Fidler On The Reef: 2019

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

The mane event

Today was Melbourne Cup day, a state-wide public holiday in Victoria. Though we live in New South Wales, Melbourne Cup is watched nationwide. Some call it 'the race that stops a nation.'

Melbourne Cup is a 3200-metre race for horses three years old and over, conducted by the Victoria Racing Club on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria, and is part of the Spring Racing Carnival.

Melbourne Cup is always run on the first Tuesday in November and is scheduled to start at 3pm. So transport yourself to a Saturday evening in May where you have some friends over dressed in your Derby finest, flip on the Kentucky Derby and throw back a mint julep or four. This is Melbourne Cup. But on a Tuesday. Mid-day.

My office put on a lovely spread and blocked out our diary for a small spring celebration.

The race is quite long by comparison to the Derby -- it lasts for about 3 minutes.

This year's winner was Vow and Declare, the first Australian-bred winner of the Melbourne Cup since Shocking in 2009. Here's a video with highlights.

Julie works for a rather socially conscious company, so we also raised funds for the Racing NSW Equine Welfare Fund. We raised about $15 to help care for thoroughbred horses at every stage of life.

More soon!

Thursday, October 24, 2019

The blog is (not?) dead

When almost a year goes by without any blog posts, you can assume your blog has died. I think about it often - quite often, in fact - but time is a hot commodity these days. Maybe this will be its revival.

To recap, here's what's gone on for the Fidler Four over the last year-ish:

We're still in Sydney so come visit! Julie accidentally returned to work (I know, rt?) in June and quickly found her groove after almost 11 years of mat leave.

We haven't been traveling much as of late but we've got a few trips booked coming up:

Meeting Julie's dad, Larry, in Fiji in December because #whynot?
Eytan is going with school to New York (!!) in March for Montessori Model UN
Far North Queensland / Port Douglas with friends in April

We plan to continue visiting the US from the end of June annually for 3-4 weeks each year. It can be a long time between seeing family and friends but it'd be insane to leave Sydney for the N American (Detroit, especially) winter when it's summer Down Under.

The jury is still out on whether the boys are developing accents. They're no doubt Americans by birth but each day that passes we notice more Aussie lingo (and intonation!) that has become part of our everyday language.

Otherwise, spring has sprung, it's baseball season Down Under, and the kids are eagerly anticipating summer!

Here are some photo highlights of the last several months:

The boys are playing zooka (machine pitch) baseball this spring and Micah has really enjoyed playing catcher. As of 25 Oct, they're 3-1. Go Falcons!

The boys split a day of school holidays between Aaron's office in St Leonards and Julie's office in Chatswood. They took the train between locations and enjoyed a refreshing fresh juice when they arrived to Chatswood.