Christmas is now approaching and to keep up traditions I have created some family photos as well as some photos of Aiden.

Recently Dao's husband moved to Australia to join her. One of the visa requirements are that they must enter a legally binding marriage (The marriage from Vietnam is not recognised here) for him to stay here, so today we went to the registry office to have them married.

On the weekend we went with the family to Darling Harbour where they have a big water playground.

This gave Aiden a chance to play in the water...which he loves.







I also took a couple of photos of Aiden with grandad and auntie.

Every year we are allowed to spend a certain number of working days on charity events. Last year I did some with a group from work, but this year I was offered to join Cisco on their charity for "Cure our Kids".

This is an even that mainly focuses on providing a support framework for parents whose kids have Cancer with the thinking that if there is a good support for the parents then they will be able to support their children better.



The work we did consisted of going through pallets of boxes with parent folders and then from these remove unwanted items and inserting new leaflets. A team was also going through other boxes to sort through what could be used for xmas and what needed to be ebay'ed off.

This weekend Kim and I met met up with the mothers group for a christmas meet.

Because the weather was nice we decided to meet at the local playground and at the same time I could take some photos of the kids.

The playground has a plastic boat which makes it nice and easy to keep them contained in one area.

They have now set up the christmas tree in East Gardens. I was trying to find a goot spot to take a photo from without use of a tripod and without being chased away by security.



This was the best I could come up with.

Last weekend we went with Lachlan and Na to Darling Harbour for dinner.

This also happened to be the night of the Christmas parade in Darling Harbour.



So there was a lot of entertainment such as the Three Wise Men.





And lots of people dressed as Santa.



And Elves.

This weekend we again drove up to the hunter valley about two hours drive North of Sydney. We left at 7am and met the other guys up there just after 9am.


This time we went a big group of us but only three of us were tasting wine. The others were taking photos.



Kim and I have spent a fair amount of time in the Hunter Valley and have a lot of favourite wines in the area. This time we decided to try some new and smaller places that we hadn't been to before. The challenge is still to find a sub $20 bottle of wine that is really good. It is pretty hard...but not impossible.




In total we went to 9 vineyards to taske their wines. Some of the favourites this time was Gartelmann (The Wilhelm Shiraz is a good buy) and Peterson Estate (Kim loooved the sparkling desert wine).

For lunch we went to a restaurant called The Verandah. They have a tapas style menu. The food was ok but a bit on the pricey side (but most of the . My favourite place in Hunter is a place called Mojo...but they are only open for dinner.



Bimbadgen really let us down this time. They have some really good wines there, but the customer service was appalingly bad! They did not provide any assistance and were very rude (not just limited to one person there). I wanted to buy a couple of their wines but ended up walking away because there was no-one there to help.

This weekend it was Ethans 8th Birthday and his parents had organised a Birthday party for all his friends. As the last couple of years Kim and I was asked if we could facepaint the kids (We are not really good at face painting but the kids really don't care). Most of the kids had some degree of autism so just getting them to stand still while we paint them is a challenge.

The previous two years I was dressed up as a pirat but decided to do something something different this year. I wanted to come dressed as a monster (Ethan likes Monsters) but Kim though that I shouldn't scare the kids and that I should come as a joker instead. We bought a hat and some stripey tights...it looked really funny.



One of the parent though I was a paid helper when we arrived and started issuing me orders regarding that I really should be watching the kids so that they wouldn't injure themselves in the jumping castle that they had hired...he must have found it really unprofessional when I brushed him off ignoring his orders (I have a strong belief that kids should be allowed to be kids and that we in this modern age is too cautious protecting them)...and he must have felt really silly when he realised that I was a member of the family.



The rest of the day was spent playing games with the kids (They had good fun when I started spraying them with water with a water pistol...until I was told by the same parent that I should stop because the jumping castle was getting slippery).

The 'Donkeys Tail' game was a bit of a non-event...all the kids cheated and placed the tail where you would expect the tail to be. All credit to the kids...at least they know where the tail goes on animals.



After the party Kim wanted some alone time with me and we decided to go and watch a movie. There wasn't any good movies on that I wanted to watch so I let Kim decide...and we ended up watching a chick flick.

Dolls are a Necessity...

Kim and I went with a couple of friends to Capitol Theatre to see Guys and Dolls. This was my christmas present from Kim ('give me experiences instead of objects').


It was really good...I think I prefer the lightheartedness of musicals to Operas. Capitol Theatre is one of the great theatres in Sydney. In inside decor is old and glamourous. The Dancing and the singing in the show was really good.




Poor guys...the Dolls seem to have the upper hand in this story.


In one of the roles was Kenny...from a famous Australian movie 'Kenny'. I have no idea what his real name is.