We stayed in a lovely apartment with Ali's Mum and Dad who arrived on Sunday evening just around the corner from Rob and Rach's, it was lovely to see them again after 9 months. The apartment had a great terrace from which we could look down on to the ocean. Unfortunately at the start of the week we experienced a pretty sodden couple of days as the heaven's opened but Ali was able to occupy herself with wedding dress shopping with Mum and we spent the evenings with Rob, Rach and her parents and Aunt and Uncle, it's so relaxing for us to be surrounded by family - especially family who spoil us rotten. Friday night Rob took us out with his Hockey club for an all you can eat meat feast at a local churrasco restaurant, fantastic although we both got meat sweats. We'd also had a lovely night out on Wednesday with Andrew (another friend from back home) and his wife Aimie. It's really amazing how many people we know out here, we've pretty much filled our entire time with friends and family - it's been great having been away for so long.

The highlight of the week was Izzy's christening which was held in a beautiful colonial house with lovely gardens and it was a perfect day and even though she is very far away a day we were able to toast the arrival of another family member, Eira, Steve's second niece who was born on Tuesday. We had such a great day at the christening that we fell asleep in front of the TV and ended up standing Ali's mates from Uni up who we were supposed to meet in the city that night - rock and roll, asleep at 6pm after a christening! Then on Sunday we went down to Bronte beach to watch the finish of the Bondi to Bronte swim, 2000 people swimming over 2 kms, we'd still be finishing if we'd tried but it was for allcomers. We then spent Monday wandering around Bondi with Mike and Ailsa before catching our flight to Adelaide to see our friend Lizzy Ray and her man Leigh Roy.