Planes, Trains, Automobiles...and Ferries

Our new life of just me and my three boys is starting to sink in that this is now our 'normal, but school holidays are still really hard as we try to fill in our days without Aaron and Noah.   A couple of months ago when there were cheap airfares I rang my brother Chrish, to see how he felt about us coming to spend some time with him during the holidays.  It's good that he lives on his own and has lots of space for us.

On Thursday after work and school, we finished packing and couldn't wait to get on the plane to get away from the cold, rainy weather.  Harri was especially excited to see Chrish and his new puppy Tess, and was counting down the days all week.

We always joke that it's raining in Sydney whenever we come because it's actually pretty true, but we were so happy that we've arrived when there's a few days of lovely winter sun predicted.  On our first day here we decided to make the most of the sunny weather and headed into the city on the train, to go to Taronga Zoo. 

Uncle Chrish introduced the boys to the game Candy Crush. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not ;)
Once we were in the city we jumped on a ferry to get to the zoo.  Harri started freaking out at first, thinking it was going to be rough like on Uncle Eden's boat.  Once he realised that it wasn't going to be rough, he really started to enjoy it. 


 It's always so beautiful on the harbour. 

Because we arrived in Sydney very late the night before, we were really tired so we all slept in and didn't get to the zoo till late.  Our plan was orginally to go to Luna Park, but when Jay broke his arm at school, we knew it wouldn't be any fun for him watching us go on rides, so we decided to go to the zoo instead.  We only lasted a few hours before Jay's arm started really hurting him, but we had a lovely time. 

 Kobe the tour guide.

Kobe has been having a lot of dreams lately where he can remember them for the first time.  Lately he's been dreaming about bears attacking him and gets so scared at night.  Every night I have to remind him of the same thing - that the only type of bears we have in Australia are koalas and teddy bears.  He was so happy to see the koalas and to know that they weren't scary at all.




 The boys loved the seal show. 



The boys loved it when the waves splashed up on us on the ferry on the way back. 

Chrish always plays footy on the weekends, and the boys were excited to be able to watch him play.  He was playing a long way from home, so we decided that on the way there we would stop off at Bondi Beach as I had never been there before, and always wanted to go.  Jay reminded us that the last series of The Block All Stars was filmed in Bondi, so we found out the address of the houses and went and had a sticky beak.  I didn't tell Harri that we were going to go there, so when Chrish pulled up outside them Harri kept asking where we were, and then he saw the houses and said 'The Block houses!' and was very excited. 

It's always so strange to see the houses completed and know that there were months of TV crews and chaos happening on those streets, while the houses were being renovated.  

We then loved spending some time in the sun on the beach.  Bondi was even more beautiful than I imagined. 
Kobe was the only one who was brave enough to have a splash in the water.  He was worried about going in in his undies, but was okay when I told him he could wear his singlet so it would cover his undies.  Luckily I did think about bringing a change of undies in case he wanted to get wet.

I was hoping to see some of the lifeguards from the show Bondi Rescue, but there were none to be seen.

We then went to watch Chrish play footy...or I should say Harri and Kobe did.  The car was parked right behind the goals which meant I was able to sneak in a nanna nap in the car in the sun, while the boys watched Chrish play, while Jay had his eye on them. 
We were looking forward to coming back to Chrish's place to hopefully watch the Hawks finally beat the Cats on TV, but unfortunately it wasn't meant to be.   Harri is so much like Aaron and was so worked up during the game, and in tears at the end saying that he was missing Aaron.  He always gets very emotional when there are big things on like a game that Aaron would've loved watching.

The boys have a love/hate relationship with Chrish's dog, Tess.  Harri and Kobe get nervous around her when she's excited and jumps up on them, but they are learning how to control her and love when they can get her to sit and listen to them.   Poor Jay hates that his arm is broken as he can't be near Tess as he can't risk his arm being knocked.   I'm still not at all convinced that getting a dog is what we should do, so it's good for the boys to spend some time around a dog, so they know what it's really like.

Thank you to everyone for your lovely comments, and support about my new job. It means a lot to me to know that so many people care.  It's nice to be able to spend some of our school holidays with Chrish before I start my new job, and to get away from the cold weather in Tassie for a little bit.  Everyone at home is talking about how much snow is around on the mountains, and how cold it is right now, so I'm grateful to have some lovely sunny days up here.