People appropriately dressed in the 1800's attire. It's like traveling back in time.


Drum roll and some gunshots fired.


Kids pulling the fire engine from the firehouse, if you can call it that


In the schoolhouse with the teacher. It reminded me of Little House on the Prairie tv show.

We struck gold! Sovereign Hill is a recreated 1850's goldfields township about 2 hours drive from Melbourne City. We forgot to take photos when we were panning for gold, too excited to find gold, hehe...

Bird-feeding during the summer months. Enjoying one
of the hundreds of bike trails scattered around
Melbourne's suburbs. I had to ride Orly's bike as
Luke is still learning how to ride with his help.

Taken at the Ford Discovery Center in Geelong

The Bollards

Up on a ferris wheel enjoying the sites of Geelong
which is a 45 minute drive from our place

Alie at work. She is a Trainee Dental Nurse at a nearby clinic here. The photo is a bit blurry, sorry.

You can read Kitchie's story in this newsletter. She's the one on the farthest left in the photo.

Today, a cooking competition was held at the William Angliss Institute of TAFE where Kitchie goes to school once a week as part of her apprenticeship program. She joined the competition for the sheer fun of it and guess what? She won 1st Place for the 1st Year Apprentice students! Her winning dish was called "Stuffed Chicken Breast with White Wine Sauce and Mashed Potato with Onion & Bacon" as seen in the photo above. She was shocked to find herself winning the Gold Medal for the 1st Year Apprentice Students. Winners are lined up to join another competition to be held at another venue. She's quite excited and looks forward to it.

Kitchie started her apprenticeship in Commercial Cookery this Feb. Here you can see her in her induction to knife skills.

This was where Kitchie worked for the last few months as a kitchen crew. Taken during the last week of Kitchie's work at Hungry Jack's Fastfood Outlet before she starts her 1st year chef apprenticeship this February 2007.

Kitchie and Michael having a feel of the snake, Jake and Luke aren't that brave.

We went to Halls Gap Wildlife Park & Zoo which is a 3 hour drive from Melbourne to the Grampians. The kids had a lovely time feeding and touching the animals. There is an albino kangaroo, lots of deers and kangaroos. You can see Jake feeding a wallaby.

Orly was recently featured in a site named Expat Interviews.
This website was co-created by my bookworm sister. You can view her profile here and here.

We spent our Christmas holiday in Sydney. We drove from Melbourne to Sydney for 11 hours with few stopovers to eat and refuel only. It was a nice drive seeing the countryside of Victoria and New South Wales. A bit dry though since it is summertime now.

Orly's siblings and their families take a break and have their pics taken. Seen behind is the Harbor Bridge, to climb to the top is a long walk and an expensive endeavor, but worth the view. We didn't try it though.

Of course, we had to have a family picture taken at the famous Opera House. It was a perfect day for a walk and have a great view of the Sydney Harbor.

During our stay in Sydney, we drove up to Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains are named so because, from Sydney, they look blue.