Boxing Day 2011

We had a very relaxing watching the Aus vs India cricket on tv.  At lunchtime we went down to Middle Head to watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.  It is quite an incredible site with 88 yachts competing and as you can see all the spectator boats.

Christmas Day at Balmoral beach

We spent Christmas day down at Balmoral beach with Hels, Doug & Sean and some others.  We were very lucky with the weather as this was the nicest its been for quite a while.

 Seanie testing out his new boogie board

 A bit of help from Dad & Lynchy

 Our picnic party under the trees

 Hels, V & Conor

 Us in our crazy Christmas hats!

 The Haywards

 Seanie wanted Lynchy to hold him for this photo

 The 5 of us : )

Christmas night for us was some games of scrabble and some vino.  We also got to talk to Kate & Tigger in the UK which was a great surprise.

Jim & Ali visit us in Sydney

We had a lovely few days when Jim & Ali came over from NZ to visit us in our new spot.

 We did a 4 hour coastal walk from our house to Manly, it was a great day out along all the headlands & through the national park.

 There were lots of these guys along the way - an Eastern Seaboard Water dragon

 Just cooling down along the way

 A well deserved glass of bubbly on Manly beach after our walk : )

 The view from West head across to Palm Beach

 Another scary lizard looking dude - a Goanna

 We also did a walk from Balmoral beach to Taronga zoo which was great - we almost got caught in the rain!

 An awesome view of the city and weather in the background

Dinner at our new dining room table, hopefully next time I take this pic we would have put the picture up

Rio de Janeiro & Buzios - July 2011

Hi All,

I don`t think I mentioned in my last email, but when we were in Norfolk our little trusty camera broke. So when we were in Heathrow we had the unexpected cost of purchasing a new one, but obviously we had no choice as we were about to start our trip round South America.  The new camera is a great little pocket size cannon and takes great photos, only thing is they are much better quality therefore a bigger in file size so I have only been able to upload a few here.  We think it will give you a good idea of what we have been up to.

Night out in Lapa in Rio, the party district.

Ipanema beach at sunset on a cloudy evening.

Learning to use the self timer on the camera on a beach in Buzios

Lynchy´s wedding ring art photography, I think this one is a framer : )

Ipanema Beach

Lynchy and his Ladies in Lapa! 

Swimming in Buzios

All of us out at the bar in Lapa

We went to meet Patrick (Ali´s son for those who don´t know), he lives in Rio in a suburb called St. Theresa.  It is the little colonial suburb of Rio and has coblled streets and some great old bars.  It was great seeing Patrick again and we had a good seafood lunch

Us with James and Patrick in St. Theresa

Patrick took us to this little bar in St. Theresa which is about 100 years old

View from the top of Sugar Loaf mountain

View of Rio from the beach

Chilling at the hostel in Buzios - we did a lot of this : )

Lynchy´s favourite pastime!

I think this suits me?  Maybe  this will be the car of choice in Sydney...ha ha

Walking around the beaches in Buzios and we found this great view

Lynchy´s beard - one week on