I think Jude would say the highlight for him of the past two weeks was having guinea pigs for a weekend. Anna’s preschool has guinea pigs and each kid gets to take them home for the weekend. While Anna enjoyed the guinea pigs, Jude was in heaven. As soon as we got home from an outing Jude would ask if he could hold one of them; sometimes he even wanted to come home from an outing specifically to see them. They were very tame and are used to little kids not so gentle touching. Both kids had such a great time that we signed up for another weekend later in the year.

The other highlight of the past fortnight was our family day at Luna Park. This is an amusement park right on Sydney Harbour and went there this past Friday. Jude is officially in kindergarten four and half days a week but by Friday he is exhausted so we are planning on taking him out of school most Fridays and the teachers are fine with that.

Anyway, Jude is a huge fan of Luna Park, in particular the Wild Mouse roller coaster. Marcy lost count of how many times they went on it but in the end she told Jude she needed a break. They take a photo of every car in one of the steep sections and we had to buy one of them – Jude looked just like this in all 15 or so rides they took.

This morning was one of the most spectacular sun rises I have seen in a long time. Jude even woke Marcy up to make sure she didn’t miss it. I took this photo from the office window.

These days Jude loves to run. He particularly likes chasing birds as we have mentioned but he also often falls behind when we are out walking because something has grabbed his attention. Today we went to the Australian Museum in the city and we walked back through a park and I snapped this photo of Jude running at full tilt.

Jude started Kindergarten 10 days ago and as expected it was a bit of a tough transition. He cried a lot and didn’t want me to leave him and the first day I took him home after an hour or so. The second day he was much better and after a week he has settled in nicely. He still wants me to stay when I drop him off but I can see that once I leave he is totally fine. He seems to enjoy school and has lots of stories to tell us when he gets home. Here is a photo of Jude with Marcy as he is about to go off to his Sydney school for the first time.

Last weekend we all ventured out to Aunt Robyn and Uncle Mark’s farm in the country. Jude and Anna had a blast – they got to ride horses and explore the 30 acre farm. They had a little dam that Jude explored in great detail – studying at the fish and all the insects – but his favorite part was definitely riding the horse. Here you can see Jude riding bareback on Cruise the thoroughbred and former race horse. Jude and Anna took a tandem ride on Cruise that I captured on video here.

Yesterday we decided to meet up with some good friends and take a walk over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We caught the ferry into Circular Quay, met our friends and then walked over the bridge. It is probably a good couple of miles all told and Jude walked pretty much the entire way. Anna was a trooper and walked about half. Here we all are halfway across the bridge.

One of Jude’s favorite things to do these days is to chase birds. When we get to a park or the beach he just wants to run and try and catch a bird. He sometimes gets pretty close where he might be able to catch one but he gets scared when they start flapping their wings hard. Well today, we had a family lunch at a cafe overlooking the Parramatta River and there were plenty of birds around. Uncle Mark had some pigeons under his chair and he managed to grab one much to the delight of Jude – he went over to give it a pat on the head.