Hannah Andrew Tracy John

Santa

tracychung — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 19:53:17 +0000

These past few months have been huge for us and we’d never been busier. The year is finally winding down. I took the kids to the Concert Hall at the Opera House to watch the girls sing Hallelujah Chorus on Friday before heading to see Santa.

Skiing

tracychung — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 12:36:00 +0000

We packed our bags at the start of the week for a long drive to Snowy Mountains. In the days/weeks leading to this trip, there’d be reports about it being the best season in 20 years. We were hopeful. As we approached, we were pleased to see the amount of snow dump, the road had obviously been ploughed.

After parking, we went tobogganing straight away. But, we were not fully prepared for the wild wind. So after about an hour or so, we went inside to have some lunch and a hot chocolate! It wasn’t long before it was time for the kids’ ski lesson. Their instructor allowed us to go up the slopes with them and they had a go at “making a pizza”. Hannah was a bit nervous but was convinced to finish the lesson. At this point, specks of snow started falling It was an incredible sight for all of us. That evening we made sure we went to the ski store to buy more gear to protect our heads from the cold!

The wind was even stronger the next day, but with our new balaclavas and neck warmers, we were covered from head to toe! The kids had another ski lesson and Andrew was getting a better handle on skiing. The snowfall was magical!

The sky cleared and the wind stopped the following day. We got up a hill and walked through some thick powdery snow. Who said we don’t get powdery snow in Australia?? By this stage, Andrew was not interested in tobogganing any more. He loved to skiing. John tobogganed with Hannah for a while. It was very tiring but they had a lot of fun. Hannah also decided to ski after that. It’s surprising to see how quickly the kids picked up skiing. They showed little fear and had a blast! We really didn’t want to leave, but it was getting dark. We contemplated on returning the next morning, but we were just exhausted.

We all had an amazing trip. We stopped by at Koko Black for some hot chocolate on the way home.

Click here for an animoto

Public transport

tracychung — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:18:49 +0000

We drove to the city, caught a bus, a ferry, a cable car, another bus, a train and even a taxi! Guess who was happiest about that? We went to Circular Quay to catch the ferry to Taronga Zoo. If you haven’t been to the zoo lately, their facelift to the entrance is complete and it looks pretty good. The kids enjoyed the cable car as usual. They also enjoyed seeing the meekats. After that, we headed for the Family Show in Moore Park. And here are some more photos to demonstrate Hannah’s new found proficiency at posing for the camera.

Supermodel?

tracychung — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:57:39 +0000

Here are some photos from a recent shoot in the city with the cheeky monkeys.

We stumbled on a model having a shoot around Mrs Macquarie’s Chair. Hannah started imitating the way she posed for those photos. You be the judge…

Dressing up

tracychung — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:17:48 +0000

Since Hannah was born, I’ve learnt that girls get to dress up so much more than boys. See for yourself.

Mount Tomah Botanic Garden

tracychung — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:05:29 +0000

A drive about an hour and fifteen minutes led us to Mount Tomah Botanic Garden. We brought the kids’ scooters which they enjoyed.

Zig Zag Railway

tracychung — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:18:07 +0000

We drove up to Zig Zag Railway last week for a ride on the steam train with a couple of excited children. We parked our car at Clarence station aboard the 3pm train. Given that it’s school holidays, there were not many people at all. Among them were a group taking wedding photos. Fancy that, I’d never thought of such a place for photos. It’s an ingenious idea because you get some nice shots.

The carriages were fully enclosed unlike Puffing Billy where you could sit at the edge of the “window”. This was much more civilised. There was one other family sharing our carriage. Our kids had so much space to roam around.

Upon leaving Clarence, we went through this long tunnel. I think they forgot to turn on the lights in our carriage. It was pitch dark! We ended up getting some light from mobile phones and the LCD of the camera. The round trip included several stops. One of the children’s highlights was seeing James from Thomas the Tank Engine in real life. Apparently, James was out the weekend prior for “Day ou with Thomas”. We also got to see the train being coupled and refuelled.

Sweltering heat

tracychung — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 21:20:27 +0000

The heat this week has been unbelievable, above 40 degrees every day for the past 6 days. I don’t remember Sydney ever being that hot for that long. I am so grateful that both Andrew and Hannah have air conditioning at their schools. I, on the other hand, have almost melted because I don’t have the same luxury! Getting the kids in and out of school, and the drive between school and home was unpleasant in the blazing sun. Just hope that we don’t black out because the air conditioning at home has been working hard.

Hannah’s big week

tracychung — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:01:34 +0000

This week has marked a couple of milestones for Hannah.

She started preschool on Monday. She didn’t even cry (close, but held back)! She had a good day. Tuesday was a bit of a shock for her. When I told her about going to preschool, she replied, “I already went there yesterday, mummy!” Oh, dear!

