Sunday - by Luca

We went to the zoo. We saw a peacock bigger than a Cockatoo, it had a blue head and really big feathers at the back. We saw two elephants, a big elephant & a little elephant and they were holding hands by the tail and trunk. I wanted to see an echidna, we saw four of them, outside and in the dark, the one in the dark had a long yucky nose and was sticking it in a hole to eat. We floated in the sky in the sky train.

After, we went to Clifton Gardens to play on the toys and mommy made a nice lunch. We saw a beach and another beach across the water. We watched a big ferry drive past and another boat that looked like a ferry but was a tug boat. There were cool climbing toys and we were like Spiderman.

After lunch we took dad home and went to the shops and had ice cream.

It was a very good day.

The next Croc Hunter!

Luca had a couple of days away with Grandma and Grandpa at their van on the beach about 90 minutes north of Sydney. Building on his Python exploits in Thailand he was keen to show his flexibility in animal handling.

Luca sporting an old school Pittsburgh Pirates lid (a la Chuck D) and a lizard

Father's Day

No raincheck required this year, I got the full treatment for Father's Day.

It all started with our traditional present giving in bed before I'd even gotten up (actually I was pretty close to still being asleep). Luca was super excited about the day this year and started very early. He got to buy me a present of his choice at his school (a red lunch cooler with "Super Dad" written in yellow on the side), and he made chocolate rocky road which he said was a present that I could share with him. Kelly always gives the best fathers day presents because they usually involve something I can share with Luca and Scout, this year we all got "pantone" expresso coffee cups in different colours ("blue" for me, "red" for Luca and "pink" for Scout).

After we tried out the new cups with coffee and baby cino's I headed off to swimming with my dad. After the races we had a beer and then met my mum, Kelly and the kids at the local hamburger place "Curly's on the corner" - the only decent burgers around these parts.

Luca was also looking forward to leading my dad and I on a walk through the "jungle" around the headland from North Curl Curl beach to Dee Why beach. Luca and I did the same walk about six months earlier and it was cool to see how much he had grown, the last time I had to lift him up the improvised rock stairs at least twenty times, this time he did it all by himself.

Luca in the "jungle"

An awesome day that should happen at least half a dozen times a year! (Although there are probably some in our house who would argue that it already does).

Yum Cha

On the platform waiting for the train.

Almost six years in Australia and this weekend reminded me once again how amazing the weather is down under! Spring has only just begun and Saturday morning it was 80 degrees, not a cloud in the sky with a slight breeze. Some good friends invited us to Yum Cha in the city, so taking advantage of the beautiful Sydney weather and wanting a bit more adventure for the kids we took the train. The ride from the station to the city is only about 15 min, crosses the Harbor Bridge and stops at a few stations. Luca and Scout were glued to the windows and very excited on the way there and back.

Checking out one of the stations.

Yum Cha was delicious, the kids were very well behaved at the restaurant (maybe this is a benefit of our time in Thailand) our friends were doing well and we enjoyed catching up. Lovely weekend, with warm weather and tons of time outside. It's not quite beach weather yet, but my bet is we'll be in the ocean in the next few weeks. -kel

Thailand - Khao Lak pt.III

It might not sound like it from the earlier blogs but we did get out of the resort, and not just to ride elephants.

The main town Bang La On (which most people refer to as Khao Lak) was about 20 minutes drive from where we were staying. The roads are pretty crazy even though this area is not massively developed, there seems to be a skinny outside lane closest to the curb where all the motorcycles/scooters ride (and there are a lot of those, often with two or three people on them, sometimes with a baby up front on the drivers lap) and then all of the cars, trucks and buses use the other lane and are prone to high risk over taking. 95% of the cars on the road are pickups and that seems to be so they can double as cabs. The local cabs have a welded steel riding section with canopy screwed to the back of the pickup, so we were hanging on to the kids each time we rode in them for fear of losing them overboard - definitely a different experience.

If Scout moves to Thailand she wants a scooter in pink!

The town had some really great restaurants, a couple of 7Eleven's (where we picked up beer and snacks), a lot of shops that sold knock-off surfwear and a number of tailors and optometrists. It was really hot cruising around in the shops and after the first trip into town we decided that it was no fun for the kids so we got a sitter the next time we went in.

The second time we went in we had two objectives 1) find a tailor to copy a favourite pair of trousers of mine and a jacket of Kelly's, and 2) visit the local markets.

