Sydney

The kids went back to school today. Easter Holiday is over. I keep calling it spring break, but it's not spring, it's autumn. Here's what we did with 2 weeks off school.

Now isn't this your idea of fun: stick 5 happy (but noisy) kids in a car for 14 hours to explore a bit down under. (Actually, we had to go to Sydney to visit the American consulate and conduct some business - kill two birds with one stone.)
Listen to a little didgeridoo and party with the natives.

Here's a familiar sight.

The Sydney Opera House has such great angles.


Ride the ferry out to Manly beach.

Bondi Beach (home of the famous reality TV show: Bondi Rescue - don't worry, I hadn't heard of it either, but we don't watch a lot of TV.)

Bondi is a beautiful beach right in the middle of Sydney.
This is a wildlife crossing. There were koala and kangaroo signs everywhere, but I think this is for the sugar gliders and possums. We saw plenty of boomers. After Sydney we drove to Coff's Harbour where we realized our car was badly leaking fluid. It was Thursday evening. We found a mechanic who would take it - on Tuesday. In the mean time, we got to use their loaner car - a totally "flash" (australian for fancy/cool) 1991 station wagon, which didn't have enough seatbelts for everyone. Fortunately, it says "Goodyear" all over it, so we had no problem convincing the cop at the random check point that it wasn't really our car. I think Shon's 5 o'clock shadow (broken electric razor) helped convince her that we really are responsible parents who use seatbelts. (We really are!)

On Sunday we went to church. It was a small branch which doubled in size for the holiday. We don't normally see the fruits of our efforts, but we did this time. We made friends with another family that had children (here is their daughter with ours) and Shon got to borrow their surf board. We brought our boogie boards, and had a ball. We also had an invitation to dinner and, most importantly, a ride home to Brisbane for Shon (who had to get back to work) and Bryce (who had a football [soccer] camp). The rest of us got to stay and enjoy a couple more days at the beach. The car took all of an hour to fix, and we got to spend a relaxing 6 days by the beach.

This was my morning run, along the beach and up the stairs, where I startled a kangaroo. (He startled me too.)

Caleb, mate, you're too young to kiss! We took a little bush walk, past the banana plantations at the top of a hill. It was beautiful.
It was cloudy, so it's hard to see the ocean in the background.I've never seen this before: an honesty box. Put in your $2 coin and take a bag of ripe bananas.

It's good to be home.