Friday July 19th

I am already very behind on posts!  We've been in Australia for a week already and have been to busy to keep the updates posted.  We just arrived in Sydney today and will try to catch up since we are away from the rest of the family.

Friday was a great day.  We had a good nights rest over at Linda and Greg's place on St Helen St in Hawthorne East.  After breakfast we took a cab over to the Melbourne ScienceWorks which is a museum targeted at kids.  It was really fun.  Linda joined us and we met Andrew, Debbie and AJ there.  Luciana dropped off the Clynes and it was the first time I got to me her.

After ScienceWorks we caught a cab back to Hawthorne East with everyone and had lunch at a great Cafe called George on Burke Rd.  The kids had scrambled eggs with bacon (grilled ham over here).  We ordered nachos, fries (chips) and other foods and stuffed our face.  Luciana joined in near the end and had a coffee.  It was nice to relax.

After that we went our separate ways (Clynes were staying at Luciano's place downtown and we were a the O'Connell's) for some rest and to prepare for the first big family event.

Dinner was at a place called the Old English Hotel and there was close to a 100 people there with our party.  We saw Nona for the first time.  And we met a ton of people from the family - Marisa and Pio, Christine and John, Zia Savina (the birthday girl) and her sister, Pia (99 years old)!  Jim and Shirley Gabbo and their daughter Olivia and her husband Andrew. Luciana's daughter Melanie and her husband Nick.  And a host of other people (see pictures).

It was our first full day in Melbourne and Jet Lag was tough.  The kids were hitting rock bottom but they were great and struggled through with flying colors.