Year 1 class photo

Here are Olivia's class pictures for her year 1 class. Her teacher is named miss Wong and all the girls call her miss Swan! She is lovely and Olivia could not be in a better class! Olivia was too small to sit on the front row so they tried to level her in the second row by having her stand on a book...do you see it? She had just been discharged from the hospital earlier that day and was so pale, I put a ton of blush on her to make her look a bit more alert and I think it did the trick!

Art Exhibition

So in case you didn't know, Stan is showcasing his oil paintings in his very first art exhibit. His teacher is an 80 year old woman who goes to our church. She is a very seasoned artist and has taken Stan under her wing. They paint together on Sunday afternoons and Stan has finally taken on a hobby in lieu of work!

I realize most of my followers are not in the area to attend the gallery but in case you are around the exhibition opens on August 4th -15th and is open from 11:00am-4:00pm and then on weekends from 11:00am-8:00pm. We are having a cocktail night for those interested in buying on Saturday August 7th from 6:00-8:00pm. The address is Chrissie Cotter gallery, Pidcock Street, Camperdown, Australia.

While I think Stan's paintings are good he is pretty shy about the whole exhibition and has decided that he wants to donate all the profits to the Starlight foundation. http://www.starlight.org.au/Pages/default.aspx?gclid=CIPC5cym96ICFQwaewodOUry4Q This organization came to the hospital to visit Olivia when she was having her operation and during her recovery and multiple infections which placed her back into the hospital. They are a nonprofit organization and they consist of a team of clown doctors, princesses and comedians. They visit hospitals and make kids smile. They blew bubbles for Olivia for about an hour and gave her all sorts of smiley face masks and toys. Stan has wanted to "give back" for a while but has not had much money to give them. This exhibition is the perfect opportunity for us to give back and to start a new hobby!

Come if you can!!

The Rockpool

So over time Stan's company has stopped rewarding him with bottles of champaign and starting giving him dinner for two after they realized he is not a big drinker. His business partner laughed once saying "since he knows Stan doesn't drink, dinner is never that expensive!" We have been letting our dinner vouchers accumulate since getting a babysitter and finding a night when Stan isn't working late has been a bit hard. Since Ben has been here we started using our vouchers as Stan and Ben come home from work at the same time and Ben can babysit immediately which means we just leave from home!

This weekend Stan and I hit The Rockpool. http://www.rockpool.com.au/sydney/rockpool/ It made the top 50 in the world from 2002-2008 and only serves either a 4-6 course meal or degustation (8 courses) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degustation. Here is a wiki for all you non-gourmet people

It was one block from the Opera house and since the last time we went out we got to do the degustation on the way to Kangaroo Valley, it has been fun to compare the two restaurants in Sydney. The only other time I have gotten to do degustation was when I was visiting Paris, France (16 years old) and my parents got last minute dinner reservations on the top of the Eiffel tower. I barely remember it....

Anyway, the food was great. Lots of seafood; and since moving to Sydney I have developed a taste for seafood as it tastes much better fresh...compared to what Montana gets :-) I got to taste truffles for my first time, and I liked them. My favorite part was at the end when they brought us the 7th course ( it was a dessert) and the outside of the plate had fire around it. Mine died out quickly but Stan's dessert ended up catching on fire and he had to squash the grapefruit meringue with his spoon to put the fire out. We concurred that even though we said we don't drink there had to be something flammable around the edge of the plate!

Our next scheduled fine dinning experience is in 6 weeks for our Anniversary, at Tetsuyas http://www.tetsuyas.com/index.html. Which only does degustation and was ranked top 5 in the world from 2007 on. I am excited!! Ben is babysitting again, it is so nice to have him here!

Rugby!

Rugby in Australia is bigger than football in America during the 1980's. Rugby is so big out here they have taken the sport and then created a second identical game with slightly different rules just so the Aussies can walk around playing the original game and then the second game nonstop... literally 24/7 year round. Ben got asked by some YSA guys from church if he wanted to go see the finally game for a rugby tournament and he jumped at the chance.

The ANZ (a bank out here) stadium at Sydney Olympic park. Built for the 2000 Sydney Olympic games and the largest Olympic stadium ever built holding 110,000+ people.

Before he left for the game he spent 30 minutes reading about Rugby on Wiki so he would know what people were talking about/ cheering about.

Local team colors were blue, it was a three game series and the best two out of three took the national championship. This was game three and we lost the finally game :-( Sydney has a good team, but I guess not good enough!

I have never even been to a rugby game so Ben has now done something more Australian than ME!

