After a nice time catching up here with Colette and Colman’s friends Michael, Suzie and Peter, John and I took the bus to Bondi Beach and walked back in the cooler evening temperatures. It was still pretty hot at the beginning of the walk but cooled off once we got…

As I’m sure I’ve covered in past blog posts about Sydney, there are walks all along the harbor and also along the coast that are super nice. Improvements are being made to the walks to connect even more parts, and earlier this year a walk at the southern end of…

Probably not the biggest priority right now in the US, but if we could just get past some of the other issues occupying our minds, we might get to the problem of how to refer to December 26, which in the US doesn’t really have a name. In Ireland they…

We arrived in Sydney on Christmas Eve and spent the day settling into our rental home in Clovelly, taking in a big delivery of groceries Colette had organized, naps for some, and having a first swim at Clovelly. Christmas morning Santa brought a full night’s sleep for everyone, lots of…

On Friday, Colette took “the kids” to the zoo. Quick summary – it was very hot! And the bird show was amazing – they have the birds trained to swoop right over the audience, and there’s a huge condor that is pretty impressive and scary. Birds in flight juxtaposed against…

Uneventful trip to Dallas and after a quick bite to eat, final assault on Christmas cards, and a haircut for miles, we are ready to head down under!

Maddie turned 6 today! She started celebrating last Friday with a party with friends and classmates at a Pump It Up indoor play place. It was really well organized, with time and staff to take them through 2 playrooms and also for pizza and cake at the end. Last pic…

We had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend last week with lots of people in from out of town! A few hours after the Turkey Trot, Debbie drove Nana and Grandpa, who had been staying with Debbie and Maddie in Naperville, to our house. We had some time to catch up and…

John and I started Thanksgiving morning with a 5K turkey trot in Lincoln Park. For readers who want to know more about the history of turkey trots in the US, there’s lots of fun facts here! The weather was a nice dry 32 degrees F / 0 degrees C. The…

We’ve had a really good start to Fall so far this year, in fact so much I haven’t taken a break to do a blog post! Here’s some catching up of what’s been going on since early September. First, this morning John joined me at the Comer Race for the…