Sydney, Manyana - January 2012

staff karaoke

In early December the girls and I went back to Sydney to begin packing up our Fletcher Street home, to complete the full move to New York.

David and I have lived in Fletcher Street for 15 year. The apartment we first moved into together was just across the road from our current house, so there was a lot of packing and saying goodbye to do with the house, but also with the area.  It will be a hard one to match, cliff top with beautiful beaches a few minutes walk away.

Trinity went back to Montessori for the last week of school and got to say goodbye to her friends there, and seemed to let go of her friendships there too.

It was crazy, between the packing, organising, preparing for the family coming for Christmas lunch.  The girls got to go and stay with each of the grandparents, so I could focus on getting stuff done. Wrapping up the year in the business also needed to be squeezed in. A very intense period indeed.

David returned in time for the staff Xmas party, which of course included Karaoke (seems to be theme).

And then it was Christmas lunch, and all the family came over and a lovely day was had by all. It is the first time in a long while we had both David and my family (almost all) in the one place, including the nieces and nephew and it was delight filled.

In the later afternoon we walked down for a swim, and found a dance party starting in the park next to us.  All the family left except grandma, and we went back out to the party and danced.  The girls went home to sleep and I got to dance, and David got to drum the night away, at least until the police came and shut the party down. Loud noise in a residential area and all that.

On Boxing Day a good friend of ours, Tania always has a party, so we went to recover our hangovers, and swim.  Trinity is stealing lots of lollies from the ginger bread house on the left.

The next day we went out on a yacht in the harbour with a friend of David's, and Trinity got to steer the boat, and she took the task seriously.  Cruising Sydney harbour on any kind of boat is probably one of the finest things you can do in summer.

Jafflemas, my families christmas equivalent was the next day. One brother Michael came with his three daughters, and we got to eat even more food. My eldest brother Stephen had put together a holiday CD which had us dancing and singing wildly.

Stephen, Steve and Michael

The young cousins got together and hang out in a shower (!?).  And there was even some skipping too with Steve and David.

The cousins

New Years was pretty quiet, thankfully, with a lovely picnic on new years day at Redleaf pool on the harbour with friends.

Ara, Olga and Gordo

After this all we were totally ready for a holiday so we went south for a week, past Jervis Bay to a suburb on the beach called Manyana, a 70's enclave with shag pile carpet. Beautiful and so relaxing.

Mum and I

I came home to do my annual week long art course, and the girls left with David to return to New York.
I moved out of the old house, combining it with the office in a new terrace house in Bondi Junction, unpacked and got organised everything so it could be utilised fully as an office and then flew home to New York.

New York September, November 2011

Avery, Sona and Trinity up a tree

It was great to return to a fully furnished home, so we could settle in and get to work without much effort.

The girls school had moved from walking distance to 20 min bus ride away.  So we had to settle into new routines and rhythms.  

The new school was downtown at the old South Sea Port, and also near Wall St, so I got go visit Occupy Wall Street, which was interesting.  A social experiment in progress.

David took the girls to a sculpture park (Pepsi hq) with some other families from Trinity's BlueSchool class.

India buried in leaves

David and Phil Zimabardo

The San Francisco sumit team

The annual NeuroLeadership Summit was held in San Francisco.  The quality of speakers and logistical management improves each year, so it was a complete pleasure, and I got to relax a little more.

The kids stayed in New York with Sophie the much loved babysitter, so David and I could focus fully on the event.  There was media coverage by HBR, and the largest participant numbers yet. 

Apple pie

We then returned to New York for my very first Thanksgiving. David invited a couple of friends over, so of course I got to whip up a quick Thanksgiving Lunch with all my favourite food - roast turkey, creamy roast potato and cauliflower (all pre cooked from Trader Joes), and apple pie (home made by Ivy) which was delicious.

Sydney, August - September 2011

We returned to Sydney, with Trinity going straight back to Montessori school to hang out with her friends. I am not sure how much school work she got done though.

It was winter in Sydney sadly, though the weather was pretty good. We held our annual leadership retreat with our managers and licensees from around the globe.

It was lovely to see everyone and we got to have karaoke on the last night of the event, so it was great fun to see everyone cut lose, sing and dance.

We also had a chance to catch up with our friends and family after a hard six months in New York getting set up.   Below the girls are with Frederique, Evy Rose and Bridgette. 

Siani and Guy, neighbours and close friends took me out for some fun, a Sydney Dance Company fundraiser organised by a friend of ours Pam. Here is Siani the morning after, with full make up still in place and looking spectacular if a little shiny.

We delayed our returned to New York so Trinity could go to school camp to a farm stay which she loved.

San Francisco, Montauk June July 2011

Summer came to New York and the heat is intense. The parks have the water features turned on, and girls are happy running wild and playing with the many other kids around. The garden at the new office is a beautiful sanctuary and an in demand meeting room when not too hot. Granted the  garden is a little wild!

The end of year Blue School show put on by Trinity's 2nd grade class was a treat, with them pulling out all the stops with vaudeville style skits and entertainment.

David had a week of delivery and training in Palo Alto and San Francisco, so the girls and I tagged along too as school had finished for the year.

We did the touristy things in San Francisco like spending time at Pier 39 and going to the aquarium. I took the girls sight seeing on the hop on hop off bus, including walking through the Presidio and spending half a day at the Exploratorium which the girls absolutely loved. It was filled with hands-on science experiments for kids and we could have stayed there for days.

We flew back to New York and began school holidays in earnest with the girls going to summer camp each day.

The weekend before returning to Sydney we went to Montauk, with Blue School co-founders Matt and Renee, who have a five year old son Rhyus. They offered us a weekend in their guest cottage five minutes walk from the beach, which apparently has the best surfing on Long Island.

