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Jack started school today at Merewether Heights Public School.  He is in Kindergarten in a lovely small class of 20.  The school is up the hill behind our house and set in amongst lots of trees.  Nice and shady but lots of mozzies.

Jack had no qualms about going to school, and was very happy to be going into class.  Then, since he finished, he’s been very excited about going back tomorrow, which is sports day.

With Jack in school and Grace at pre-school Sarah had the middle of the day to herself.  She managed to fill this, by going for lunch in the pub with other mothers from Jack’s school and buying 2 new dresses.

Dave and Cass were delighted to put us up in Sydney for the past couple of nights.  We spent Australia Day in Sydney centre and around the Harbour.  There were many events going on, and we watched the ferries racing, the tall ships arriving and many other boats in the harbour.  As well as this there were a multitude of old cars to see, live music and childrens free events.

Later in the evening we went to the Theatre Royal to see The Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.  This is an Australian Childrens story, about bush creatures on an adventure to see a human city.  It was great fun with a lot of singing and dancing.  Both Jack and Grace were enthralled all the way through even though it was a late night for them.

Today, on our way home, we went to the Australian Reptile Park.  Here, we saw alligators feeding, eric the crocadile and lots of snakes and spiders.  The park does a lot of work collecting venom from the spiders and snakes for use as Anti-Venom and it was interesting to see all the spiders in their plastic tubs ready to be harvested.

Grace had her first 2 days at Bel-Air pre-school last week.  We were surprised how easily she took to it.  She had a great time painting, cooking, stamping etc. and has made some new friends.

She will be going 2 days a week from now on and we are looking forward to her having lots of new friends.

We received a Christmas Card from Horbury Library this year and, in it Bridie was writing out a new website that has been set up about Horbury.  It is quite interesting with some good history and pictures about the town.  I’ve added it to the tool bar on the right.

We have finally been able to start putting photos on the website.

We’ve just put on some photos from the last 10 days of our trip in the caravan, some taken while moving into our house and some from Christmas and New Year.

We should now be able to upload photos on a regular basis.

We’ve just been down to Sydney for Declan’s 4th birthday.  We decided to make a weekend of it and stayed with Dave and Cassandra.

It was a fairly easy drive down on Friday night (even though the road was solid in the other direction) and we arrived down in time for a barbeque.  Both Jack and Grace had slept most of the way down so it was a late night for them.

On Saturday morning we went to see Sarah’s cousin Tanya, her husband and 2 of their children.  we spent the morning chatting on the deck watching all the children playing in the pool.  After lunch we drove back to Dave and Cass’ and walked into Sydney centre.  Cass (who works for Sony) had got some passes to see Charlottes Web at the movies.  A great film that both Jack and Grace were entranced by.

We managed to get Jack and Grace to sleep fairly easily which left the rest of us to leavy Cass’ mum in charge and went out for dinner.

On Sunday we went to Declan’s party at a park near ther house.  It was an excellent park with a superb playground.  There were lots of children there all playing together which was nice.

After a coffee back at Tony and Heather’s house we drove back to Newcastle in the rain.

After spending New Years Eve with some friends in Newcastle, and still being home in bed before midnight, we had a very enjoyable New Years Day.  During the morning we went down to Merewether Beach, which was as busy as I’d ever seen it, though there was still plenty of room.  We pitched ourselves near some sheltered pools so Jack and Grace could run in and out of the water.

We went home for lunch and then drove out to Blackbutt reserve.  This is a big wooded area nearby which also has some native animals in enclosures.  We spent the afternoon there looking at the koalas, kangaroos, emus etc and playing on the play ground.  Just after Christmas, we bought a new TV and got given some tickets to watch a football match that evening.  So we all went out for dinner and then Jack and I went to see this match.  It was Newcastle Jets against Sydney FC.  We found some seats high up in one of the stands, and had a great time watching the match and listening to the cheering.  Dissapoinintly Newcastle lost, but Jack would still like to go again.

It was late by the time we got home, but Grace was still up waiting to see us.  They were both tired and soon settled down to sleep.

We’re all ready for the next 12 months, which should be more settled and less stressfull than the last 12.