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December 16th 2008

Published: December 16th 2008

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Annelies' birthday

We negotiated the West Gate bridge and City Link tunnel with relative ease through to Hawthorn East, where we stayed with Matt, Courtney and their son Baden.

We had quite a busy schedule during the ten days in Melbourne and caught up with heaps of friends. Annelies turned 'double digits' (10) and while she and Alex went to see High School Musical 3, Mark and Thomas went up to Eureka Skydeck 88 (highest public viewing platform, fastest lift in the southern hemisphere and tallest residential building in the world). Afterwards, Mark caught up with a few people at his work's head office end of year party while Alex, Annelies and Thomas spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around town and on the city loop tram. Our traditional family birthday dinner was at the very inexpensive, but delicious “Shanghai Dumplings” in China Town.

Other highlights included:

• dinner at very short notice at Dave, Giselle, James & Robbie's house in Mt Waverley;
• a picnic lunch at the Royal Botanical Gardens with Jon, Angela & Toby, Simon, Sue, Frank, Emily & Aiden, Clare, Paul & Josh, Russell & Andrew, Grant & Claudia, and James & Toby;
• a visit to

Thomas in the city

the Scienceworks museum with Courtney & Baden followed by a visit to the Myer Christmas display windows;
• lunch with Greg, Leanne, Benjamin, Jordie & Matilda;
• dinner with Grant, Janie, Eloise & Claudia;
• dinner at Little Creatures with, amongst others, Rach, Damo, Sarah, Lachlan, Rod & Robyn;
• ice skating and watching Courtney and the rest of her ice skating club perform in their end of year show;
• morning tea with Annamarie;
• celebrating Baden's 4th birthday.

It was great catching up with everyone and thank you all for making the effort to come and see us at the Gardens or for having us around. A special thanks to Matt, Courtney and Baden for being great hosts and putting up with us for such a long time, not to mention the directions they gave us and loan of their Melways to make sure we didn't get lost in the big smoke!

Thomas kept his accident-prone reputation in tact (see our Perth blog entry) by collecting a brilliant 'shiner' (black-eye) while playing on a roundabout at the local playground - he jumped off but the roundabout kept spinning and smacked into his head above his left eye. Fortunately there was no