Mountain biking the Blue Mountains

This weekend Stan and Ben rented some mountain bikes and spent a day ridding through some trails at the Blue Mountains. The blue mountains are about 45 minutes west of Sydney and very famous, as tourist after tourist tends to go missing in here and is never found. The Blue Mountains are like Yellowstone National Park, but far less developed for the local tourist. They cover about 4,000+ sq miles of bush (totaling seven different national parks). They have tons and tons of steep gorges (explaining the missing tourist), the deepest one discovered so far is about a 2,493 foot drop. There are several plants in the area that have yet to be identified and every Aussie I have talked too truly believes this is where Big Foot lives. At first I thought they were all joking but whenever I bring it up as the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard I am surrounded by local criticism. So, that may also explain where the missing tourists are going...and for the record. Big Foot is not just a huge one man show, according to the locals there are sighted colonies of these naked people roaming around the area....But, Ben and Stan didn't see any!

Ben and the Three Sisters rock formation (note it is the middle of winter here so it just looks cold and wet up here this time of year)

The part of the trail where they lost a gear and spent an hour trying to find it on the road so Ben's chain would stay on his bike.... :-)

Ben took about 3-4 spills over the handle bars...I guess Montana didn't prep him enough for the outback! OR, the rental bikes weren't that good :)

Thomas Turns Two!

Thomas turned two on Thursday, July 8th. We had a small party with some neighbors, church friends and school friends. He is obsessed with Buzz Light-year and one person gave him some buzz and woody PJ's and he has worn them nonstop (going on 4 days now).

The best part about the day was him blowing out the birthday candles. He would sing along as loud as he could and then he would get so excited to blow them out. After he would blow them out he would say "again" so we would re-light the candles and sing the song again and we did this about 5 times in a row on three different occasions (breakfast, dinner, and b-day cake). At the end of the day I put him to bed and he sang "happy birthday" but instead of saying Thomas he would say mommy. I think he wanted me to feel as happy as he was about a birthday. Thomas is too cute!



You may notice the outfit change mid-way through the party. He opened the woody PJ's after I had hid the buzz pj's from that morning (so he could be dressed normal for the party) and decided to stripe down half way through opening gifts to put them on.

For his present we took him to see Toy Story 3. Thomas wore his Buzz light year PJ's and Olivia wore the Woody one's and went as Jessie. They were eating up all the attention they got at the theater from other kids who were equally excited about Toy Story 3. (Stan has those pix on his phone... I will upload them in a few days) It was kinda funny! Happy Birthday Thomas

Sightseeing with Ben

Since Ben (my little bro) will be with us for 8 weeks we get to do some real sight seeing around Australia. Last time he was here, Olivia had just had an operation so I had a very difficult time being a nurse at home and tour guide for my family (mom and sister were also here). We only did stuff around Sydney. This weekend we drove an hour north to the surfing beaches (Narabeen, Wale beach, Mona Vale, Newport etc...) There are a series of about 8 beaches all separated by cliffs The last time I had been was over a year ago so it was really fun to see again. This time we did some hikes and spent more time on the beaches instead of trying to see them all before the sunset. Once it was dark we grabbed some pizza at ate it at a park while the kids played on the equipment.

Ben on the hike

Olivia and Ben

All of us on the cove where the wave hits the rock

Ben and Thomas waiting for a big wave

A big wave!

Ben and the sun starting to set

The girls chasing the seagulls

Stan and Ben conversing!

Hiking around the rocks

The foamy water post wave

The kids and Stan crawling around the rocks

Miss Mary

4th of July in Sydney....

This year since the 4th of July was on Sunday, we skipped the American Society Outback Steakhouse BBQ and fireworks over the harbor bridge and hosted our own Sunday dinner with sparklers in the backyard. It started small but then once we invited more people than we could fit in our apartment we had to rent out our villas club house which allowed max 40 people so we just kept inviting more! It was so fun!! We had an "American BBQ" (hot dogs and hamburgers and root-beer floats) compared to an Aussie BBQ (sea food, sausages and beer). Most of our ex-pat friends are married to an Aussie so the spouses were good to drink our root-beer even though they commented that it smelled like black licorice (it must be an acquired taste)! We had USA trivia, sparklers, (which you can find year round in the birthday section of the grocery store out here in Australia--crazy hu!), and lots of mingling and food and patriotic music.

Stan was the hero of the night, doing all the shopping, meal preparations and clean up. I owe him big time after I invited most of the people :-) Happy 4th everyone!