Swinton Family Christmas Card 2011

In case you missed our Christmas card this year, or your letter was lost in the mail here is a digital copy of what we sent out! Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Dear Friends and Family!

2011 was a wonderful year, full of blessings, travel & fun times for the Swinton Family.

After 4 years in Australia, we were able to cross off a few of our ‘must see’ destinations with a trip to beautiful New Zealand with the girls and a few days just Stan and Alisha scuba diving The Great Barrier Reef for Stan’s birthday. It was our first time scuba diving together and very memorable! Aside from getting to see more of the region, we have had a few trips ‘home’ to the good old USA – Stan had two trips for work to L.A. and Miami, I had a trip to San Diego for my brother’s wedding and to Salt Lake City for my Grandpa’s 90^th, and the whole family went to D.C. for two weeks of Deep Creek Lake with the Swinton family.   

This year has been very good. Stan is still busy at Bain & Company, and Alisha has been at home with the kids – she is looking forward to deciding what to do with her free time come the new year when all three kids are at school.

Olivia (8) had a very good year. She was fully discharged from her urologist and gastroentologist and now only sees an endocrinologist to help her grow. Olivia was cleared to play sports and I signed her up for ballet, tap and soccer on top of swimming, piano, and voice.  Next year we are going to just pick two things to make sure we have enough time for homework and play dates!  Olivia completed year 2 in school, got her ears pierced for her birthday, and on a beautiful sunny day in November was baptized in the ocean. One of Olivia’s new favorite past times is to read joke books!  

Mary (6) completed kindergarten this year and will be starting year 1 in February.  She has turned out to be quite a good reader and loves to have some one-on-one time with a parent so she can read to them. Mary also participated in ballet, tap, swimming and soccer this year.  She loves to dance and can never get enough of the dress up.  Mary is still very loyal – her BFF is a girl named Georgie and they are always together at school.

Thomas (3) was potty trained and will start preschool 2 days a week in February.  He has gotten very cheeky, but Alisha loves her ‘baby bumpkin’ so he gets off light on most occasions.  His favorite toy is a stick (we can’t go anywhere without picking up a few good ones.

We continue to love life in Australia and are always ready to welcome more visitors. Come January we will be moving from beautiful Sydney to stylish Melbourne for a short work transfer. We are excited to explore more of Australia from a new vantage point and can’t wait to share it with all of you!

We wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Stan, Alisha, Olivia, Mary, and Thomas Swinton

Moving to Melbourne and the last day of school!

On the last day of school the kids have Christmas mufti day. Mufti means you don't have to wear your school uniform. Here are the girls with their friends!

Olivia in her Christmas attire 

Mary with her BEST friend Georgie!

 Olivia and her Year 2 crush....Gabriel 

 Olivia and her good friends! (Olivia, Indiana, Olivia & Aiofe)

 BFF Indiana (who moved to the USA) and came back for the last day of school

Mary and her Kindy crush Jamison

 Mary and her good friend Tea

Thomas and Archie (have been together since 8 months)

    and then me and my mum friends from the past 3 years

In addition to winding things up on the last day of school, Stan and his work finally finished negotiations and settled on an agreement to move our family down to Melbourne so we can be with Stan this next year. Stan is consulting a company based in Melbourne and has been flying down (8 hours south) every week, for 2 years....home  on the weekends! Stan would be working in Melbourne for at least another year or two so we approached the company about moving down, so long as they helped with the move since it was work related. 

Overall it as a huge win:win. The company no longer has to pay to fly Stan down and back every week, put him up  in a hotel, and give him a food allowance. From our side, we get to see Stan, and save some money as well (free rent, utilities, no moving costs and best of all free public schools!) The timing is unbelievable as the Australian government has just moved to stop all tax cuts to non-resident working in Australia come July. With Bain picking up our move and living expenses for this work transfer, we can apply for residency during this hot political time and if approved we will be treated and taxed like regular Australians by the time our work transfer is up. In addition, we should be able to save quite a bit of money for a house if we choose to stay in Australia or go back to America. 

The perks will only be for a short time but the timing is a miracle, given the surrounding political circumstances and the fact that our visa's are about to expire (Oct)....seriously there are so many compounding variables that I can't even remember them all, but our other ex-pat friends are having to have hard conversations about being financially forced to move back to America (still in recession) or to try to stick it out in Australia during all this political turmoil. Because of the project Stan has been assigned in Melbourne, we end up way better...which I never would have seen 2 years ago when he first started traveling. I am so glad we never asked to get off the case!

Good by Sydney and Hello Melbourne!

Church Christmas Party

This Saturday we had a church Christmas party. I was reminded just how fun Christmas can be outside of America. Since it is summer here we had a giant potluck/ BBQ, followed by a big dance party that was broken up by individual performances for different auxiliaries in our ward! I got out my camera for my favourite one. Here is Mashere, 6 (from Tahiti) dancing for the ward so we can have a water break! She is in Mary's primary class!

Another performance from some guys came after, during a different water break! I think they are either Kiwi (NZ) or Tongan. 

Merry Christmas from Australia!

School: Christmas disco and Olivia's graduation!

