visit Desiree, Thanksgiving and Sinterklaas

Desiree came here again for 5 days after her visit to Tasmania (after seeing her pictures and hearing her story we want to go too!), it was so nice to have her here again. We went to the botanical gardens and opera house with her (it was really hot!) and went to the beach of course and took her to the Australian Reptile Park. Also we celebrated Thanksgiving when she was here, we found a real turkey (a frozen one, not the best we have ever had..but ok) and some cranberry sauce (at Aldi), made some stuffing and mashed potatoes and had a great meal! Also we celebrated Sinterklaas again of course which was a little different this year because it is summer here which is just strange. Desiree was here and she had brought some presents from Sinterklaas from The Netherlands (chocolate letters) for all of us and some marsepein. Also we made pepernoten (gingerbread cookies) just like every year. Then Desiree left for the Netherlands, we miss her here, it was a fun visit! The following weekend we went to the Sinterklaas celebration at the Dutch club in Sydney (Neerlandia) which was fun, the boys really enjoyed it. The weird thing is that it was in English, but I guess there were a lot of mixed couples and kids who could not understand/speak Dutch. It was pretty interesting. And then on December 5th we celebrated Sinterklaas at home -the boys got some nice books, some games and a body board each. It was a fun evening and they were pretty happy with their presents. It was the first time the boys themselves wrote some poems for us, they were pretty impressive! But first a picture of our view -with a beautiful sunrise. And our dog Lyra who is very happy here!