Christmas 2012

Finally, after 11 weeks or 55 work days, we have made it to the Christmas break.  Now we have a week off to relax and get some much needed rest.  We will be in Sydney from Christmas Eve until 29 December and will spend New Year's Eve in Brisbane.  One year we would love to be in Sydney to see the big New Year's Eve fireworks show but we need to decide more than a couple of weeks in advance that we want do it.  Hotels are completely booked and probably have been since the middle of spring.

The storm blows in...

but it doesn't last long

We have had some crazy weather here ove rthe last few weeks: highs in the high 30s and lots of wind.  When it isn't windy it's humid so no matter what, it will be unpleasant.  Our spring had some crazy storms, with thunder storms moving quickly through the city and leaving behind flooded areas and blown down trees.  We are hoping to get some respite from the heat in Sydney, but they are certainly not immune to crazy weather.

Going to Sydney is one of our favourite things to do and we haven't gone there as much as we wanted to in 2012, so it is a great way to end off the year.

Tropical Christmas

This is our third Christmas in Australia and it still is a strange thing for us, to hear all the same Christmas carols and see all the same decorations that we would in Canada, but it is outrageously hot and just getting into summer!  (How hot is it?  We hit 38ºC on Tuesday, the hottest December day in 10 years in Brisbane!)

Six white boomers (the other two wouldn't fit in the picture)

The kids are getting out of school now, so our offices are a little less busy as parents take time off to spend with their kids, or to get ready for Christmas.  There are still quite a few kids group activities going on, and almost every day at lunch there is a group of kids from either a school or a club, singing carols on the Queen St Mall.  It is quite nice to hear the familiar music, but now our problem is sunburn, not frost bite.

Children's choir on Queen St Mall

We have seen some really amazing Christmas displays, including a sandcastle of Santa and his reindeer, along with an emu, a wombat and a fairly angry looking kangaroo.  The sculpture isn't finsihed yet, but it is most impressive and we hope they treated the sand so that the artwork doesn't all disolve into a puddle in the next rainstorm.

Amazing sand sculpture

Not all the decorations are man-made, this is also the time of year when many of the trees are in full bloom.  The frangipani trees are very pretty but the most impressive are the poinciana trees, with their brilliant red flowers.  The trees have a beautiful canopy shape and provide lots of shade over a wide area.  One of the most beautiful poinciana trees in our neighbourhood was recently blown over in a summer storm and they had to close two lanes of traffic just for the clean-up!

Poinciana Tree...this photo was taken just two days before it was blown over

Lovely and colourful frangipani trees

This has been one of the longest vacation-free stretches for us (12 weeks!) and we can't wait for the next two weeks of work to end.  We will have 10 days off, including spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Sydney!