New Years Eve party in Sydney

This year two of my good friends from high school, drove up from Melbourne to celebrate new years with us! Candace & Wes Anderson (yea, they married each other--crazy hu!) They had never been to Sydney (in fact they just moved to Oz about 3-4 months ago) and so we sent them around the city to get the official tour (opera house, botanical gardens, AMP Tower etc...)

We booked tickets to see the fireworks in the city. It was a family place with no glass or alcohol and the best fireworks I have ever seen IN MY LIFE... yes, aunt Susan-even better than the 4th of July in Farmington (which were better than the ones in DC). We could see 6 of the 7 points where the fire works were set off (they set off identical fire works all along the water building up to the Sydney Harbour bridge; which meant we were more or less surrounded as our venue was a military flight landing area that was built on the water

Taking the train into the city

Candace and I

Still lost and not at our venue for the 9:00pm/ kid fire works!

Found the venue and broke out the sparklers

The fire works have started!

Some pix from the finally

Although we only live 15 minutes out of the city, it took us 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to the venue due to getting lost (about 4 times) and having to walk everywhere and take public transport as the roads were more or less closed off in the city. On the way back a similar story--2 hours getting us in bed with three little kids around 2:30 am. Without the extra pair of arms (thanks Candace and Wes) we never would have survived the city with the kids.

Next year, I will either watch it from home or a boat but the city venue has been checked off my list! Happy NEW YEAR everyone!!