When the cab driver found out we were after a tailor he went on about the best tailor in the area and insisted we go there. The place was a mile and a half out of town and the driver promised that once finished someone at the tailors would give us a ride into town. Undoubtedly the driver got some form of kick back from the tailor for bringing in business and although we were aware of this we chanced it and it was a mistake. The tailor did not have great fabric so we decided to check the multiple tailor options in the town proper, but with no business there was no ride into town. With limited time and 32 degrees C temp the mile and a half walk into town was something we didn't want to face so we started walking in the opposite direction toward the local markets where we had seen some cabs (this was a bit less than a mile away). We had only just started walking along the side of the road, watching out for the scooters buzzing by us (no sidewalks here), when we saw a cobra and a cat in a stand off about 10 feet from the side of the road. We didn't care too much about the scooters at that point and found the next taxi in record time.

When we finally made it to the local markets we had a good time, again a lot of knock-off stuff but also all sorts of fruit and veg and some interesting stall food. It was a lot of fun and I guess our luck turned while we were there because no sooner had we finished with the market and were sitting down in a restaurant across the street enjoying a beverage then the heavens opened up.

Local markets

One of the highlights of our last couple of days was letting off paper lanterns on the beach at night and watching them fly off into the sky until you couldn't see them any more. All up there were probably one hundred lanterns let off in the space of 20 minutes so they made a continuous line of fire in the sky as far up as the eye could see. The kids stayed up late to do this and they loved it.

Kel & Luca waiting for the hot air to fill their lantern before release

The journey home was overnight so it was much easier on the kids who slept most of the way. It was a magic family holiday making it hard to snap out of holiday mode and get back to work. We are already planning our next Thailand visit, probably in 2013, and we are hoping that some of the family and friends in the US can join us!

Thailand - Khao Lak pt.II

The Le Meridien was awesome for more than just pools and food, there was a great activity schedule for kids and adults. There was a special kids indoor play centre called the Penguin Club that had everything from Playstation competitions through to crafts like t-shirt printing. Both Luca and Scout did a number of the craft classes but the stand out activity was the Thai boxing (Muay Thai) classes that Luca took. The kids dressed in the special Muay Thai boxing pants and boxing gloves and had lessons in a real boxing ring. There was no holding back as you can see from the photo's of Luca below.

Mosquito weight champion Luca Ferguson

For Kelly the favourite "activity" was the spa, which from her description sounded pretty decadent and awesome, and for me I enjoyed the garden tour. The guy who led the garden tour, Karn, became a bit of friend for me while we were there and whenever he saw us he would invite the kids to feed the Koi with him. There were some awesome ponds with pagodas built over them and all had masses of well fed, huge Koi in them.

There may have been a lot of Thai/Buddhist ornaments to choose from on the grounds of the resort but Scouty's favourite was a small statue of a Thai women that was outside of our room who was nicknamed the "booby lady" by Scout.

Scout and the "booby lady"

Thailand - Khao Lak pt.I

We've been waiting on this one for a while - a well earned break in the tropics in the middle of the Australian winter. There was the not insignificant hump of getting there with Luca and Scout to deal with but once that was done it was automatic switch-off.

We stayed at the Le Meridien Khao Lak which was great, we had been going back and forwards with a place in Phuket as an alternative but both the facility and the region were the right choice in the end. We had adjoining rooms with a door between the two rooms which meant the kids had the own room and they treated it as there own , I was asked to leave and go back to my "holiday house" by Scout on more than one occasion.

Luca eating Dragon Fruit at breakfast

First morning we headed down to the buffet breakfast which really set the scene for the food on the entire trip. The buffet breakfast which catered for Asian customers, Europeans, healthy eaters and the egg and bacon crowd (me!) was the way to get things started right everyday. After that we didn't need lunch, so we were on a two meal a day plan with dinner alternating between one of the restaurants at the resort (Italian, Indian, Thai, Korean, Seafood) and a trip into the local town to eat awesome Thai food for next to nothing. As my lead off topic you can tell the food was a big hit, in retrospect my enthusiasm for the food experience was not even dampened by dealing with 20 sit down restaurant meals with Luca and Scout - which is more than they have had to deal with for all of the non-Thailand part of their lives.

Kelly and Scout on a waterslide - but who is having the most fun?

The other day one activity that was high on the list were the water slides. Before we arrived, Thailand was the land of water slides and elephant rides in Luca and Scout's eyes. Day one we spent a good six hours in the pool and went up and down the water slides roughly 50 times. As well as having our "own" pool virtually outside our apartment the resort had three other massive pools with two of them having partial accommodation for children. Most days we did between 4 and 6 hours in the pools over two stints.