This year was Olivia's last year in her Infant School here in Australia. Her school is unique, as it only has three grades: Kindy, Year 1 & Year 2. The school is fitted with little toilets and sinks, and a big grassy play ground. The school facilitates pretend play and only provides props on the playground that encourage this kind of play. NO swing set or playground equipment (which I thought would be useful for fine motor skills since my kids still can't pump on a swing) are on the premises. My kids have gone from being handed tools to play to having to make tools to play or use their imagination; which in hindsight I am grateful for. They are hardly ever bored, and I think it is because of this school's perspective on play. For example, there is a giant stage nestled among some trees, with stage seating for people to watch. One day Olivia told me all the year 2 kids had made-up a play which they put on during recess for the other grades. Olivia charged everyone a $2.00 coin and one kindy kid told me he wasn't allowed to watch the play because he forgot his money that day.... O-gosh--she takes after me... I would have thought of doing something like that as a kid.

The school has picnic tables outside which the kids eat on everyday, a sand pit, and lots of trees to climb on. The kids are required to learn how to jump rope by kindergarten and play the recorder in year 2. It was a good little school, and I will miss it!

On the last week of school the parents were invited in to see their child graduate. Below are some pictures of the graduation ceremony! Olivia was BEAMING when she got her diploma! Way to go OLIVIA! We are so proud of you!

The graduation ceremony ended with the National Anthem which I have always wanted to tape. Here was the best I could do!

After the graduation ceremony (at the beginning of the week) the school also hosted an end of the year "disco" for all the parents and teachers and kids at the end of the week. During the last quarter of school all the kids took dance lessons so they would know how to dance at the disco. They preformed for the parents and then danced the rest of the night. Here are some pictures of the event. I am always so surprised how dressed up everyone gets!

Can't wait for Christmas!!

Christmas Dance Recital

This year we signed the girls up for DANCE. They loved it (tap and ballet) and of course got to participate in their first ever dance concert. Below are some pictures from their special night!

Here are there tap uniforms. I was so proud of Olivia, she was the only kid in the whole two hour performance who was asked to sing a solo to kick off a dance routine (This little light of mine...) and she jumped right up and sang into the microphone even though there were probably 1,000 people watching, at the Olympic stadium.

She kept telling me she was going to get to sing on stage (I am not allowed to watch the dance rehearsals, parents sit outside every week), but no one said anything to me so I didn't take her seriously. To say I was utterly shocked when they pulled up a microphone and put a spot light on her would be an understatement. Stan was like--"you didn't tell me she was singing" and I was thinking--'it is a DANCE recital, I didn't know singing was involved!'

Later when I asked Olivia, she said she was nervous but couldn't see anyone because the lights were on her so she just sang! I am still waiting for video reel as we were not allowed to film during the concert, and had to buy the footage from a professional ($55.00/ tape--rip off)

Next Ballet.....

Here the girls danced ballet to a Cinderella song. I am the worst mom ever because I didn't want to put Olivia in her own class and Mary in her own class (2 years apart) so I just put Olivia in Mary's class (same size right). Mary's kindy class combined with the preschoolers and Olivia was horrified when her classmates were in the year 2 class and she had to be in the preschooler ballet class. I got away with it all year until the end of the year performance and then reality set in when Olivia's classmates were sitting in the stands watching her with the babies.... I guess I will be doing two dance classes next year....oops-- so sorry Olivia!

Either way, it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

Good Job girls, maybe we found something you both like to do!

Thanksgiving & Getting ready for Christmas!

Four days after our trip to the Great Barrier Reef, it was Thanksgiving. Since Stan was working down in Melbourne we postponed the feast until Sunday (which we seem to do every year). We celebrated again with the Stemple family and their guests and it was amazing! Deanne is a fabulous cook (her husband is America) and she is Australian but does it all--Turkey, pie, sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce etc. She is our friend from school. We even had to say what we are thankful for and eating outside on the veranda while the jacaranda petals fell (because it is spring here) made me feel so calm and relaxed.

I don't know why but for some reason I was feeling homesick for my first time since being abroad in 5 years. We missed Halloween because we were in New Zealand and Thanksgiving came and went and with the heat of summer coming on, I was not in the mood to unpack Christmas decorations. After Deanne invited us over for Thanksgiving I totally snapped into the Christmas mood and I am sure it was because I had Thanksgiving dinner. It is hard to grow up with certain holidays strung together and then to just not have them, makes it hard sometimes....I know, all mental right? Either way--Thank you Deanne!!

After Thanksgiving I was in "the mood" and got out the Christmas decorations--

Thoma's awful attempt at smiling these days....

Mary showing off our Christmas ornament from 08' when we first moved to Sydney.

Decorating the tree!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Great Barrier Reef- Day 3

Our last day in Port Douglas we explored the Daintree Rain-forest. This is the largest rain-forest in Australia and responsible for 30% of the frog, reptile and marsupial species in Australia, 65% of Australia's bat and butterfly species, and 18% of the Australian bird species. There are also over 12000 species of insects in this rain-forest alone (wiki) and probably lots more to be discovered. Below are some pictures of what we hiked through....

Another crocodile sign.... just don't go in the water!

Prickly vines....

Cassowary signs...these birds are near extinct (about the size of an ostrich/emu) and only found in northern Australia and papa new guinea.

A random chicken in the bush.... much more colourful than an American chicken!

After hiking around we found a local ice cream store next to the beach....

Ice cream ingredients in season, and our only option of of ice cream flavours.

From left to right, canistel, ?, soursop & Jackfruit!

All the fruit is grown on the premises and used in the ice cream (banana's are still getting ripe)!

After Ice cream and the beach, we waited to cross the croc river via ferry. No bridge has been built due to all the attacks on the builders.

After a day of hiking we went back to the resort and walked along the beach until dinner. I thought this seaweed looked like a seahorse!

Happy Birthday Stan, the love of my life!

These little balls were made by these little crabs, they were so cool!

Seafood buffet at the hotel, happy birthday Stan!