Happy Birthday Papa!

We LOVE you Papa and can't wait to see you in a few weeks! Happy Birthday!

Caught in the act...

Lydia loves to climb, even after repeatedly being instructed not to. I caught her in the act the other day.

guilty and she knows it...

Whining after she was instructed to not do it any more...and stopped from doing it.

Botanical Gardens

The Rose Garden...I have been waiting months for these to bloom!

"smelling" the roses

pow pow

Noodle Night Markets

During October Sydney host its International Food Festival. We have had fun doing a few new things during this month. Our favorite was Noodle Night. It was set up in a park that is a few minutes from our apartment. There were 30 or so different Asian restaurants that has stalls selling food. The noodle nights were for 2 weeks (weekdays) and we went 3 times. I tried to talk Caleb into going a fourth time, but he wasn't interested. We enjoyed some yummy Malaysian noodles, Japanese pancakes, variety of Thai dishes and dumplings. We have had a lot of variety of foods while here and I have to admit, I am loving the variety. We even got food from our favorite Thai place, Chat Thai. Soooo, yummy and reasonably priced (which is huge deal here). The third time we went, we met a few families from the church we have been attending. We love the church and have been very welcomed by them. We really enjoyed the evenings out in the city.

They also were having an art festival throughout the city. So one night on our way home, we walked through another part of the park that had photographs hanging in the trees. This is a fun aspect of living in a big city that we will miss.

Happy Birthday Grandmama!!!

Grandmama,
We love you so much and thank the Lord for you. We had such a fun time with you while you visited us in Australia. We look forward to seeing you in less than a month! We hope that you have a great birthday...and that we can catch you on Skype.

Happy Birthday Grandmama! We all love you so much!

Paddy's Market

I've mentioned before the market that I have come to love and frequent weekly. The more I go the more I realize how good it is. A lot of the things are about half the cost of the grocery store. But the cost does change every week (daily I think). This week red peppers were $8kg and they were $2kg about a month ago. When they were $2kg I got a red pepper for about $.50. And now with the HORRIBLE exchange rate, it cost pretty much the same as US dollars. Side note, when we found out we were coming to Australia an Australian dollar got you about $0.83. Caleb tried to go ahead and exchange some money but had trouble so we didn't worry about it. When we got here the rate was $0.89US to AU$1.00. As I type this the rate is $.991 and the worst it got was $.997. So, instead of being about to take about 10% off the price of items to make us feel better about the prices it is now equal. What also stinks is we have been waiting to get our souvenirs until closer to time to come home and now that is going to cost us at least 10% more. Oh well, it stinks but nothing we can do about it. Back to the market...I really just like going for the fresh food, but they have about everything you could want or need. We finally took Caleb this past weekend. We got a few souvenirs and finally some pictures.

A little workout

Caleb was trying to do a little workout but had some company.

ignore the mess in the background...it was a tent that got destroyed

Brian also has some company during one of his workouts

no words needed...

a day at the botanical gardens

just like Aaron

Lydia loves doing things like and with Aaron. They are getting better at playing together, but most times when you turn your back you hear Lydia scream bloody murder. We have learned that this is rarely due to Aaron but her getting mad. She typically will be stuck or something is hard or she wants something Aaron has. She also has a tendency to chase after Aaron screaming "miiiiine". As I write this She is climbing in and out of a drawer trying to get a book. She will scream when she has trouble. Anyways, back to the purpose of the post. Both kids love shoes. They wear them when we are just around the house. But Aaron does take them off as soon as we get home as well. Anyways, after dinner and baths they are all ready for bed in PJs and they both have to put on shoes (without socks...their new trend). Here Aaron is reading to Lydia. They were really cute looking at pictures together. Lydia's love for Aaron and all things he loves probably explains why most of her words are related to boy stuff; car, cyl (motorcycle), ain (train), ruck (truck), ball, tdoow (touchdown, we say that when Aaron falls, ball. She also calls and points these things out when she sees them. To give grandmas a little hope that she is a little girl she did say baby and pretended to rock a baby when we sat next to one on the ferry the other day. I guess this is all the result of having an older brother that she adores. But she will love playing on the pretend construction site at the museum that we are going to shortly.

Wildlife World again

I think that I mentioned before that I got an annual pass into some cool attractions here. The pass includes the aquarium and Wildlife World. They are both really good and we have been to each at least 3 times. The kids and I went the other week then we went again last weekend to show Caleb. It is really nice having the pass too because we get to skip the line waiting to get in!!!

Lydia's favorite part, playing on the air vent!

The butterfly exhibit was open this time. Aaron loved it and even got to hold one!

Daddy and his kids

The last post on NZ.  I love these 3 so much!