The other week one activity we got straight onto was the elephant riding. Luca got a big kick out of it and got to ride up front with the jockey(?), Scout didn't let her reputation down for instant sleep in any moving vehicle and was asleep before we even hit the jungle. Post the elephant rides we saw a snake show where this crazy guy was kissing massive cobras and getting them to spit venom at him and then he put an 8 foot long Burmese Python's down his pants. At one stage he got Luca out of the audience (which was just the Ferguson family) and was just about to put a python down Luca's pants when we put a halt to that (we told the guy Luca already had one down there and it didn't like competition). These guys were persistent and when we were not paying attention for a second they had Luca holding another large python with no assistance from them while they were taking pics that they later sold to us. A bit of reality on this, at one point on the elephant walk through the jungle we passed where these guys lived, it was primitive, third world so a couple of bucks for a photo didn't seem like much to part with.

Elephant jockey and snake charmer - Luca Ferguson

We were only a couple of days in and had the two big ticket items for the kids well and truly covered. I married a (beautiful) well organised, over achiever - as if anyone who knows Kel had any doubts!

Cool Cats and Longy Headland

As much as the upcoming family holiday to Thailand is on our minds we have still been making the most of our weekends in Sydney, inclement weather and all.

I swim early each winter Sunday morning in an ocean swimming club, the Cool Cats. Last night our club invaded the local fish and chip shop for a family social event. As you can imagine swimming in the ocean in the dead of winter attracts some strange characters and Kelly and the kids got to meet them all last night. The kids came along and were well looked after with copious amounts of seafood and a few unexpected presents, I enjoyed a few beers and a bit of banter and Kelly (apart from looking after the kids) recognised one of the guys as the bus driver that often drives her to work and so spent quality time talking about her morning commute. Given Kelly is also not a big seafood fan you can understand who got the best of that deal. I did try and make up for it by taking Kelly to breakfast on Saturday and having grandma look after Luca and Scout for a couple of hours.

With a break in the weather today Kelly got us all moving for a walk up Long Reef headland. The kids enjoyed getting out of the house and running up and down the grass hills and climbing rocks and we all enjoyed the view.

School Photo

Luca's 2011 School Photo. I can't believe how big he is growing, how clever he is and how much fun he is every single day. His teacher gave him great marks in his report and we couldn't be happier with how he is going at his "big boy" school. -kel

Taronga & Clifton Gardens

Luca is on school holidays and has been living the life. In the space of a couple of days he has gone to sports camp with five of his friends from school, had his first sleepover at a friends house, went on a play date at another friends house and today we went the zoo and had a picnic lunch as a treat for both Luca and Scout.

It was a little cold when we first got to the zoo but it warmed into a beautiful winter day without a cloud in the sky. The highlight of todays zoo visit, apart from Grandma and Grandpa coming with us, was a gorilla fight with both protagonists put in their place at the end of it by a huge silverback.

Scouty riding a leopard seal

After the zoo we went down to a beautiful park by Sydney Harbour called Clifton Gardens, had a picnic lunch and the kids played in the playground and along the waters edge. Awesome day.

Luca at Clifton Gardens

Ballet Recital

Pre-Recital

On stage

On stage

Scout had her first ballet recital today. She was adorable and loved every moment from the chit chat with her ballet friends, to being on stage. No tears, only big smiles from Scout. She was very enthusiastic and had a great time. The entire program was a bit like organised chaos. Luca was a super big brother, watching the entire performance and congratulating Scout on her performance by giving her flowers he had bought for her.

Mid performance

Mark and I were camera crazy, between the two videos and the 80+ photos we took, this event was well documented. On the ride home as we told Scout she was a wonderful ballerina, she said "I know...I am". What she lacks in skills she certainly makes up for in confidence! -kel

Cold and Rainy

It's been a cold and rainy June - not too much has been going on - a few painting projects, hanging new pictures in the house and watching our peas and broccoli grow.

Kung Fuuuuuuuuuuuu!

The most eagerly awaited movie of the year in the Ferguson household.

The Lilac Swim

Sunday Mark participated in a charity ocean swim at Bondi Beach in the ocean pool. It was a freezing rainy day (water 20 C, air 17 C) and although his team made it to the second round they didn’t make the final. "The Lilac Swim" raises funds for the Nelune foundation which supports cancer patients, finals or not, he had a great time supporting a very good cause.

