Scorching Sydney

We always love visiting my brother Chrish in Sydney and months ago I grabbed some sale flights to go up during summer holidays for a week with my Mum.  We went up a couple of weeks ago and the first thing we did was jump in the car to go to Wet n Wild. We once again bought season passes so that we could go whenever we wanted, as it's just 10 minutes from Chrish's house.  Jalen was not impressed about the boy's pose :)

Chrish had the weekend with us and also took one day off work to hang out which was great.  He came to Wet n Wild with us and Jay jokingly said that he wanted to go on the 'Sky Coaster' which is like a giant swing that you get strapped into and lifted 75 metres above the ground before you pull the chord to let yourself swing back and forth.  Chrish said he would go with him, and within half an hour they had organised it and were getting strapped in ready to go!

My heart was racing watching them being lifted up! There is no way that I could ever do that. This is a video of it just off my iPhone.  I decided not to use my good camera up there - just wanted to enjoy things without having to lug a big camera around too much.  Jay decided he wanted to be the one to pull the chord to make them 'fly' and had to listen to the guy yelling out 'three, two, one, fly!'.

My friend Makayla made a 1 Second Everyday video last year and shared it on Facebook at the end of the year. It shows one second from every day of the the year, and I absolutely loved it so I ended up buying the app so I could do it for this year.  I'm still videoing every day, but with the app you can also make 'freestyle' vidoes where you can add any video and use 1 second from each clip to make a larger video. I had lots of fun over the week capturing videos to put together into larger videos. This is our video of arriving in Sydney and at Wet n Wild.  It's just using my iPhone so the quality isn't great, but I love that you can capture things so quickly and easily.

We loved Wet N Wild a lot more this year as it was so much easier to get in lots of rides. They have changed the system so that every pass has  'tap and play'.  You tap your band on a machine and choose which ride you would like to go on. It then gives you a time to go back (anywhere from 1 minute to an hour and half) and then you know that at time you can go to that ride and get straight on. 

You can only tap for one ride at a time, but in the meantime while you wait you can can go on other rides which have shorter lines, swim in the wave pool, float around the lagoon or have lunch etc. 

We got so many rides in this time because of it and didn't have to wait in lines for any longer than about 10 minutes each time we visited.  One day we went there for an hour and a half and got in about 6 rides including some of the more extreme rides a couple of times.


Jay found one of Chrish's dress up costumes (he and his footy team often dress up for football events) and cracked us up as he put it on and modeled it for us.

Jay and Chrish did their annual bike ride together, which always scares the crap out of me, but it's nice that Jay gets to do it.

On Chrish's day off went went into Circular Quay on the train and caught the ferry to Manly. No trip to Sydney is complete without going to Manly and grabbing lunch. Kobe cracked me up as he looked like a little old man waiting for the train.

Once again there was a cruise ship docked at Circular Quay and it made us wish even more that we could go on a cruise.  The boys kept saying ' I thought we were saving to go on one Mum!' and I told them we need to stop going on holidays to Sydney if we want to go on a cruise! Kobe said 'okay Mum when we get home I'll help you so we don't spend lots of money so we can go'.

It was super windy on the harbour :)

Love this view so much! Sydney is such a pretty city.

Arriving at Manly.

We all grabbed lunch on before walking to Manly Beach. The boys wanted KFC (out of all the things they could've chosen they always choose KFC or McDonalds. Sometimes Kobe will choose sushi) and it was a very new and fancy one where they make the food right in front of you.

It was such a beautiful day. 

There were lots of these signs up the beach but lots of people were swimming and there were lifesavers about, so we thought we would jump in too. 

After we were in the water for about ten minutes the lifeguards got on the speakers and said that it wasn't safe to swim and asked everyone to get out of the water and swim between the flags (which was right up the other end of the beach). We headed up there for a bit but it was actually not as safe as where we were, and it was full of seaweed.  Chrish ended up getting caught in a little rip but was able to get back okay, so we ended up just getting out.  I love the waves and beaches in Sydney but often it's too dangerous to swim and the beaches are closed which isn't much fun.

We grabbed a slurpee for Aaron before jumping back on the ferry. They were always his favourite and he would go to 7Eleven every time he would go to the mainland just to get one. That was before Maccas and Hungry Jacks used to sell frozen drinks though, so I don't think he would be as excited about it anymore.

Before jumping on the train Mum bought an Aboriginal painting at Circular Quay. This is the artist who painted it.

This photo cracks me up with the hands on the hips :)

I only small storage on my iPhone so had to keep deleting things off my phone to take more videos and photos. Somehow I have lost one of my videos I made about going to Manly, but you can still watch it on Instagram here.

It was so hot while we were up there - unbearably hot! Chrish has air conditioning but only in the lounge room, so the first day we were there we went out and bought fans for the bedrooms.  It was really hard to sleep because it was so hot and one day we were there it was the record for the highest temperature overnight. 

The humidity made it worse and a lot of the time I just felt tired because of the heat.  We went to Wet n Wild 5 times while we were there - sometimes for 4 hours and other times just for a couple of hours. Thank goodness it wasn't far from Chrish's house. 

 

My poor chocolate didn't like the heat either! 

On one of the days that it was 42 degrees we thought we would go to Maccas for tea to get away from the heat for a bit, but they didn't have air conditioning! It was even hotter inside the store! We quickly ate and left and then grabbed a slurpee on the way home. 

Some days it was even too hot to want to go to Wet n Wild as we weren't keen on running around to all the rides in the heat, so one day we just went and literally just floated around the lagoon for ages to cool down. 
Another day we decided to go shopping to avoid some of the heat as we knew we would have air conditioning in the car and shops.  We cracked up when we ran into Chrish there who was out and about and delivering (he works for Star Track which is a courier service).

