2025 Year in Review

Hello, family and friends! We hope everyone is doing well.

Kids

Ari is almost 20 months old and has evolved from a cute but immobile blob to a walking, talking, cheeky little man. He (mostly) adores his big sister and will copy everything she does - good and bad! It seems like he's taking after her in the risk-taking behaviour so that’s going to be super fun for us. He has had a few ups and downs on the health front, including lots of ear infections (for which he has now had grommet surgery), but we are hopefully in the clear for a while now.

He absolutely adores animals, especially our backyard frequenters of kookaburras (“burra”), wallabies (“wahby”) and cockatoos (“dodo”). He is also a fan of tractors (“tahdah”), playing peekaboo, kicking balls, and bopping along to music, with a particular love for Hot Potato (“titi nana”) by The Wiggles and Do Re Mi from The Sound of Music.

At 4½ years old, Avery is now a verifiable “kid” and has the sass to match! The past year was occasionally…challenging…from a behavioural perspective, but overall she is a great kid and has really come out of her shell this year! She flourished at her preschool and developed some new close friends who she loves to hang out with, and is slowly becoming more confident in group settings. She loves swimming and finally cracked being able to swim across the pool by herself. She took up gymnastics as well and has been loving it so far. We thought lots of activities might wear down her boundless energy but it only seems to fuel it.

She continues to amaze us with her insightful questions and life commentary, although this took a slightly creepy turn when she became interested in the concept of death and started listing off the order in which we would all die (apparently dada, then mama, Avery, then Ari, and finally a very long-lived Kiki). A few other fun quotations from this year I noted down (side note, if you have young kids, I highly recommend you write down the nonsensical and hilarious things they say - so fun to look back on!):

• “What was the dinosaur that blessed you on the kids?” (referring to the brachiosaurus that sneezes on the kids in Jurassic Park)
• Me: “Ok Avery, are you less sweaty now?” (after she took off all her clothes for a nap); Avery: “No, now I need to take my skin off and then my blood and then my bones and then throw me in the bin”
• “Haha, you can’t have annnnyyyy peace” (said mockingly to me after bursting into the bathroom)
• “Where did they put grandpa’s eye that was sore? Did they put it in the bin?” (discussing lens surgery)
• “Maybe I could buy wings from Bunnings and put them on the pig?” (Avery trying to figure out if she could actually make pigs fly, upon learning the phrase)
• “I’m going to live with Ari forever and ever until we die” ❤️

Work
Andrew continues to work as a Product Lead at Airwallex, which has kept him extremely busy this past year due to rolling out into new countries. He's still enjoying the work but is hoping this year brings a little more balance as there have been a lot of late nights which are tough with an early waking child!

Annika returned to work at Coras in April and is currently navigating the joys and challenges of a 3 day/week schedule. She also has the new job title of Partner of Corporate Services which means she is now responsible for the Finance, Commercial, and People & Culture teams as well as Business Operations. Trying to take on new responsibilities while on a part-time schedule has not been easy, but the learning curve is certainly keeping things interesting!

Home & family

Living in Middle Cove continues to delight us. Not only have we been seeing the wallabies a lot this year, but even got to see one of them nursing a young joey and watching it climb into its pouch! We never tire of our marsupial neighbours, and nor do the kids. We also were visited many times by some very friendly lorikeets, which was lovely for us and sad for Kiki who was not allowed out to murder them (not that she’d stand a chance, really).

On the family front, we’re lucky that Avery continues to have grandparent care one day a week, alternating between our families. She has built a wonderful bond with her grandparents and Ari now also gets very excited to see them and launches into their arms. We also did several escape rooms with our families for birthdays which has been lots of (slightly nerdy) fun! Moments like this reiterate our decision to move home and be close to our family network.

Travel / fun stuff

We kicked off the new year with a trip to Orange with a group of mates from uni, which was loads of fun. Shared parenting is the best, and we continue to scheme ways to set up a commune.

We also travelled to the USA in February, kicking off with a week in San Francisco / Sonoma to catch up with old friends, which was truly just the best. We followed this with a week of skiing in Breckenridge, CO with Andrew’s parents. Avery went to ski school for the first time which she enjoyed, but even more than that she liked skiing with us in the afternoons and refusing to pizza her skis because she wanted to go fast. According to Anne & David, she is Andrew’s child as he was exactly the same as a youngster!

We don’t get to attend many weddings nowadays, so we felt lucky to attend two this year! One was for our good friends Alan & Sean which afforded an opportunity to dress up in nice clothes and dance the night away in Sydney harbour. The other was for Andrew’s brother Ian and was overlooking the beach at Freshwater which was beautiful. Avery and Ari looked very cute as flowergirl and pageboy, and did their best to make it down the aisle without losing it.

We also tail-ended the year nicely with another trip to Orange with the same set of friends, which was once again delightful and included cherry picking and the 5 “big kids” sharing a room all together for the first time. The kids spent most of the time entertaining themselves and we adults got to do all the exciting things adults in their late 30s do like playing board games and staying up til 11pm.

This year we both found more time to return to the exercise we both enjoy, although it continues to be a juggle with demanding jobs and demanding kids! Andrew has been playing in a soccer team and Annika has (kind of) taken up running again (consistency is still an issue, but she did manage to do a few park runs and a 5km fun run with Avery as part of the Sydney Marathon), as well as resistance training, because apparently that’s a thing she should be doing so her bones don’t crumble into dust as she ages. Goal in 2026 is to get back on the road bikes although that is a whole other level of time commitment 😅

Some quick hits from 2026:
Favourite Podcast Ep: If Books Could Kill - Elon Musk (Annika); Articles of Interest - Gear (Andrew)
Favourite Book: The Familiar - Leigh Bardugo (Annika); Pedro Páramo - Juan Rulfo (Andrew) Favourite TV Show: The Four Seasons (Annika); Bluey (Avery, Ari & Andrew)

And that’s it! We wish you a wonderful 2026 and hope the year brings you and your loved ones lots of little glimmers of joy.

P.S. Annual Kiki photo dump. She is becoming an old dame and is spending a bit more time napping in the sun, but continues to find enough energy to ambush people in the hallway and bat their legs.