Last Saturday was my birthday, the first one I had spent in Sydney in 22 years. I had a great day with a visit to the beach in the morning, a family lunch, a visit with my mum and then prawns and champagne on Balmoral Beach for dinner. Anna actually snapped this photo of us – she is becoming quite the little photographer at the tender age of 3.

For weeks now we have been seeing the seaplanes near our place and when we were out on the Harbour. Jude has been asking for a long time to take a ride in one so this weekend we did just that. We drove over early to have breakfast at a local cafe by the water and then we caught a boat out to the waiting plane. Jude was very excited about it and he loved every minute of it.

I thought the seaplane ride was amazing. We went all around my favorite parts of Sydney – including the northern beaches and Pittwater as well as taking in all of Sydney Harbour. We did a figure eight loop around the Opera House and Harbour Bridge and here is one of the best photos I took.

Sydney has a lot of birds. Every morning we are woken up by the kookaburras making their loud and somewhat obnoxious call at the crack of dawn. And we have a tree right outside our balcony that is home to dozens of rosellas – a really colorful Australian parrot. They even come on to our railing some times, so I snapped this photo last week much to the delight of the kids.

Finally, I want to talk about my mum this week. She is one of the main reasons we are in Sydney for six months. She has Alzheimer’s disease and has been getting progressively worse for some time now. She recognizes me some of the time, but interestingly she recognizes my Dad all the time, at least until now. She has some very dear friends that she has known for over 60 years and we got them together for lunch this past week.

My mum, Pat Bernard and Betty Phillips met while working at Ryde Council in the early 1950’s and have remained good friends ever since. When my mum quit the council to become a full time mother just before my brother was born they kept in contact. In fact, until my mum moved into a nursing home a couple of years ago they had seen each other once a week for morning tea or lunch every week for several decades. With my mum’s declining health this is almost certainly their last lunch together. These women were so important in my mother’s life but now she barely even remembers them.