depending on how tired the kids are) mostly on quiet streets through a gorgeous, upscale suburb.  It is such a breathtakingly beautiful zoo.  We bribed the kids to walk back home by offering to buy gelato on the way.  It was a good end to the weekend and the kids were exhausted.  It was an early bedtime tonight, which no one complained about.