Birthday in Sydney

Lynsey was still on the cruise and Alyssa was at her Nan’s place for the night. We had decided to have my birthday in Sydney as Lysney and Grandma were coming back the next day and we were picking them up from Sydney Airport . At the airport Lynsey and Lee Ann were both in tears, Lynsey had a good time, but probably 2 weeks was just a bit too long away.

Lynsey at the airport

Christmas flew past, my mum, (Grandma) was supposed to come over to our house for Christmas lunch, but came down with the flu, so Christmas lunch was really quiet. Lee Ann’s parents and one of her brothers came down for Christmas dinner and stayed the night.  The kids of course had fun opening presents, dressing up animals as Santa, the sweets and chocolate money .

Pixie being dressed up

After a Christmas a few slow days, not much at all, just lazed around the house. New Years did nothing, had some wine and watched the fireworks on TV. In the new years we had a some friends (Tom and Amanda) down with their daughters (Zoe and Milly) from Sydney. They stayed a few days, filled the recycling bin the first night they were here and the following day a quiet picnic down a Wee Jasper on the river to recover. After two days they went back leaving Zoe here for the week.
Zoe will head back to Sydney on the 4.00pm XPT tomorrow (Monday 12th) with Lynsey and I. Lynsey will stay at Zoe’s house for a few days.

One thing I cannot believe is that the past three weeks have gone past so quickly. I didn’t ride enough and really did not get up before 8am most days. I will be logging into work tomorrow and physically back in the office Tuesday.

Due to the wind and continual drizzle over the weekend I did not construct my deck/pergola (4.5m x 4.7m). This weekend was blustery, cool and wet, 51m of rain Fri – Sun and temperatures were around the 15C mark. On the flip side it is a perfect day today Monday, little breeze and the sun is out (but it is not too hot) but I have to be logged in doing the paid work. Oh well next weekend now. Hopefully I will have it almost done before Christmas.

We have a great nursery here in Yass called Dan and Dan (also where our fruit trees come from) and they have a small pine farm which you can call up each year and reserve your tree. You specify the size and arrange a pick up date. So we went down on the Sat and picked up our tree. Apparently it was only cut that morning and it had that very sweet pine smell about it. So Sat nite was decorating nite in which Lee-Ann and Alyssa decorated the tree.

Sunday as we had not bought the concrete for our deck we purchased 5 ‘Red Devil’ Photinia as we do need a wind break for our vege patch. I planeted them in approx 15 meters further down from where the last vege patch is (I will be building some more vege patches to take up the space) Lee-Ann has nicknamed this the Devils Break.