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Published: January 26th 2010
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Well being back in OZ for the first time in a while is great, and especially as we have 6 weeks here to enjoy without being in a rush, so it should be a good time to spend some time with family and friends as well as check out a few old haunts and hopefully get some good weather. In the lead up to Christmas Deb and I had family around to celebrate Debs birthday on the 20th of December and to catch up with them all after such a long time. The last time some of them had seen Deb was back in November of 2004 and we even had a few new babies to meet up with that we hadn't met. We had a great day, a good old BBQ (beef sausages mmmmm), a bit of cricket and even pulled the old dart board out.
We met up with some friends of mine at different times, it was great to see them and hopefully a bit more over the next few weeks. We also went up to the Hunter Valley Gardens near Cessnock where we saw the nicely laid out gardens, the brilliant light show and see the kids
generally enjoy Christmas.
Christmas Day was great, it wasn't too hot, we had lovely food prepared by mum, her new mango and chicken salad is a treat and the pork crackling came out perfect and my brother Troy brought some prawns around which I thoroughly enjoyed and thats not to mention the trifle for dessert (I can feel some weight coming on).
What can I say for NYE, it turned out to me a once in a lifetime event. My brother Troy was working on a tug boat holding one of the fireworks barges in place in Sydney Harbour. We were holding the first barge west of the Harbour Bridge (not Opera House side), we sat out the back of the boat in the exclusion zone, it was like we were parked in the best spot in Sydney, on the water, not a boat near us and we took it all in and the clouds started to clear as the afternoon rolled on. We were in place by about 5.30pm and enjoyed it so much. We had the 9pm fireworks to get ourselves prepared for the big ones, and they didn't let us down, it was brilliant, so loud being
so close, but fireworks above us, on the bridge, the city skyline and even some that shooted in to the water before letting off. It was a great show and we felt so lucky to be there. Deb said she really had wanted to see the fireworks before we came over so she can't say I didn't deliver (well my brother really). All in all it has been a great first two weeks, the weather hasn't been too good, a good day and a bad one but we are having a great time and enjoying relaxing at mums. The cicadas have been so loud this year we can hardly hear each other out the back sometimes but I am enjoying listening to the laughing kookaburra once again. Have two pages worth of photos on this one
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