The family together again!

Anna and the girls arrived on Wed morning!  After staying up all day and being forced to take a long walk to the grocery store, they all fell asleep early and slept about 10 hours.  It seems like they were over their jet lag in about 24 hours.  Gavin stayed home from school on Wed so he could hang with Mom and the girls.

After getting Gavin off to school, Thursday was spent trying to get the girls set up school.  We met with the Principal at Sydney Secondary College, Balmain which is where we planned on both girls going to school.  SCC Balmain is Year 7 to Year 10 so it seemed like a good place for the girls.  Of course the best laid plans don't always work out the way you expect.  The Principal looked at the girls grades and looked at the availability of classes in Year 10 for Ali and developed a worried look on her face.  Turns out that they higher level classes that would be appropriate for Ali were full.  Her comment was that if they put Ali in the lower level classes, her brain would turn to mush and she would be bored.  Thankfully there appeared to be room in the higher level classes for Shelby.  After talking to a couple of other people, it was decided that Ali should go to the Senior campus of Sydney Secondary College (Years 11-12).  This is called Sydney Secondary College, Blackwattle.  The school is actually closer to where we live but now we have 3 kids at 3 different schools.  Bummer--but I guess there is no better way to have the kids become self reliant to make friends than to have them each be at their own school.

Friday, Gavin's school had a swim carnival.  They bussed them to a local pool and had swim races all day.  Much like in Harry Potter's Hogwarts, the students at the school are placed in one of four houses and the houses compete against each other at these carnivals for points.  Gavin swam the 100 free, 50 free, 50 breaststroke, 50 backstroke, and a relay.  Although he said the races were fun, I think he had more fun eating chips (french fries) with his housemates and friends.

Gavin in the breaststroke:

Gavin and some of his mates:

After watching most of the swim races, the rest of us went and finished buying school uniforms for the girls.  We will be sure to send pictures from their first day-we can't get them to wear them before they absolutely have to.

Yesterday, we practiced the walk / bike route to Ali's school with the help of the next door neighbor.  Check out the view of the ANZAC (Australia New Zealand Army Corp) bridge and some of the Sydney CBD (Central Business District) from Ali's school.

In the late afternoon / evening we went to Manly beach which is north of Sydney Harbor.  Nice long beach with some great body surfing waves--we still need to work out the surf board issue before we can report on how good the surfing waves are.

Prior to heading home, we went to North Head which is the land on the north part of the entrance to Sydney harbor.  Great view into towards downtown Sydney.

So far today (Sunday) we are just laying around the house, doing laundry, and posting on the blog.  We will see if we can muster the motivation to go do something.  The last day of the Chinese New Year celebration in Sydney's Chinatown is today so we may venture out later.

We will be sure to post more this week to let you know how the start of school is for the girls.  Until then, we hope you are doing well.

Love,

Lee, Anna, Ali, Shelby, and Gavin (it is so great to be able to sign everyones name now)