Hannah's first day at preschool

In the past, Hannah was afraid of the sand. Lately, she’s been brave and started touching sandpits as she’s learnt that it’s a common thing for children to do. In Andrew’s best effort to encourage his little sister to play with sand, he’s told her how he used to play in the sandpit at his (now her) preschool and how much fun that was. But you can tell that she’s not entirely comfortable with the idea. She wouldn’t actually go inside the sand, only use some sand toys as tools, eliminating the need to grab sand.

As a reward for Hannah’s first day at preschool, John gave her some Princess sand toys. Today, for the first time, she was pleased to go the beach. Here are some pictures of her happily playing (with her feet in the sand and all!!).

I can't believe Hannah is here in the sand at 3 1/2!

See how happy Hannah is? And her Princess sand toys!

Andrew also had lots of fun at the beach.

With John's help, Andrew had his lower half buried.

Our Melbourne holiday

tracychung — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 10:16:02 +0000

We just came back from our Melbourne trip where we spent a week there. To Andrew’s delight, we flew down, he really doesn’t like to be in the car for an extended period of time now. We stayed at Medina on Flinders Street. It was a great serviced apartment, it had everything we needed. A tram stop was just outside and Southern Cross train station was only about 5 minutes walk. Since we used public transport for the entire journey, it suited us perfectly. Andrew, of course, was so happy to hop on and off the trams, trains and buses for a week!

It was hot when we arrived on Thursday. We had a little wander in the evening after dinner at Old Town Kopitiam.

We headed to Scienceworks in Spotswood. It’s an awesome place. Everything was so hands on. The kids really liked touching everything. There was a sports related exhibit that looked familiar, as it turned out, we’d seen it in Questacon last year! Adjoining Scienceworks was an old pumping station. Years ago, sewage from Melbourne city was collected there and be pumped out to Werribee. The equipment was massive! The music they played made it a bit creepy.

We visited Werribee Open Range Zoo on Sunday. We found this experience to be awesome. We’d never gone on a safari before. Upon arrival, we were given a timeslot to go on a special bus to see the animals in a savannah. There were no cages, the animals just lived more or less like in the wild, except they didn’t really have to hunt for food. There were giraffes, hippos, zebras, antelopes, camels, buffalos and wild dogs. What I liked best were the rhinos. They came quite close to us and we had to drive off quickly just in case they bumped into us! After getting off the bus, we did a walking trail and saw some more animals. It was worthwhile trip. Hannah decided that zebras were her favourite animals while Andrew loved seeing the meerkats. Even John grew a new fondness to giraffes.

We also went to Melbourne Zoo. It was a rainy day but it was the only day we could go because the weather was getting progressively wetter. Still, there were a lot of people. This zoo is nice. It’s smaller than Taronga Zoo and since it’s mostly flat, we didn’t get tired so quickly. We had to hide in shelters whenever it rained heavily. Seeing the giraffes from the ground level was a different experience to Taronga Zoo. The seals and penguin display was well constructed. The monkeys enclosure was well laid out. At Melbourne Zoo, we got much closer to the animals than other zoos. It felt like we almost touched the orangutans. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. We’d initially thought that we’d be “zooed” out since we’d been to 3 zoos in a week (we went to Taronga 2 days before going to Melbourne). We’d planned to stay in Melbourne zoo for a couple of hours, we ended up staying there till our legs got too tired!

Other places we visited include State Library of Victoria (amazing building, the kids enjoyed the exhibition on the Australian picture books, the illustrations were magnificent) and the National Art Gallery’s Kids Corner in Federation Square. We only visited the outside of Melbourne Museum because we didn’t have time to see the exhibits.

We did some shopping and lots of eating. The kids were spoiled rotten with treats. Hannah asked me last night what we were having for desserts and I said fruits, she then told me that fruits were not desserts!! Oh, dear! How is she going to re-adjust to normal life and normal eating habits again?!

We finally got to explore some famous eateries like those in Degraves Street. We loved the atmosphere there. Melbournians are so relaxed. Every cafe in Degraves Street and the street adjoining to it (I can’t remember its name) was filled with customers and this wasn’t even the weekend! Those laneways resembled Hong Kong hawkers style eating except they were Western cafes. It was there that we discovered a Belgian waffle shop called Waffle On. The waffles were delicious! They also sold some very yummy baguette sandwiches!

Our other eating discoveries include paellas at Anada on Gertrude Street. It’s a relatively small tapas bar in Fitzroy. The paellas were tasty. It wasn’t till our search for Hu Tong Dumpling House that we stumbled on the famous Flower Drum Restaurant (in its hay days, bookings were made months in advance). Hu Tong has great reviews written about them, so bookings had to be made in advance, luckily, we managed to get in with one day’s notice. The decor was suitably oriental, the dumplings weren’t too bad.

We had a wonderful time. We got to “lose ourselves in Melbourne”. We look forward to going back