Shearer in toon

An amazing morning in Melbourne with the main man here on a promotional tour. We went down to the Bob Jane Stadium in Albert Park to watch Shearer
train some kids from various Melbourne football clubs. Of course, we were fully decked out in toon gear to make sure he felt at home. About 300 other ex-pat Geordies had done the same so it was quite surreal. After about an hour they finished up and he was being whisked off to go and watch the AFL grand final at the MCG which is also on today (no co-incidence there I'm sure). Before he went though he met the fans and signed autographs. The top picture is of him signing Ethan's number 9 on the back of his shirt and the bottom one speaks for itself. So thats another ambition chalked off ... you don't get closer to the almighty than that ;-)

Back in the US of A

I've left the Aussie sun for some Texan sun this week as I've gone to the states & Canada for a couple of weeks on business. Good timing on the 5th anniversary of September 11th(!) Maxine is delighted at the prospect of looking after the kids for 2 weeks while I go to Dallas, New York and Toronto.... Looks like lots of presents will be in order on my return. We're flying up to NYC on Friday to spend the weekend in Manhattan. Thems the breaks eh.....

Ski School

...We did wonder if it was wise booking up at the start of spring, especially with some of the worst snowfalls in years but as the aim was to give Ethan some
experience on the slopes we went anyway. Mt. Buller is just over 3 hours from our house and easy to get to in the car. Its pretty low by mountain standards (5600ft) but is enough to usually get decent winter snowfall even in Australia. It was actually much better than we thought and there were some good runs for us to go on as well as being able to get Ethan into ski school for the first time (it starts with 3 year olds so he just got in). It was fantastic seeing him in his class with all the other little 'uns. As you can imagine, as very proud parents we were snapping away as he was learning. He has the smallest skis we've ever seen and looked unbelieveably cute ! He had a lesson on the first day which was pretty basic so we took him the next afternoon for a bit more time on one of the beginner 'green' runs - he even went up on the chair lift without being worried at all. He absolutely loved it and by the end was managing to go in a straight line by himself for 10m or so before falling. I think he liked the falling down in the snow bit a little more than the skiing though ! All in all, a fantastic couple of days.