2012 Christmas Card

In case you missed our Christmas Card,  here it is in all it's glory!

We had another fantastic year in 2012 with two big changes. Our first change was moving from Sydney to Melbourne at the start of the year. We LOVE Melbourne's culture, activity, and entertainment in conjunction with the ocean, mountains, and countryside. We were not surprised to learn that if you wiki 'most livable cities' Melbourne has been ranked as the #1 city in the world! Our second big change was becoming permanent residents in Australia.

This year Stan has continued to work at Bain in consulting and we continued to explore more of Australia. We spent a bit of time driving, but managed to see the White Cliff opal mines, Bendigo, Broken hill, Darwin to Broom and in August, Stanford and I celebrated our 10-year anniversary on lovely Hamilton Island!

This year Olivia (9) has really blossomed! She loves to sing and preform. She had her first major audition this year - making it to final round for the Broadway production of Annie. We were so proud of her and are trying to facilitate her natural talent with dance and singing classes this year which take up much of her time. Olivia also started Kumon, Surf/ lifesaving and guitar this year!

Mary (7) is at a very sweet age and has had a lot of 'firsts' this year, e.g. Mary lost her first two teeth and started riding her bike without training wheels to school. Mary also started surf/ lifesaving with Olivia, got her first pet a bunny named Chloe (later re-named Henry.)

Thomas (4) started his first year of pre-school at Brighton Grammar (an all-boys Anglican private school).  Thomas is very social, he makes friends easily and loves nothing more than spending the day with his 'mates' This year Thomas started swimming and soccer.
We hope you have a very Merry Christmas and wish you all the best in 2013!

The Swinton Family!