January 23, 2012 Well, after flying back to Sydney on December 9th we spent one night in the Quay West Hotel near the Rocks area of Sydney before we boarded our Virgin Australia flight to Los Angeles. We stayed in New Zealand last year during Christmas and we vowed we would never miss Christmas with the family again--we missed them too much. We had a wonderful Christmas with all our kids and grandkids--we are the happiest when all our kids and grandkids are with us. We plan on staying here in SoCal until the beginning of March when we will fly back to Sydney. We then plan on car touring up the east coast of Australia--the 'Gold Coast'. We will then put Serenity back in the water and after a refit we will travel up the north east coast of Australia following the Great Barrier Reef up and over Cape York to Darwin in the Northern Territories. We plan on doing some touring of the national parks in the Northern Territories before we join the Darwin to Indonesia rally up the Indonisian archepeligo to Singapore. We then hope to spend some time exploring the waters of Thailand before we have Serenity shipped up to Turkey after which we tour the Mediteranean Sea. But of course, all these plans are written in sand at low tide--which means we may or may not follow the plan. The attached photos are of our grandkids--the first is Jackson and his Mom snowboarding in Mammoth Mountain.