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!

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.

The boys on their way to a Swans match...including a headlock of #brotherlylove

Rugged up for a weekend outing to the CBD for our favourite vegan fast food,  Lord of the Fries😋.

We found our friends at the Detroit Zoo!

Lots of hugs with GG Connie and Papa Ivan!

And lots of snuggles with Bubbie Erma!

Coogee to Bondi ocean walk, M living his best life #always! 

Family photo!

First day of school (Jan 2019, lol...better late than never!)

The boys cooking up some trouble

The Harlem Globetrotters came to town!

Cheers, mates!

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...

AFL Theme Songs, by the Fidler males

Please note: this is a guest blog by Aaron, Eytan and Micah; all opinions expressed are theirs, not mine (Julie). I only like one of these songs and can maybe be heard singing it occasionally. Or often. That's subjective.

Since moving to Sydney the boys have really enjoyed following the AFL (Australian Football League - aka that odd sport that you used to watch on ESPN2 in the middle of the night in college). We’re fans of Sydney and GWS (Greater Western Sydney), but enjoy watching just about any game. We especially enjoy watching Collingwood where Mason Cox, the only American in the AFL, is a ruckman and key forward. The Australian crew at the New York Times just did this super cool story on Cox.

As we've learned more about the sport - and recently attend a finals match of Sydney vs GWS - we've discovered that there are theme songs (aka fight songs) for each club.

Image courtesy 3AW.com.au

Listed below (thank you, wikipedia!) are the songs for each team with our ratings (out of 10) for each and a short comment on the song. We hope you take the time to listen to a few of these (some will sound quite familiar to many of our American friends, though with different lyrics) and enjoy our take on the AFL theme songs!

Club name	Name of team song	Basis for team song	M's take	E's take	Daddy's take	Comments
Adelaide	"The Pride of South Australia"	"US Marines' Hymn"	5	6	7	I keep expecting to hear “from the halls of Montezuma…” The first in an ongoing theme of, “hey, isn’t that song actually…”
Brisbane Lions	"The Pride of Brisbane Town"	"La Marseillaise"	4	5	5	Plays to the large contingent of French AFL fans.
Carlton	"We are the Navy Blues"	"Lily of Laguna"	1	1	4	About what you’d expect for a club that calls themselves the Blues. Not the most exciting song choice.
Collingwood	"Good Old Collingwood Forever"	"Goodbye, Dolly Gray"	5	7	5	Here we get introduced to the term “barrackers” which is a surprising synonym for “fans” since Aussies usually bias to shorter names. It’s the capsicum of sports terms.
Essendon	"See the Bombers Fly Up"	"(Keep Your) Sunny Side Up"	4	6	6	M: “I see why it says ‘up’ - it’s an airplane.” That about sums it up (pun intended).
Fremantle	"Freo Way To Go"	"Song of the Volga Boatmen"	9	9	9	A family favourite. That said, the intro sounds like something you’d hear the jews in egypt singing while building the pyramids.
Geelong	"We Are Geelong"	"The Toreador Song"	7	5	4	Starts w/ something like the rhythm of “nanny, nanny foo-foo.” Also, their coach is insanely intense. You do not want to mess w/ that guy.
Gold Coast	"We Are the Suns of the Gold Coast Sky"[3]	Original	7	9	7	Our first original song. Too bad the team is terrible because this is a good song.
Greater Western Sydney	"There's A Big Big Sound"[4]	Original	10	10	9	We love this one. After listening to the song you need to check this clip out.
Hawthorn	"The Mighty Fighting Hawks" (also known as "We're A Happy Team At Hawthorn")	"The Yankee Doodle Boy"	5	5	5	There’s just no way to make Yankee Doodle an intimidating song. But it’s fun to listen to.
Melbourne	"It's a Grand Old Flag"	"You're a Grand Old Flag"	8	7	7	If you’re going to steal a song and make it about the colors red and blue, just take the Penn song.
North Melbourne	"Join in the Chorus"	"Wee Deoch an Doris"[5]	6	6	5	Good, old timey song.
Port Adelaide	"Power to Win"[6]	Original	9	9	10	Another family favourite - nice work on the original song.
Richmond	"We're from Tiger Land"	"Row, Row, Row"	10	10	9	Rumour has it that their barrackers only really know the words “yellow and black” (that’s really all you hear if you go to one of their games).
St Kilda	"When the Saints Go Marching In"	"When the Saints Go Marching In"	1	2	9	Clearly, the kids and daddy don’t see eye-to-eye on this. How can you not like “When the Saints Go Marching In?!”
Sydney	"The Red and the White"	"Notre Dame Victory March"	9	9	9	I love all of this. Except that it’s Notre Dame’s fight song!!! Since we cheer for Sydney, we know all the words - it pains me that we do. Because, again, Notre Dame!
West Coast	"We're Flying High"	Original	5	5	3	Not the strongest start to the song. Doesn’t really do much after that.
Western Bulldogs	"Sons of the West"	"Sons of the Sea"	3	2	3	It gives a good description of a bulldog. Not sure that makes for a strong fight song.

