Changing leaves!

Welcome Fall!! It is so beautiful here, and everything is ushering in the new season.  Butternut squash for $1.00/ kilo, clementines, flu shots, and lots of rain (it is the rainy season) although the weather is still between 65-70 F. Here are some pictures in the courtyard of our apartment building. 

The courtyard outside our door

Can you see the rain drops? It had just started to rain!

Daddy and the kids

Thomas getting ready to take off...he just goes and goes now!

 Some of the leaves outside our balcony

Thomas and the leaves

Daddy and Thomas (10 months) and walking well.

Miss Olivia, 5 years old. Currently going ballistic in gymnastics. She has been in Kindy since January and loves it.

Mary Bear, 3 years old.  Mary's middle name is Adelle. She hates her middle name. If we call her Mary Adelle she screams that it is not her name. Her name is Mary A Swinton (not A like the letter, A like "uh") Mary...uh Swinton is what she says her name is :-)

Happy Birthday

This year for my birthday Stan went above and beyond any birthday so far. It was a blast! First, we got some babysitters for the day and took the ferry into the city.

Here is a pix of the Sydney Opera House I took while ridding the ferry into circular quay

Even though I have been in Sydney for 7 months now, I have not gotten up close to the opera house. Yes, I see it on the ferry but I had never been inside. We planned on seeing a show but there was nothing available that really got me excited so this part of my birthday has been postponed until later!  After touring the opera house we got in a cab and took it over to the harbor bridge (see the background?) and did a 3 1/2 hour bridge climb to the top. It was quite exciting!
We had to wear these funny suits (which you can't see b/c we have a rain coat over us) and lots of other climbing equipment. When we were doing the vertical part of the climb it started to rain pretty hard. I was a nervous about slipping and falling. We were harnessed to a metal wire so it wasn't that bad... I just didn't want to be dangling over the 6 lanes of traffic below. I was also worried about lightning since the whole bridge is metal.  It turns out I was just paranoid because the leader has a radio and a weather report, so if lighting were to happen we would descend asap. Once the vertical part was over the rain stopped (of course). This was cool because we got to see three rainbows while climbing the rest of the way up (the archy part of the bridge). When we got to the top the sun started to set and it finished setting the whole way down and was dark when we got out. I wish I had better pictures but we couldn't bring our camera because it could fall (if we dropped it) onto a car below! Instead I had to settle for these pictures taken by our lead climber.

We went to the very top and touched the flag pole displaying the Australian flag.

After the bridge climb we grabbed a cab and had dinner at Cafe Sydney (probably one of the nicest restaurants in the city). One of Stan's co-workers had connections and got us a reservation the day before. It was at the top floor of this tall building right it the middle of the harbor. You could see the opera house on the right and the harbor bridge on the left. It was cool to see the whole city lit up. About half way through dinner a lighting storm started, which just added to the magic of all the lights.  The food was AMAZING!  I have to admit that I have some biases when it comes to certain kinds of sea food and ingredients I am not too familiar with, but I am now a big fan of some new foods. (Don't ask me what they are...I don't think I could spell them let alone pronounce them). This restaurant was a performance from start to finish and I cannot say enough good things about it.  It was a wonderful birthday!!