Lunar New Year

Sydney celebrates Lunar New Year in a really cool way - dragon dances, parades, displays all around the city, markets, food, dragon boat races and so much more!

This is the year of the dog. Arf!

The Queen Victoria Building (aka QVB) in Sydney's CBD did a fun interactive art installation featuring dogs. When you played with the large tennis ball on the pedestal, the dogs on the flat screens moved around following the ball. Fun!

We explored some of the Lunar New Year events, including dragon boat racing in Darling Harbour. Wow! Such strength and power.

Just generally opening our minds and hearts to enjoying all the events and activities Sydney has to offer!

School, work, life

After our amazing summer of travels we had to get back to reality. We jumped back into our routine with gusto!

We moved houses and are now in a house (vs. an apartment-style condo). We have a dedicated guest room and a playroom since the boys are sharing a room. We made some (odd) tradeoffs - we gave up two garage parking spots to street park; and we gave up a full size dishwasher for a half size. Why someone would put a dishwasher that small in a house with 4 bedrooms is beyond me. Not very well thought out, but we're surviving just fine. And parking has been far less of an issue than I thought it would be. We also no longer have a dryer so sunny days = washing days.

Micah, age 6.5 at time of photo, doing laundry! To his future partner: you're welcome!

Real life in Sydney is much the same as real life anywhere. Except, if I'm honest, it's really beautiful and amazing. Can you tell I LUUUUV life in Australia? But the realities of life are the same - dropping off dry cleaning, making sure the boys have brushed their teeth twice / day, seemingly nonstop laundry (but now revolving around the weather), grocery runs (though now we have a lot of our groceries delivered!), after school activities, birthday parties, thinking about how I haven't been a good blogger as of late, etc.

Just two sweet boys (mostly) walking to school!

Aaron's office recently moved from the CBD (that's Aussie for Central Business District or what Americans might call downtown) to St Leonards in the North Shore. His commute has changed quite a bit but still includes a ferry ride on occasion.

Since the boys don't have homework (LOVE!), they have flexibility for after school activities. The current lineup is hip hop, swimming and Hebrew school. This means it's sometimes a pain in the arse to rally on the weekends and get out of the house since we're a bit scheduled during the week. Lunar New Year in mid-February was a great reason to explore Sydney...