AO

To wind down a truly magical and adventure-filled summer, Aaron and I were invited to the Women's Finals of the Australian Open. Wow! Thank you, Mastercard!

Loved this sign giving visitors directions to AO!

AO logo filled with tennis balls!

Mastercard had a very cool beach club where guests and cardholders could relax, soak their feet in a cool pool, enjoy entertainment and have a bite to eat. There were spontaneous Priceless moments, too!

Glad there was a pic of the beach club online from Nadia Cameron of CMO.com.au

Like when Chris Evert came out to give us her predictions on the match (Caroline Wozniacki vs. Simona Halep, by the way).

Australian chef Neil Perry and American tennis star Chris Evert

Our view of the court

The tennis was incredible! The players were well matched (as you'd expect at world ranked #1 vs #2) and it was no sure-thing for either woman. The three sets were intense. In the end, Wozniacki won (and became ranked #1 for a short time) - and it was her first Grand Slam. It was great to witness that history.

Aaron and I rushed back from the AO to pick Micah up from our friends house and meet Eytan at the return bus from camp! We had one day before the school year started and our extracurricular activities resumed. It was a bit insane looking back, but I'm glad we had the opportunity to do so many great things over the summer!

Melbourne (but drop the 'r')

Before I get too much into our hot summer days in Melbourne, we need to clear something up. Aussies pretty much do no pronounce the 'r' sound. In any word. Unless there's no 'r' in a word, then it's available for use (example: Micah, pronounced Miker). Along those lines, the city Melbourne is not pronounced how we Americans think it would be: Mel-BURN. It is instead pronounced Mel-Bnn. You learn this very quickly when you're in country, and it helps you acclimate and gain "street cred" with Aussies.

Anyway, after Hamilton Island and Tassie, we flew to Melbourne for a few days. Between the previous 4 weeks of travel and the newly found Melbourne summer heat, exhaustion had set in. We were much slower to tackle things, but we still enjoyed our time there!

A LEGO Discovery Centre had opened in Melbourne a few months prior and the boys were quite keen to have a go (translation: they were very excited!). Great indoor activity to avoid the scorching heat outside.

Melbourne in LEGO

LEGO AFL

Melbourne Cup in LEGO

Goofballs!

At the suggestion of a friend (another mom of two similar aged boys, so a good person to get advice from!), we booked a tour of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

MCG has hosted thousands of events in its history - the olympics (1956), World Cup final (1992), Commonwealth Games (2006) and thousands of cricket matches, AFL, rugby Union, rugby League, concerts, historic speeches and more.

MCG is awesome! It can hold more than 100,000 patrons at any given time. The largest estimated single-event crowd was for a Billy Graham appearance in 1959; low estimates put 130,000 people in attendance!

E and Aaron on the field

Aaron and the boys in the visiting team locker room

View of the field from the members only Long Room

We also got to see some "behind the walls" features - locker rooms, training facilities, media rooms and more.

It was so hot in Melbourne (did I already mention that?!?) - I'm pretty sure we collapsed in our hotel after the MCG tour.

On our final day in Melbourne we visited SCIENCEWORKS. We all enjoyed it!

City planning

After some great (and hot!) time in Melbourne, we flew home to Sydney to pack E for sleep away camp, pack our house to move down the street, and pack Nani and Papi to return home to the US. 

Just after we moved houses (the day Nani and Papi left) and while E was at sleep away camp, Aaron and I would "boomerang" back to Melbourne for the Women's Finals of the Australian Open!