April School Holidays

Cade finished his first term at Kindy.  Every few months, primary schools kids are off for 2-3 weeks.   Cade has enjoyed tennis camp and soccer camp with some boys from school.    It has been a juggling act with late drop offs, early pick-ups and trying to squeeze work in between.  Last Friday, we picked up Cade from camp and headed inland to the Blue Mountains (about 1.5 hours from Sydney).  We stopped at McDonalds for a little American fix on the way out of town.  When we arrived that evening it was too dark to see anything.  The pictures from of our hotel showed gorgeous views, but when we woke up on Saturday morning it was pouring rain and foggy so no mountain views on Saturday.  We drove to the Jenolan Caves and went cave hiking.  We had to break out our winter coats for the first time for the trip.    It was really spectacular and dry!  Fortunately our hotel had many kid-friendly activities, so we enjoyed swimming in the indoor pool and a movie at the hotel cinema.  When we woke up on Sunday morning, the sun was shining and we could see the mountains!  We started out our morning with a golf cart “buggy” ride around the hotel grounds and golf course and then went to Scenic World and rode the Scenic Railway, Cableway, Skyway all through the mountains.  It was nice to get away, but we were excited to head back “home” to the coast and warmer weather.  Here are some pics from our weekend.

 

Easter - Aussie Style

Easter in Australia is a bigger holiday than Christmas.  The entire city shuts down for Good Friday and the Monday following Easter Sunday is a public holiday.  The city was crazy busy on Thursday with everyone trying to get groceries and run errands before heading out of town for the long weekend.   Some friends invited us to Palm Beach (about 45 minutes away) for Friday.  We headed there about 10AM and returned later that evening around 10PM.    We enjoyed a full day at the beach.  The kids built sand castles and Paige took a nap on the beach.  It took me awhile to enjoy the beautiful afternoon because the surf was so strong.  The waves were huge and I was nervous with the kids even getting close to the water.  It is a very different beach compared to the one by our house. Fortunately, the kids stayed back most of the time and there was a salt water pool nearby with overflow beach water.  The kids were able to put their floaties on and swim around.  Matt enjoyed a 2-hour surf lesson from a surf instructor from Manly.  It was fun to watch a 6’4” dude try to surf, but I think he did pretty well for his first time.   After the beach, we lounged around and had awesome Aussie style dinner with our friends before heading back.  It was hard not enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, but Australia has a zero tolerance drinking and driving policy and  is known for its random checks.  We encountered our first one on the way home that evening.  You will even hear about them on a random Tuesday mornings across the city.

The Easter bunny came on Saturday before Matt headed back to Kansas City for another set of meetings.  To be honest, it was a tough weekend for me to have our family apart on Easter and to be so far away from our extended family.  The kids and I had fun at the zoo and we went to Balmoral Beach for lots of play time and a picnic of fish and chips from the local famous spot, Bottom of the Harbour.  For a city so focused on healthy eating, they have the biggest chocolate eggs here that all of the kids go nuts over around Easter time.  They are everywhere.   Matt was gone for about a week.  He landed on Saturday morning at 7:00- just in time for Cade’s first soccer game. 

Mondate

Matt and I have struggled with not having as much time to ourselves for date nights and nights out with friends away from the kids.  We were so lucky to have both sets of grandparents in KC to help watch the kids.   So we came up with the idea of a Mondate – we both take Monday off and have a day date.  After we dropped the kids off at school, we went hiking through Mosman.  Mosman has about 10 different hiking trails that connect to different parts of the city.    We grabbed our water bottles and left about 9AM.  We walked through bush land, along the coastline and through some neighborhoods with some pretty extraordinary homes.  I love that the homes here are all so different.  There is a mix of very old 1900’s renovated homes, California style, modern architecture and everything in between.  Before we knew it, we had hiked about 7 miles through some pretty steep hills, but the views were amazing.   It was a great morning until I got hit by a van while we were trying to cross the street.  He was stopped trying to enter traffic onto a busy road and was paying attention to the traffic flow and what was in front of him.  He took off when I was almost past his van (Matt was just in front of me - how do you not see a 6’4” dude? The pressure of the van and my arm pushing off the car rolled me off to the side.  I was fine, just really shaken up and my arm hurt for an hour or so.  The driver realized what had happened and once he saw that I was still standing, he just took off – what a nice guy!

After our hike, we went to this cute grocery store/restaurant called Fourth Village near our house for wood-fired pizza (it is like Dean and Deluca with more of a grocery and cheese room and is full of friendly Italians).    We observed how many people were enjoying full bottles of wine with their lunch and how slow people are when they dine out.  Dining out is more of an experience here, not a quick in-and-out event. Unfortunately, wine did not even sound good to me.  We went through three very large bottles of water as we were so dehydrated from the hike. 

Matt has taken over the role as President of the Australian K-State Alumni Association.  There was a delegation from K-State in Australia, and we invited them over to our house for dinner while they were in town. The group included the Dean of the School of Agriculture, the head of Marketing and Communications for the University, a Professor of Plant Pathology and the Australian Liaison for K-State. They kindly brought us Australia/K-State pins and we talked about the research work they are doing here in agriculture and bioscience developments.  Pretty interesting.  (Yes, I had a few glasses of wine to participate in that conversation).  K-State has an ambitious goal to be ranked in the top 50 of all universities for research by 2025 – global partnerships are a big part of that endeavor. 

We will be organizing a few alumni events this year and Kirk Shultz, President of K-State will be visiting in November.