Mother's Day and Sydney VIVID

Mother's Day was a lot of fun this year.  Both of the kids' schools had activities to make the day extra special.  At Cade's school they had a Mother's Day Stall as a school fundraiser.  The parents/boys purchase a $10 gift wrapped in clear cellophane and donate it to the Mother's Day Stall.  Then, that Friday before, each boy brings $10 and gets to go shopping and pick something out and wrap it.  Cade picked out some soaps and made a sweet card.  I loved how involved he was with the process.  Paige treated me to a Friday afternoon Mother's Day concert at her school.  We got dressed up and they performed about 6 songs and then we had "afternoon tea" following.  My favorite song - "You are my sunshine, you are my sunshine.  You make me happy when skies are gray.  You'll never know Mom how much I love you.  Please don't take my sunshine away".  She continues to sing it for me in the car each morning.  The weather was beautiful on Mother's Day. We enjoyed a great brunch at Manly Beach followed by a ferry ride into the city to visit the Sydney Fish Market.    Father's Day in Sydney is not celebrated until September for some reason.  The best question came at the end of the day when Cade asked, "Mom, when do we celebrate kid's day?"  Both Matt and I answered at the same time, "EVERYDAY!"

The evening before we had an Australian family over for dinner.  Cade and their son are in the same class and play soccer together.   We laughed so hard when they showed up to our house with a pack of Budweiser for us:)

Every week, Cade has a news topic that he presents to his class.  They are usually pretty simple, like tell us about your favorite holiday or your favorite movie.  This week, they were asked to sing their favorite song.  We had been practicing, "Twinkle twinkle little star, my mommy drives a racing car (I wish - my Toyota Aurion is far from a racing car, but at least my kids think I am cool:).  Then the night before as we were getting ready for bed, Cade changed his mind.  He decided that his favorite song was 'Call Me Maybe' and that is what he wanted to sing to the class and I said, "Well, OK, can't argue with that".  I didn't get a call or a letter from the teacher, but I would have loved to have seen the looks on their faces.  The school is very formal and I am sure it was unexpected, but you have to let kids make their own decisions:)

This week, there were several US Cerner associates in town for a user group conference and on Friday night they wanted to experience Sydney.  We took a cruise around the Sydney Harbour and it was a real treat.  Friday was the opening night for Sydney VIVID, a spectacular artistic light show on the Sydney Opera House.  It was really beautiful and the art was unbelievable.    These pictures were taken from our boat. The lights from the show lit up the water and bridge and made for a great picture.   It did start raining on us towards the end so we went to the Opera Bar for drinks and dinner following.  The VIVID show is running for the next 2 weeks, and we plan to take the kids to see it again next weekend.  Check out this video for preview.