we’ve got one tired three year old passed out cold on our bed right now. not surprising, considering nayou has been showered with attention and gifts more or less since the moment he woke up this morning. we spent the early morning opening presents in our hotel room. and then scored a slinky from the reception crew at the hotel. i think this one girl christine is ready to adpot him! brenda and nayou spent the day at aunty adele’s house making christmas pudding and opening more presents with the hockeys and his great-grandma. oh, and there was a birthday cake somewhere in there too!

here’s the family making and stirring the christmas pudding, putting their good vibes and wishes into it.

of course there was no time to nap, so we whisked nayou off to his (and our) favourite pizzeria around the corner for dinner. we met up with kim and gordon who hooked him up with an amazing wood firetruck. it kept him occupied for the entire meal which is a small miracle, and we all had a good time chowing down and chillaxing.

once again our room looks like a bomb hit it, with balloon carcasses, random toys and their packaging, plus a load of new laundry all occupying our very limited floor space. four more days until we’re in our new house! i bet the cleaning crew are going to be glad to see us go! but with a three year old, the amount of disorder in the room correlates directly to the amount of fun that was had. its like that thing in chinese restaurants where they say the dirtier the tablecloth, the more enjoyable the meal was. or something like that 🙂

i would say he’s had a pretty awesome birthday! thanks to everyone all over the world who sent presents, donated money in his name, said hi on facebook and sent him emails. its so nice to know that he is loved in so many different place by so many different people!

p.s. we’ve taken lots of video today, which i have edited. unfortunately the internet connection at our hotel is sloooooow, so i’m going upload it from work tomorrow. watch this space for nayou’s birthday: the movie!

the first half of our weekend was all about connections, old and new. there is this dutch couple, kim and gordon, who are living in our hotel with their 18 month old. they have just arrived from a stint in melbourne. brenda has been hanging out a lot with kim, and on friday we finally all had a chance to meet each other and hang out. we went to the markets by moonlight at the rocks which is a great thing to do if you’re in the area! its really relaxed with interesting stalls and places for kids to have a bit of a wander. kim and gordon are cool, and gordin is really into surfing so we had a lot to talk about. they are going to live in manly, which is a great surf spot, so that gives us another excuse to head out there on the weekends!

on saturday i got the honour of catching up with aba, who i have known since i was about thirteen years old. he is the father of my good friend noa, whom i have known since high school. through noa i met her parents and have also become really good friends with them too. we dispensed with names a long time ago and now i just call them aba and ima, which means father and mother in hebrew. aba and ima live in brisbane so coming to sydney brought us closer together but not quite. lucky for me, aba was in town this weekend on business and found some time to come and say hi. we hadn’t seen each other in over a decade and it was amazing to be in his company again. a lot has happened in the time we were apart – i grew up (kind of), became a dad and he beat cancer and found a new lease on life. still, it was like we never had those years apart and he is still just as awesome as i remembered him to be. brenda and i are going to see whether we can make it up to see them in brisbane over new years. fingers crossed our stars will align!

we had big plans to go to the blue mountains on sunday but were foiled by maintenance on the rail tracks and bad weather. sundays are a good day for exploring because for $2.50 each we can ride all day on the buses, ferries and trains. nayou has been dying to ride on one of the articulated buses that run in sydney so we went on a hunt for one in lieu of the blue mountains. unfortunately we were unsuccessful so we made do with an articulated tram and a monorail ride. nayou was none too happy about missing out on the articulated bus, but he came around eventually!

the weather got worse over the course of the day so the afternoon turned into craft time. nayou’s birthday is on thursday and brenda has been wanting to make some tie-dye t-shirts and party gifts for a shindig we are planning. so we busted out the pots, pans and paraphenalia and got busy! the fumes from the dye were a bit strong so we left the door open while we worked. the people walking by must have thought it was a meth lab or something. especially since our room looks like a bomb hit it…

for some reason the directions said to put salt in with the hot water and dye. nayou had a whale of a time playing with the salt and decided to give himself a facial with some of it.

this whole thing started off when brenda found a big basket of kids t-shirts at the salvation army for $1 a piece. they are good quality shirts and come in different sizes. they went in white and came out blue!

we tried a variety of ties using marbles, coins and rubber bands. i not-so secretly thought that the shirts would turn the wearers into crusty hippie kids, but they actually turned out pretty cool!

in addition to birthday planning we are also in the process of organising our move into our house. our move-in date is the 6th (next monday). i think i say this every time i mention the house, but we are very excited to be settling down. we’ve got our utilities all hooked up, internet on its way, and a fridge and temporary bed rented. bring on the good life!

i really, really wanted last weekend to be our one that we spent house hunting. it was getting a bit depressing looking at houses because none of the ones we’d seen so far had jumped at us and screamed “YES!”. we’ve been slowly raising our upper limit on what we wanted to spend in the hopes of getting something perfect, but there was always something crucial lacking from the places (storage space, proximity to trains/parks/shops, etc). brenda and i know that we want to stay in the area we were are now. its a beautiful area (minus the junkies and strip bars. ahem.) with lots of shops and parks and more importantly, friends. commuting is easy and getting around town is easy. so we’ve been praying for something to come through but everything so far had been too expensive or too small.

we had a pretty good lineup for saturday – four houses in total – with two of them looking very likely. there was one that looked gorgeous but we had flagged it as being too far away. but i noticed on saturday morning that we could fit it in between viewings so i suggested we go take a peek at it anyway. we walked over to the place from our hotel and were surprised to find that it was actually really close. then we saw the beautiful restored art deco building and tried not to get too excited. and when we walked into the apartment we looked at each other and said “WANT!”. we grabbed an application, filled it out and dropped it off at the real estate agent’s office the same day. we faxed over some extra paperwork yesterday and finally i got a call from the agent today saying they had accepted our application! so we’ve paid our deposit and unless the landlord decides to reject it (highly unlikely) we have found a place to live!

we won’t be moving in until december 6th, which is perfect because dr. d is paying for our hotel until the 5th. so we can roll right into our new place. if you want to see some photos, here is the link to the listing. it comes unfurnished, so nayou will have lots of space to play with while we figure out how to set things up. we’re so excited to be settling down – its been quite the battle since we arrived here to grow some roots but its finally happening!

aya certainly has been keeping herself busy these days. she’s just finished up an ad for pepsi as part ofthe doritos/pepsi crash the superbowl competition. this one is for big money – $25,000 for making it to the top ten, and getting the ad screened during the superbowl if you make the top three. plus more ways to win up to $1 million! i wish it was an open vote because we’ve proven that we can mobilise the hordes for that kind of thing, but this time the entries are going to be judged by a panel. i think aya’s got a really good chance with this ad – it hits all the sweet spots for a soft drink ad aimed at a very very large audience. and shot beautifully, as always!

i couldn’t find a way to embed it directly in the post, so click here to check it out!