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