That night we went to a Big Bash cricket game - Sydney Thunder played against Adelaide Strikers. Jay is not a cricket fan so he was happy to stay home and have a quiet night with Chrish's dog Tess with the air conditioning :)

Mum hadn't been to a Big Bash game before as she thought she wouldn't enjoy it, but I knew she would love it as it's a great atmosphere with music and fireworks and it's just a short game.  She wasn't game enough to wear the bucket head though!

Harri was going for Adelaide as that's his team.

This is the video I made of our day shopping and at the cricket. 

Another day we caught the train into the city and had a look around the market and had lunch at Darling Harbour. Jay was excited to go off to take some photos in the city.

Kobe loved the playground at Darling Harbour - especially the water play area.

I love that a video can show so much more than photos.

On our last day Chrish took us to Bondi before flying home.  There was no swimming allowed so we just ended up having a look at all the art, watching some skating and having lunch. It was still so hard to leave. I just love being close to the water so much.  Mum ended up staying with Chrish for an extra week and didn't fly home with us. 

The inauguration for Donald Trump was held the day we left and we couldn't believe what we saw a plane write in the sky - it happened at the same time that a women's rights march was going on in Sydney.  You can see it in the video :)

Jay found this book at the airport bookshop and we had to get a photo as everyone comments that he looks like Troye Sivan now that his hair is longer.

We got home late afternoon and I couldn't wait to get up to the hospital to visit my friend Simone who had a baby boy while we were away. He had to be delivered very quickly by emergency cesarean but all is good now.  His name is Emerson and he is so cute. It was lovely to have a cuddle and hear about his birth. Simone and her husband Simon now have 6 kids and it makes me tired just thinking about it, but she's amazing and so calm and seems to cope with anything! I know he is a very wanted little man and will bring lots of love and joy into their family.

We loved our week in Sydney but were all so happy to be home in our own beds, and away from the heat. I love summer and love it being hot, but I couldn't cope with a scorching summer like they have in Sydney all the time.  Thanks for having us again Chrish! We hope you are enjoying the peace and quiet with us all gone, although I'm sure you must be missing us!

Hurricanes and Hobart

Last summer holidays I took the boys to the cricket in Hobart and for Harri and Kobe it was one of the highlights of their holidays.   For a couple of months the boys have been asking if we can go to the cricket again and I promised them that we would go again.   We had heaps of fun with Tim and Helene and their kids there last year, so we asked them if they were keen to go again and of course they were :)

We stayed down for the night in a hotel which the boys always love doing.  We were lucky to get in somewhere as it was so busy with lots of hotels being booked out because of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht race, New Years Eve and the Taste of Tasmania all being on around the same time.  There were so many tourists about.

Harri obviously didn't know if it was summer or winter! ;)

Before we went to the cricket we spent some time shopping - we didn't make it in time to see the cat and the fiddle clock go off.

Harri is so much like Aaron with his love for sports and sport clothing - especially expensive shoes! He's always wanting the newest, coolest pair of shoes but he has to keep dreaming.

Jay had gone off to take photos (his favourite thing to do right now) and when we met up he showed us this awesome wall.

Before we went to the cricket we grabbed some tea at Burger Haus with Tim and Helene and their friend Paul who was down in Tassie for work from Queensland.

Jay isn't a cricket fan (or sport fan of any kind!) so he went to the movies while we were at the cricket.  I asked him if he felt strange going on his own (I actually love going to the movies by myself) and he said he didn't until the guy selling tickets said 'is it just you?'. He had a bit of a laugh about that.   I really don't know why he didn't want to come and put on a bucket head with us!?

The cricket was lots of fun but Harri was a bit emotional as he was the only one going for Adelaide (again so much like Aaron - going for anyone other than his state team!). 

The cricket is always lots of fun with music and fireworks and the crowd getting into it. There was a competition going that if you sang along to Richard Marx's song 'Right Here Waiting' and they got you on camera on the big screen you could be chosen to go  on the field at half time to attempt catching the cricket ball. If you caught them you won some cash.  Tim, Helene and I thought we would give it a good crack, and although we didn't get on the screen this photo was posted on the Hurricane's Facebook page the next day! It crack me up every time as it looks like we were drunk or something, but we were only drinking water and were just having lot of fun getting into it :)

The kids wanted to hang around to get autographs after the game and were excited to get a few.

It was a very late night by the time we got back to our hotel, so it was hard to drag ourselves out of bed the next morning.

How cute are the houses outside our hotel window!

We met up with our friend Dan and his kids for brunch at Honey Badger.  We missed you Lou - some people have to work while the rest of us are on holidays!

Tim and Helene met us just as we finished and the guys noticed I was taking a pic and tried to look cool and skinny :)

Because the Taste of Tasmania was on there were lots of free events on for the kids.  It turned out that the Hobart Hurricane players were actually in the park for an hour, so the kids were so excited to play cricket with them and get more autographs.

After hanging out with the cricket players we went to the Taste to grab some lunch. 

Before going home we had a super quick stop at Mona to check out this room that we had seen people share photos of.  It looks much bigger in photos - it's actually a very small room with mirrors which makes it look a lot bigger.

Milly stayed at my Mum's house for about four days even though we went to Hobart for a night, as she just stayed on from when we were there after Christmas.  Mum said Josie and Milly had the best time just playing together.  I went to pick up Milly the next day and the two of them greeted me at the gate - they were so cute.  Both of them were very quiet for a few days after I brought Milly back home. We think they were missing each other a lot!  It was actually very strange not having Milly at home for so long, and the boys missed her heaps.  I missed her too as it was just so strange without her - it definitely felt like someone in our family was missing. It's crazy how a dog can just feel like such a part of your family (even to a non dog lover!).