Happy Oz New Year

It is just past midnight here in Australia. We are having a great time at a New Year's Eve party in Port Douglas on the Great Barrier Reef just north of Cairns, Australia. We are celebrating at a party in the lobby of the Mirage Resort. Feels a bit odd not to see the. Ball drop in Times Square, which won't happen for another 15 hours or so. The key New Year's icon here is the fireworks over Sydney Harbor. Earlier this evening we had a great dinner at Paddy's Irish Pub in Port Douglas then back to the resort for the party-- complete with live band. We had fun singing and dancing. Shortly after we got to the party, our "Little Miss Social" started talking with some kids across the dance floor. Come to find out Shannon was talking to a third grade buddy of hers from the Singapore American School (SAS). Dominic and his family seem very nice-- they also have a seventh grader although Connor and he had not yet crossed paths. It is funny to be so far away and in a more remote Australian town (most people stay right in and around Cairns) and run across people from SAS. The same thing hapened in Phuket over Thanksgiving only many times over as we met probably 10 families from SAS there. While we are having a great time, we won't last long as we had to get up very early this morning to fly from Surfer's Paradise to Cairns-- then drove about an hour north to Port Douglas. On the flight in, we got a good view of the Great Barrier Reef. It is so vast and stretches for miles and miles. Tomorrow, on New Year's Day, we are planning to rest up at the resort. It is gorgeous with about ten lagoons and two enormous pools-- one fresh water and one salt water. We are planning a few excursions out to see the reef before we head back to Singapore. We feel like our Aussie adventure has covered a lot of ground until the country map reminds us we have only seen a small sliver of Australia. Like the US, it is a huge country. That said, we are thrilled with the peek this trip is providing. Happy New Year to all. We're praying the new year will bring peace to the world and health & happiness to all. Deb, Sean, Caitlin, Connor and Shannon.