Christmas in July

Our girls love Christmas. Tess in particular has a fondness for talking about Santa, singing "Jingle Bells" year 'round and playing in snow. To the girls' delight Balmain Public puts together a school event called Christmas in July. I saw references to this early in the year and had no clue what it could mean. After asking around I found out that the tradition stems from the desire to celebrate Christmasy traditions during the coldest time of year in Australia. Several hotels up in the Blue Mountains offer whole weekend packages where they serve a full roast turkey dinner with mulled wine and minced pies. In the mountains one might even see a few snowflakes. Around here it's not nearly that cold but at 50 degrees outside at night it still felt nice to hold a warm drink and eat a meat pie. 

So on Friday evening we headed up to school as a family. We listened to kids sing carols.

We decorated ornaments, bracelets and gingerbread cookies.

Tess borrowed a red and green outfit (complete with reindeer clip) from a friend. We had a lot of fun. I'm glad we could take part in another distinctly 'stralian tradition. 

Winter day at Watson's Bay

Coming back from Bali I was struck again by the beauty of Sydney. We just adore this city. On Sunday we revisited one of our favorite spots - Watson's Bay. Riding the ferries through Sydney harbor will never get old. I could spend every day between now and August 29th just on ferries.

Once at Watson's we took the girls to the playground, indulged in some fish and chips and then split up to explore two new areas. Emily and Brian took the high road and walked up along the cliff's edge. 

Meanwhile, Tess and I explored the harbor side. We found a sneaky spot to snack on passionfruit. 

We then walked over to the secluded Camp Cove beach. The water was a lot cooler than in Bali but it felt nice to relax on the beach and not have anyone sell us anything. 

On the way back to the ferry dock Tess and I picked out our favorite house - the blue one - and our favorite boat - also blue. 

We are clearly not ready to be done with Sydney yet. In fact, Brian and I have started daydreaming about having a retirement home here. (We can dream, right?) We hope thirty years from now the trip between Boston and Sydney will go a lot faster.

I'll leave you with a parting shot of this pelican. See the photo below for the scale of this nearly-kid-sized bird. 

Bali - Sanur and Jimbaran Bay

On our final day in Bali we stayed closer to our hotel and finally explored the Sanur area. The girls adored playing in the kids pool and we happily left them to enjoy the Kids Club while we packed up the hotel room. 

We walked from our hotel to a local department store called Hardys. Here the girls each picked out a sarong and a sundress to bring home. It felt good to finally go into a fixed price store and at $3 a dress we could hardly feel we had overpaid. We checked out the fish spa outside. These little critters nibble the dead skin off your feet. We didn't end up doing it but we did stick our fingers in to try how it felt. 

We enjoyed a yummy lunch in Sanur at a location called The Porch. When we spotted this area out back Tess declared it looked like Keene Valley in Bali. Despite our 87 degree high humidity day I think the Adirondacks were probably even hotter!

From lunch we walked over to the Sanur beach. We did a lot of walking through areas like this. 

Eventually we found the beach area associated with our hotel, found chairs and began to relax. We even swam in the warm shallow ocean. 

All along the beach we met people offering hair braiding, massages and nail treatments. I decided that the girls and I would get our nails painted. As cheap as it was - $5 for a pedicure - I found the constant up-selling frustrating.

Emily and Tess thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Our flight back to Sydney left at 10:30pm so we were able to pack in a full day. We checked out of our hotel and drove over to Jimbaran Bay near the airport for one last sunset dinner on the beach. Our driver suggested a wonderful seafood restaurant that looked right out on the local fishing boats.

The girls were far from adventurous with their eating in Bali. They consumed a lot of chicken and chips but they did learn to love the local snake fruit. We received a kilo of these from Brian's work friend. They have a rough snake-like pattern on the outside. The inside looks unsettlingly like a garlic clove but tastes sweet and crunchy like an apple. 

So I'll leave you with this parting shot of the sun setting. The red eye flight home was tough. The girls were exhausted. The airport was really poorly set up. They fell asleep in all sorts of uncomfortable and awkward places. But we made it home and we have a ton of amazing memories from our time. Tess kept talking about "the next time we go to Bali" and Brian and I just laughed. At some point they'll realize how special and unusual this whole experience has been.

Bali - Safari Day

Most of Bali feels like a bargain but sometimes you have to splurge to do the sort of things you just can't do in other parts of the world - like ride elephants and touch tigers. We signed up for the Elephant Safari package. That twenty minute ride was a lot of fun but it turned out to be just part of a full and enjoyable day.

The animals roam free in different areas of the Bali Safari & Marine Park and then visitors travel through by bus (or elephant). It is all set up to resemble an African safari. They break the areas into African wildlife and Indonesian wildlife. I'm glad we got to go through on both modes of transport. We did the bus first and got a lot of good photos. The areas looked on the small side for the size of the animals but overall they seemed well cared for. 

This tiger walked right next to our bus. You can see the side of the window in the photo. If the window were down I probably could have touched him. 

When we went through again on the elephants we were not able to bring our own cameras but we did feel a lot closer to the animals. And, of course, we had the thrill of being so close to the elephant. Emily and I rode together. She had a lot of questions. How old is the elephant? 34 When is his birthday? I don't know. How long does it take to teach him? 6 months. Brian tells me Tess squealed with delight the whole time and grinned ear to ear. 

We made sure to watch the animal show and hear more about the variety of animals found in Indonesia. They did a separate elephant education show as well. The girls seemed to enjoy the shows and they definitely left with a keener awareness of endangered species and the threat of extinction. 

The girls each took turns feeding carrots to the elephants. 

Our entrance package included four professional photos. I jumped at the chance to pose with an orangutan. I'm thrilled they could fit in the whole family. 

This photo with the girls and the orangutan might be my favorite from the whole trip. They have no idea how lucky they are!

Emily and Tess declined to get photographed with the tiger cub. It's probably best because Brian and I both really wanted to try it. Brian followed the rules and did not touch the tiger. The woman after him reached in and pet the tiger. When I went up I figured I'd try reaching out. The child that went after me must have pushed it further still because the tiger got ruffled and pawed at her. She left in tears without a photo. We were definitely not in Kansas anymore. 

The girls each picked out a new stuffed friend to bring home. Em chose this baby white tiger that came in a little purse with his own little milk bottle. Here she is holding it up in front of the actual white tiger. 

Tess chose a baby cheetah. The girls have been babying their two little guys ever since. 

As if that wasn't enough for the day we came back to the hotel, played in the pool and then Brian and I went out to dinner while the girls stayed in with a babysitter. Whew.