That’s Mark in the middle, looks like he’s saying a prayer? What was Mark praying for anyway…that his picture wouldn’t be published in The Telegraph wearing a speedo, or that I wouldn’t post the pic on our blog so all of our friends who don’t read the Sydney papers wouldn’t miss out? -kel

Autumn

Autumn in Sydney is so fantastic, the weather is chilly, but not cold and for the most part the sun is shinning. We've always found this a great time of year to explore Sydney, since most of the summer we are at the beach. Saturday we took a trip to the Inner West. First up we checked out the Orange Grove Public schools markets. Particularly cool, as Mark's parents were with us, and Mark's dad actually went to school at Orange Grove. He started Kindergarden there in 1944, by his account the school hadn't changed much.

The kids were interested in Grandpa's reminiscing, but they were ecstatic about the pony rides. Scout was crazy after the pony ride, she was running and jumping up and down, she absolutely loved it. She is proving to be such a girly girl, ballet, ponies and refuses to leave the house unless she is wearing pink!

After the markets we played in a huge pile of leaves, there aren't many places in Sydney with traditional autumn leaves, this was a great treat for the kids who loved every second of the running, jumping and falling around.

Of course a day in the Inner West wouldn't be complete without a trip to The Three Weeds, our favorite pub. All in all a terrific Autumn day. Something tells me we'll be back at Orange Grove Markets for pony rides within the next month! -kel

Ballet

Ballet classes have started again. Scout is still loving every second of her class. Her classes are in a Girl Scout hall, and typical of all such halls in Australia, they are not heated. So yep, Scout is now rocking the 80's style leg warmers for ballet, seriously she LOVES them, not to mention her new ballet dress. Let's just hope all of her enthusiasm is helping her with her gracefulness and flexibility. -kel

Mother's Day 2011

Fabulous weather, beautiful kidos, the most amazing husband ever. Mothers day was perfect. Luca was particularly adorable, excited all week for Mothers day, and thrilled to bits that I liked the coffee cup he bought for me at the school's Mother's Day shop and that I wore the bangle he made me all day.

I feel like I joined a very special club today, I officially became one of the moms sporting the very, very obviously kid made jewelry on Mother's day. As seriously gaudy as the bangle is (bright purple with various butterfly stickers stuck on at random) I wore it with pride and was actually thinking I'll make a point of wearing it around him as much as possible, I loved it.

We had donuts, very yummy coffee, tons of cuddles, nachos, smoothies, a play in the park, and and adventure to Avalon. We bought a new painting (totally unexpected, but for those who have visited our house, the big blank wall will be blank no more!), played at the park and had a very yummy brisket for dinner. A wonderful Mother's day.

Here are a few pics, including my most favorite photo of my mom and I, not from today, taken in the spring if 1978. Happy Mother's day. -kel

Taronga & Gunners

A visit to the zoo has been on our list for a while but we haven't been able to go the last few weeks because of various other things we had on - finally we got a clear day so we were off.

The zoo has some of the best views of Sydney and is generally a nice place to walk around and being ten minutes from our house it is a real winer with Kelly and I. The highlights this time were two baby elephants who were playing a game of trying to push each other into the water and a very large tiger who was walking back and forward across it's enclosure literally a couple of inches from us (separated by glass).

After the zoo we headed to our favourite picnic spot and the food Kelly made was so good that this crazy Kookaburra dive bombed Luca trying to get his sandwich. It was definitely hungry, when we finally threw it some bread it nearly ripped the leg off a crow who got a bit too close. All this and home in time for Scout's nap - a great Saturday morning.

Easter Eggs and Local Views

Action packed weekend just gone, as well as bowling, we took in a lookout a few minutes up the road from us (scouting out a future bushwalking path to take Luca on) and spent a beautiful Sunday picnicing and hunting for Easter eggs with families from Luca's school.

A priceless moment when, while trying unsuccessfully to calm Scout, who was chucking a wobbly for not getting a pink basket to collect eggs in, the Easter bunny showed up and she instantly went from scrunched up mad/sad face to wide eyed amazement.

Bowling

Saturday afternoon we took the kids bowling for the first time. Luca loved it, after his first go he said to me "this is sooooo fun mom". For the kids there were bumpers and ramps not to mention the shoes which accounted for a lot of dancing by both. I've never seen the ramps in the US, but they were fantastic and really made the game fun for the kids. Scout was winning for the first half of the game, she didn't love bowling as much as Luca but I am attributing that to some lingering tonsillitis she's been battling all week. Luca's been asking to go back again, so we'll see how Scout fairs in round two. Here are some pics from our adventure. Oh, and I lost, yes a 2 year old beat me at bowling! -kel