Zoo, Weekend Fun and Flat Alexis

I am a little delayed with my blog update, but we had an Internet outage for 36 hours which set me back.  Oh, Telstra Australia - you know how to test my patience. 


Cade and Paige at Taronga Zoo

We finally made it to the zoo and caught the last day of the dinosaur exhibit.  It rained some and was a little cooler, but it was fun.  The zoo is very impressive and a huge hill down or up depending on where you arrive.  We traveled all the way down to the bottom and took the sky safari back up which has beautiful views of the Sydney Harbour.  Since it is just 10 minutes from our house, we bought an annual pass so we could go back anytime. 

Our friend, Flat Alexis Forgy joined us for a few adventures and she just left for home yesterday in the mail with lots of fun pictures of her time in Sydney.   The kids got a big kick of taking pictures everywhere she went with us.   She visited all of the famous Sydney spots, spent some time at the beach, rode a Vespa and even got to meet a few new Aussie boys. 

Friday evening, we had dinner at our house with a friend of Matt's from Cerner and his wife and the executive who is wrapping up his time here.   We had dinner and drank wine out of my beautiful plastic cups.  At least they understand the sea shipment process and delays.  Last weekend was gorgeous and we spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning at the beach.  We tried to FaceTime with our dinner club back in KC and were able to say hello for just a few minutes before the connection gave up.  The kids got new boogie boards and were trying them out on the mini-waves at Balmoral Beach.  We enjoyed dinner with some new friends from San Francisco and their neighbors (locals) on Saturday night.  Their son is in Kindergarten with Cade and they have two older kids.    It was fun to exchange our experiences and also get some tips from the friendly local Australian.  It was a great time and a late night.  The kids watched movies while we enjoyed dinner and drinks outside.   

We brought some sweet treats and met our neighbors this past weekend.  They all seemed very friendly and they have some older kids so we are hoping for some neighborhood sitters so we can get a date night in soon.  The family next door has a little boy and Paige and him share the same birthday.  They will both be turning three on March 24th!  When Matt told his colleagues in the office that we brought the neighbors candy and walked around to introduce ourselves, he got a lot of laughs- apparently that is not very common here.