Thursday, April 30, 2009

Now that I'm 2..


I can ride a horse












And I love to take my clothes off even though it's only 13C outside.  So my mum and dad decided that I could have a go at wearing real BUTTERFLY undies just so that I would put some clothes back on and not die of pneumonia.  I didn't do too badly for a first attempt at wearing no nappy.



Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Geri Update

A total of 8 more days of work for me and 4 weeks (and counting) until Geri is supposed to arrive.    

One of the perks with working in the industry is test driving the latest ultrasound machines.  Our company is trialing the newest Phillips Ultrasound machine which includes 3D and 4D imaging. Geri wasn't all that co-operative in that she had her head turned away from the camera for most of the time. Here's the best ultrasound picture of Geri, taken today.




Sunday, April 26, 2009

Ella's Party

Our little girl turned 2 today.  She has become more aware of the concept of a birthday and we encouraged her understanding of the upcoming big event by talking to her about whose birthday it was, what the cake was going to be, how old she was turning and who was coming to her party. So for the last few weeks she has been singing her version of happy birthday - I had to be corrected by Andy as I though Ella was saying Pip away (meaning go away Pippa our dog) but in fact she was saying hip hooray!  

Ella started the morning by sleeping in until 7am!!! Normally the little patter of feet arrive sometime between 5 - 6am.  After drinking some milk she opened her presents in our bed - a jigsaw, some clothes, a pair of ugg boots, some sticker books and a In the Night Garden dvd. 

 

Choas started at 10ish with the arrival of family and friends - a total of 10 little people and 15 accompanying adults. Due to winter arriving over the weekend and with a max temp of 13C today most of the party was spent inside. A small part in the clouds meant the kids could run around fighting over the slide and the one bike, playing in the wet sandpit and being licked by an excited dog for about 20mins.  Then it was back inside for CAKE!

 

All the kids were impressed by the bus cake and waited patiently without touching it until everyone was ready to sing happy birthday.  Ella looked happy and a little shy but did managed to blow out both of her candles.  We definitely had a fun day and Ella enjoyed herself too - she was exhausted sleeping for nearly 3 hrs this afternoon!

 



Saturday, April 25, 2009

Happy Bus-day (for tomorrow)

The final leg of the April birthday-fest arrives tomorrow. Like newbie parents, we're excited about the fact that this is the first birthday for which Ella is sufficiently self-aware to know that it's hers. So we've been ramping her up, coaxing her into some sense of excitement.

Part of the excitement is that we decided to make her a cake. Like amateurs, we thought it would be a good idea to ask Ella what sort of cake she would like -- to which she replied: "BUS". This was fairly predictable. Ella responds to every second question with the word 'bus', and it's only worse on days which we catch the bus to work. Anyway, once committed there was no turning back, and the image you can see here is the result. We think it's kind of cool. Let's hope Ella notices.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Happy Birthday Mummy

It would seem that all the cool people have birthdays in April. First it was Pippa, while Ella is last. But today it was Nat's turn. The day began bright and early (actually, it wasn't bright at all, it was still dark) when Ella came in to our room to wake us up. When I reminded her it was her Mum's birthday, she remembered the card and present we had stashed in her cupboard (after spending hours wrapping the present). She ran off to grab it (needed a bit of help there) and we came back to do the giving. Ella was pretty excited; I'm not convinced Nat was ....

Normally I would have volunteered to cook a nice dinner for my wife on her birthday, but since I was at work and she was at home, Nat had to do the honours! She cooked a lovely lamb roast (although I did step in at the end to make the gravy). We thought it was great -- Ella didn't. To be honest, she spat her meat out, took a nibble of a mushroom and wouldn't touch any of her vegetables, only perking up when we offered her some plain old bread. The bread came with some desert on the side (a tiny slice of cheesecake). Ella thought this was a normal state of affairs and proceeded to invent her newest culinary delight: Cheesecake Sandwich!

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Hunting Easter Eggs

Ella has a new favourite pastime - hunting easter eggs!  Our relaxing easter sunday finished off with an easter egg hunt in the backgarden.  It was so much fun we had to do it twice! I think we only lost one chocolate easter egg to the easter egg hunting dog named Fuji....

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Happy Birthday Pippa

Our border collie Pippa, celebrated her 5th birthday yesterday. She spent most of the day playing with her best mate Fuji (andy's parents dog).  We are dog sitting for them while they are in Tassie for the easter orienteering carnival.  Later in the day, Ella took Pippa and Fuji for a walk to the local playground where they all played on the slide together.

  


Thursday, April 9, 2009

Goodbye Colonial Windows, Hello Double Glazing

Well stage 1 of the double glazing conversion of our windows has begun today with the lounge room.  They definitely look good (see below for before and afters) and with winter fast approaching we'll let you know how they perform.  Stage 2 is converting all the bedroom windows and is a little involved as we are changing the awning type window openings to casement type to allow more airflow during summer. This requires a carpenter to change the hinges to the side so not sure when stage 2 will be completed. Still waiting for the carpenter to get back to us....you know what tradespeople are like....

 

 

 

 


Every kid remembers this....

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Old Fashioned Orienteering

While Andy was coaching Patrick in a last minute bid to improve his orienteering skills for the upcoming Easter 3 days held in Tasmania, Ella and I conquered the 1.6km Blue course.

Unfortunately for Ella the event was only using SI units for timing which meant she wasn't able to stand at the control inserting the dibber 10 million times.  Instead we had to learn how to punch our card (and then our map a few times).  Anyway we had fun still the same.

The perfect day allowed us to test out our new camera as our old camera, which was only a year old, died I think after being dropped a few too many times.