Aussie Pizza and Wine Country

We returned to the Sydney Vivid show the following weekend to show the kids the spectacular light performance.   Some Australian friends joined us and treated us to a real Aussie dinner in advance of the show.  Here is the menu of pizzas we sampled from the Australian Hotel.  Most were surprisingly good with the exception of the crocodile pizza. Capsicum is what they call red/green/yellow peppers. Unfortunately it was another rainy night for the show.  It probably helped contain the crowd, but we likely would have stayed longer if it weren’t raining, but Paige enjoyed working the crowd with her own umbrella.  
 


Last weekend was a 3-day weekend with Monday being a public holiday for the Queen’s birthday.  We don’t have another 3-day weekend for some time, so we took an overnight trip to Hunter Valley wine country.  It’s about a 2 hour, picturesque drive from Sydney.  We treated ourselves to McDonald’s (Macca’s) Egg McMuffins on the way out town first.  We lucked out and had beautiful weather and it wasn't too crowded.   We scheduled a horse and carriage ride so the kids could have fun and we could experience some of the smaller wineries.   Our horses, Cowboy and Louise took us on the back roads to the wineries and Cade got to help drive the carriage.  The kids both kindly shared some of their apples with the horses as well.   Matt and I took turns with the tastings while the kids ran around and played.  They did get to enjoy the olive oil and chocolate tastings.  Our hotel was very kid friendly with several outdoor games including life size checkers, chess, ping pong, croquet  and giant balls and bean bags.  We met up with some friends at our hotel that evening and then they joined us for dinner and then for aqua and putt-putt golf on Sunday.   Here is Cade at the driving range trying to hit the ball into a bucket in the lake.

 

We have all been battling colds and coughs for the past few weeks and we are ready to be healthy again.  Happy Father’s Day to all the great Dads.  For some reason, Australian’s celebrate Father’s Day in September so it has thrown us off a bit.    Of course, Matt is expecting two celebrations:) .  On our way to Cade's soccer game yesterday morning, we went through another RBT (Random Breath Test) at 8 AM in the morning.  Really?  I guess they are catching people who are still out from the night before.