Like most kids Jude and Anna spend a fair amount of time in the car. All of this time is spent in their car seats, certainly not in the drivers seat. But in Dubbo, where we went recently for a four day weekend, they both had their first taste of what it is like to drive a car. You see, the Dubbo zoo is huge – almost 1,000 acres and so you can drive your car inside the zoo. They have a 10km/h speed limit so it is very slow going. On our first day there it was raining and we literally had the zoo to ourselves so Marcy let Anna and then Jude sit on her lap and steer the car around the zoo. They didn’t do too badly for a first attempt. Below is Jude looking out at the giraffes in the rain.

Luckily we only had one bad of weather in our four day trip to Dubbo. We made it to the zoo three times and by the end of it we had seen most of the animals. One of the best things about this zoo for us is that they had a big kids area which we frequented after seeing the animals. On Sunday they had a big bounce house and there was a big playground that included this hippopotamus that Jude took a liking to.

We arrived back in Sydney on Tuesday with just two weeks remaining on our trip. We are trying to make the most of these last days so today we all went out for some exploring around Sydney. We went to Fort Denison, the tiny little island in Sydney Harbour right near the Opera House. Then it was on to the museum and finally we did a trip up Centrepoint Tower, the tallest building in Sydney. Here we all are being attacked by a giant koala on that visit…

Jude loves animals especially dinosaurs. This is not news to anyone who knows him. But what he really loves to do is create stories with his animals as the central characters. Yesterday, he put together this very elaborate scene on our dining room table where the animals were all in a circle wearing clothes pegs. We didn’t hear him setting this all up so we don’t know what the meaning of it all was but he spent a lot of time creating it and wanted us to leave it there all day which we did.

We have these really pretty birds that frequent a tree right outside our building. We think they are rainbow lorikeets or rosellas, but whatever they are called Jude and Anna both love them. Jude was brave enough recently to hand feed these birds as they came to our balcony. Here he is giving them a piece of bread.

From birds to puppies. Last weekend we visited Uncle Mark and Aunt Robyn’s farm where they had had some new additions to their family. Their dog, Ruby, had recently given birth to seven gorgeous little puppies and everyone was excited to see them. They are not even four weeks old so the kids couldn’t hold them long but they enjoyed the short time they had with them.

Yesterday was June 9th and a milestone in our family’s history. My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. We didn’t make a big deal out of this milestone because of my mother’s health but I wanted to at least honor this date with them. So, I took my parents out to lunch at the local bowling club and we had a really nice meal. My mother acknowledged the milestone several times when I told her and I think she was genuinely happy. We had a great conversation about their wedding day and what happened all those years ago.

The other big news of the week was that we bought our tickets back to the U.S. It is quite sad that our trip to Sydney is coming to an end. We have had a fantastic time here and we will really miss so much about this wonderful city. But we are also looking forward to getting back and seeing all our friends in Denver. We will be back on July 4th.