Idyllic walks along the beach, swimming in their pool, eating wonderful food and roasting marshmallows on an open fire made this the most magical weekend. They were most excellent hosts.

The girls spent four weeks in total at Sweet Soul Movement on Lafayette right near Astor Place. The camp focused on dancing and singing training with a Broadway bent. At the end, they performed in an amazing show which David and I enjoyed thoroughly.

After the show David and I met up with Ara to celebrate his birthday with some intense karaoke and celebratory toasting. It was not a good look on the flight the next evening. Especially with the temperature sitting around 41 celsius the previous day.

Brooklyn, Orlando April May 2011

April & May were busy with finding, moving into and furnishing our new rental apartment in New York. After long weeks of searching and many barriers, we finally succeeded, and now live in a lovely two-bedroom duplex overlooking a park in Grammercy above the East Village (view at left). An old maternity hospital, it is a grand building, or 'fancy' as the kids friends like to say and big by New York standards.

We also found, rented and furnished an apartment in the East Village to use as an office which has a wonderful garden at the back which is fast becoming a jungle.

My birthday, mothers day and Trinity's birthday all came and went. Mothers day was spent at the cherry blossom festival in Brooklyn botanical gardens, which was packed with people and performances and was exquisite.

Trinity had a party in Central Park in the sheep's meadow on a beautiful spring day. My only sadness was that I didn't bring enough champagne for all the adults that showed up. I will know next time. We did however have a raccoon show up later in the afternoon, one of the 50 plus population that live in Central Park.

Over these few months India has found her voice, as some of the photos above might hint at. Trinity enjoyed working in her class toward an end of term show. She and her friend Sona got to rehearse in the Blue Man rehearsal space, a cavernous stage in Alphabet City, as well as see and try on the latest merchandise (India tries one a light show mohawk).

There was the usual round of birthday parties for both India and Trinity's school friends. India and friend Lyla enjoy the chance to become someone else or at least themselves in disguise (to the right).

For the Memorial day long weekend (the first weekend of summer), David was presenting at a conference in Orlando, Florida, and we decided to fly down and join him. We booked tickets to Universal Studios to go see Harry Potter as Trinity had recently finished the series. Two days before we were due to go, we found out that some of the Blue men founders where heading down with their families, so we joined their group.

We stayed at the Disney Animal Kingdom hotel, which is built around a zoo. Most days we saw giraffes, zebra's, wildebeests and other wildlife from our window.

The first day we went to Universal studios on our own, and found a minimum of two hour lines at all the rides in Harry Potter. It was around 32 degree Celsius and humid, so we didn't have a lot of energy to wait around. We spent time at other rides with shorter waits, like Atlantis (so scary for the girls), and Dr Seuss world, which was lovely.

The next morning we kicked off early, and went to the Magic Kingdom on a guided tour. When joining a tour you move to the front of all queues, so we did an incredible 13 rides in our short day. Trinity and India's favourites were Thunder Mountain (their first roller coaster) and 'Its a small world'.

We got to go to Epcot too, watched the fireworks and ran to avoid the crowds at the end of a long day. At one point during the weekend we got caught in torrential rain and ran through the heavy shower and large puddles for a mile to exit the park. This was one of the highlights of trip, proving something meaningful about purchasing power.

The people at Disney are experts in crowd management and I take my hat of to the amazing amount of thought and effort that goes into the Disney experience. It seems like ultimately it is about minimising effort. Get on a ride and learn about history in three short minutes. A perfect example of the American culture in action. All up an amazing experience, that I hope never to repeat.

Our last port of call before collapsing from exhaustion was Typhoon Lagoon, a water Disney water park with the largest wave pool in the country and many water slides. We spent the day enojying it with thousands of others, though it never felt crowded. It was a ball and we left it all on the court that weekend.

New York, Sugarbush - February March 2011

We moved full time to New York in the middle of February, in time to see the last snow of a harsh winter. The excitement of being in a lovely warm apartment and seeing big fluffy flakes coming down made us all squeal and jump around with excitement.

It was a tough entry to New York this time as we did not go to our usual home away from home at the Clouds on Wooster St in Soho. Instead we sublet a fellow Aussie's apartment for two months - a space of our own were we could make noise and wash dishes when we felt like it.

We got the dishes done, however the neighbours downstairs made the girls aware of their heavy footsteps early on so the noise idea was curtailed.

Going from beautiful, sunny summer in Sydney to winter in New York was too much for Trinity and I. So we both spent some time in bed getting well in the first little while. Luckily we came back to our lovely nanny Sophie (left, with hat), who kindly looked after us all.

We got the chance to go ice skating a couple of times, and Trinity and David went snow boarding for a day in Mountain Creek in New Jersey with Griffin from Wooster St, while India and I focused on cleaning off the snow from all the bicycles in the streets around our apartment.

We found the local parks, and some favourite restaurants (particularly the Indian place, top right with the amazing light show), and got the girls settled into Blue School full time, a few blocks from our new place in the East Village on 6th Street.

We bought some scooters, and began our training to become a scooter gang. Trinity learned to blow a bubble gum bubble for the first time and India began her obsession with the ultimate mullet cut.

We went snowboarding as a family to Sugarbush resort, Vermont for four days. Late season snow seems to work for us. Another hot tub and more fresh snow and snow boarding.

Trinity has fallen in love with reading and because of the main character in the Percy Jackson series has become enamoured with cheeseburgers.

Fresh from Vermont we went into a big conference in New York and launched our new branding for our company.

We then spent a day on strategic planning for our businesses in North America and Latin America with our regional and global core team and then spent the next day with our North American training team. Ready for another holiday already!