What a Weekend!

We were all very excited that The Man was coming home after almost 3 weeks in Asia.  He visited Shanghai for the first time but unfortunately it was freezing and raining and he couldn't see much!  In addition he visited Singapore, Koh Samui and Bangkok for meetings and he arrived back in Sydney last Friday.  So we drove up to meet him, stayed in an apartment in Darling Harbour and had a blast!  We had booked tickets to the Harry Potter Exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum which was absolutely fantastic!  We all love HP, so we really enjoyed it, and Taylor being a mega-fan of the films was beyond excited!  No photos unfortunately, as they were not permitted, but we can highly recommend it!

We spent the rest of the day bowling and walking around Darling Harbour, then had a lovely dinner at Cockle Bay before watching fireworks over Darling Harbour and heading home exhausted!  The next morning we had a bit of a sleep in and slow start then headed out for some shopping at the QBD.  We bought some amazing bits and pieces there and just really enjoyed looking in the cute shops upstairs, grabbing a bite in the food hall for lunch.  Chris took our shopping haul back to the apartment and we spent a couple of hours with the kids in the playground and water park, soaking our feet and people watching, before heading up to Chinatown.

We checked out some of the street theatre then enjoyed a delicious Chinese dinner before finding a spot in the crowd to watch the Chinese New Year Parade.  After all that walking the day before and that day as well, the two hours waiting and the hour or so of the parade were excruciating on our old feet, especially The Man who held Ronin on his shoulders for much of that time.  It was worth it, the parade was terrific, and there were fireworks again at Darling Harbour on our way back to the apartment.

On Monday we checked out and headed for Ikea in Tempe right on opening.  Which was good, because we left right on closing!!  Yes, we were there ALL DAY!  It literally took us that long to do the big shop we had to do, despite all the preplanning, designing and choosing online we had done in preparation.  We stopped for lunch (swedish meatballs for me!) but the rest of the time it was full on.  We ended up with 10 large trolleys of stuff, 9 carried the boxes of storage units we were purchasing to outfit the new Mancave, Ronin's bedroom, hall cupboards and the redo of the media room - all in all 164 boxes!  Luckily they are being delivered!  We took a little trolley of bits and pieces home with us and arrived back in Canberra about 8.30pm!  What a day!  What a weekend!

I took a couple of photos, but it was not fun lugging around the big DSLR all day.  I am SO not fit!  Although it was good prep for only my second personal trainer session of the year on the Tuesday morning, I think I would have died otherwise.  She actually got me to SKIP, that is JUMP ROPE!!  I did it to, only for a minute, but I didn't think I would be able to do it at all!

Now we are almost prepared for the new school year, the reno is still in full swing, I'm still writing, photographing, doing the 365 challenge and preparing my craft room for (hopefully) the arrival of all my stuff and the unpacking of same next week!

I hope you all enjoyed the back to school experience, or will if you haven't already!  In the meantime, Kung Hei Fat Choy!!  Welcome to the Year of the Dragon!

Cheers,
Tracey