Before flying to Perth we celebrated Christmas in Sydney last weekend. You gotta love a bloke who cuts out his nephew's names from cardboard for their present. And people think I'm the artistic one in this relationship?! We also adopted the boys for the weekend to give their parents their first break in 2 years. We had so much fun.  

The Barr boys. All of them are gorgeous! 

The Barr girls. A signficant improvement to a household of 4 blokes who love steak and football. 

Happy Christmas! My best buy on ebay yet..1 cent head lamps for little boys to go treasure hunting at night. We hid chocolates all through the house and had to stay up 'til 9pm (darkness) to use them well. 

Bedtime stories with the superheroes. 

Up up and away

It's a crazy time of year. We are flying to Perth in 2 days and there is so much happening. We have our staff meeting today for which I've brought in the Santa suit purchased from an op shop in July for $5. If you can't use it at a time like this...when can you use it?

All is well. See you on the west side.

Gut full

We went to church yesterday. It wasn't our usual location with our usual 'peeps' (translation: people). At this church, men wore dresses. Well, the men that were important and up the front. White robes with red stoles. Except the guy who preached (about IR reforms) who had swapped his clergy stole for a Sydney Swans scarf. Now obviously that would usually have impressed the Barrs however to someone who already doesn't understand clerical garb, it completely confused me. If wearing dresses in church is so important for some ministers and it's a signifier of consecration and liturgical appropriateness, how can you so flippantly exchange it for a football team scarf? In my head he completely ridiculed his own faith (and footy allegiance) by doing so and he completely closed down any open-mindness I had deliberately woken up with. To compound the situation his opening remarks were along the lines of how irrelevant the church has become to today's world. No kidding mate. Maybe the songs we sung that were written a bizillion years ago also contributed to irrelevancy. This particular church meets in a commercial cafe that is on one of Sydney's most enjoyable shopping strips. The cafe is not open on Sundays and as we were leaving we noticed a church member meeting a group of people at the cafe door to explain they weren't open for business. On Sunday this cafe is just for cross-dressers and Middle Ages choir boys.