Mardi Gras

We went to a Mardi Gras Party at the home of one of John's colleagues. We enjoyed a brilliant feast of muffaletta sandwiches, red beans and rice, gumbo, and this amazing seafood boil. The food and friends were fantastic.

Football Season

It's finally football season again (that is Australian Rules Football season), which means we have left boring season behind us here in Melbourne. We took the entire family to St. Kilda's first game of the year. It was exciting match with St. Kilda winning by 1 point in the final minute and beating our least favourite team, the Collingwood Magpies.

We loved the Saints' cheering section with their enormous pom poms.

This is the team captain, Nick Reiwoldt (on the left). We don't think that he would be able to eat at the Yarrawonga and Border Golf Club, do you?

Only in Australia - Dress Code

During our water skiing weekend we went to dinner at the lovely Yarrawonga and Border Golf Club. The club's strictly enforced dress code caused us all to wear our "Sunday best" to dinner, which was unfortunate because John really wanted to show up in his "singlet" and "footy shorts" and Jenny wanted to wear her "tatty jeans".

Yarrawonga

We went water skiing once again up at Lake Mulwala and enjoyed a beautiful day out on the water with the Melton and Fruechtl families. John and the kids went skiing in the morning and Jenny went in the afternoon. As you can see Colin, Brooklyn, and Bella were all able to successfully get up and give it a go. We all had a great time and look forward to being close to good water skiing in Texas.



While the group went water skiing in the morning, Jenny dragged the other women along with Jared and Anton on her search of all things big and found the "Big Strawberry" in lovely Koonoomoo. It was awesome.

In addition to great water skiing, Yarrawonga also favoured us with some lovely sunsets.


The sunset over Lake Mulwala.

Only in Australia

Actually, this "hook turn" sign only appears in Melbourne's downtown area. Because of the trams that are used here, the city worked to provide a safe option for people to turn right (across traffic here because in Australia you drive on the left) and keep the road clear for trams and oncoming traffic. So you must wait on the side of the road for the light to turn red and then you turn as fast as you can to get out of the way of the traffic whose light just turned green and are now racing toward you. I won't tell you who, but one of us didn't turn to the guidebook (there really is one) when we first moved here to find out how to perform the hook turn and he/she couldn't understand why so many people were honking.

Australian Open 2010

We went to the quarter finals of the Australian Open. The match between Tsonga and Djokovic went five sets and lasted nearly five hours. It was a very fun and intense match to watch. Colin went earlier in the tournament and saw Roger Federer and Serena Williams play, but not each other.

Sassafras

We went back to the Dandenong Ranges in January (which is summer here) and the weather was colder than when we went in May of last year (which is equivalent to November in the Northern Hemisphere). It is surreal how different the weather in Melbourne can be on any given day. Jenny was thrilled to find another "Big Thing" which we failed to find the first time there.

Rainbows Down Under are Awesome

We will also miss the many rainbows we see out of our windows or from John's office.

Double rainbows on both sides of the apartment.

This picture is from John's office of Eureka tower and the Royal Botanic Garden.

Sunsets Down Under are Awesome

These are some of our favourite pictures of the sunset from our apartment. We have always appreciated our view, but now as we get closer to moving back to the States, we try to appreciate how spectacular it really is.

Only in Australia

Every once in a while in the United States you will come across a park where some aggressive dunk ball has taken place and you'll find a court where the rims have been torn down. So, when we got to Australia we found it very strange to frequently find "basketball courts" where the hoop remained, but the backboard was gone. When we asked the locals about this, we found out that the backboards were not actually missing, but that Australians play a game called Netball. Instead of going into all the detailed rules of netball let me just describe it like this; it is lame version of basketball played with a volleyball where you can only dribble the ball once and must keep at least 3 feet distance between you and the person with the ball.

In Australia, Netball is only played by women and is quite popular (go figure) they even have a professional league. And for those of you who think that the WNBA is bad, let me now introduce you to the ANL (Australian Netball League) . These gals make the WNBA look like pure entertainment, but at least their uniform is flattering.