No more flights

We just returned from a great but tiring trip back to the States. Our intinary includes stays in San Diego, New York, Seattle and Hawaii....a full coast to coast effort. Plus Nate got to celebrat his birthday in each city- I think he's had 5 turning 5 parties. Lucky kid. Nate has the whole flight thing down- he is a true world class traveller. He gets on the plane steals my itouch and bose headphones and takes long plane naps. I wish the same could be said of Reese. But overall both were good travellers and adjust to different time zones and getting hugged daily by new faces.
It was wonderful to see our friends and family again. We really got to spend quality time with everyone. My sincere apologies for those few who I had to cancel on. We got rushed towards the end of our stay. We did our part to help stimulate the US economy (hope you own Target & Costco stocks)- and even needed to buy an extra suitcase to carry back all the toys, kid clothes, and contraband food.

Now I need to get to thoses suitcases and unpack ;)
check out the photos View Album

Life on Mars

I awoke the other day at 5:00am (thanks to Reese) to look outside and see only orange. It was very surreal. There was a thick red/orange fog that had engulfed all of Sydney. It turned out to be a dust storm bringing in red clay dust from a drought area. A 70 year storm they say. It was pretty interesting to experience. On the downside we had left some windows open and had a thick layer of red dust all over the house. No kidding- the *$&@Q was everywhere. We (in this case me) was cleaning for days and I can still find it in places. We almost changed the theme of Nate's birthday party (scheduled for the day after the storm) to a Mars/Sci-fi party ;)

Check out the photos:

family pasta night

Ever wonder- what do we do on an average weekend night? Some fancy dinner out, club hopping with the international jet set party, black tie event? Nope. We are just as lame here as we were in Seattle. Check out the photos from last Friday night. We broke out our newest favorite kitchen gadget- our pasta maker. The whole clan got in on the action and had a ball. Is it considered a violation of child labor laws to have your two year old make you dinner? It was a flour disaster but lots of laughs and a tasty result.

Nate Reading

Check out this video of Nate reading. We've been working on his reading together and hopefully by the end of the winter /seattle summer he will be confidently reading.

Nate The Artist???

Check out this beautiful work of art that Nate did at school. It is a Japanese paper mache art on a painted canvas. The picture makes it look big (it is ~ 8x11). I don't think it looks like a 5 year old did it. Sure that if I hung in a gallery someone would buy it. Gotta love art.

A Great Sunday In The Country

We had a great weekend. It was warm and sunny - around 20 degrees and it felt fantastic. The schools are closed last week and this week for winter holiday so we had nothing on our schedule- no soccer games, no baseball games - FREEDOM! . Plus Michael is out of town so I wanted to leave our plans flexible. Like the Sundays of my childhood when mom and I would set out on an adventure checking out some new town or beach I felt the urge to explore a new area of Sydney. On Sunday Angela, Nate, Reese and I explored the Northern Beaches coastline. We passed beach after lovely beach until reaching Palm Beach (where the North Beaches peninsula reaches a dead end). You may recall a prior entry about Palm Beach and the nice lighthouse climb there. Instead we took a passenger ferry across to the Ku-ring-gai national park. There is a small campground there accessible only by boat (the rest of the park is quite huge). We learned that in the summer the place is mobbed with tents but we found it almost empty and peaceful. It was a lovely day - we had a nice picnic, played with the native wallaby, looked for crabs, and napped on the blanket (well Reese did at least). All and all an excellent day.

Renewed hobbies - me time in the kitchen

Now that I am a stay at home mom (a woman of leisure as Michael likes to tease) I have been enjoying rediscovering my love of cooking.

You need to check out my new favorite cooking site....of course referred to me by my great friend Lisa the gourmet. http://www.smittenkitchen.com/ - I absolutely love it. We've gotten into making our own pasta. In fact I've have been cooking a lot in the last month- made excellent choc chip banana bread (see above), apple/cranberry turnovers (see above)-soooooo easy- a great thing to bring to book club or make for a special breakfast or dessert treat- look up the barefoot countessa recipe- she used apples and dried cherries but I liked (& only had) dried cranberries....seriously it took 10 minutes to make and the store bought puffed pastry made it easy and looked great. Nate has been my little chef helper- we've been watching this Top Chef like Australia show Masterchef so he's been into the food thing lately. Last night he made mac & cheese by himself and today he made mini berry shortbread cakes from a kid's cookbook we checked out from the library. He is so cute when he cooks and talks about cooking. He rates all my meals. His descriptions are very funny - "I love the combination here", or "30 out of 10" - he doesn't quite get the rating score thing ;) For now, until his tastes improve I'll enjoy the compliments.