marc.vic.max.elliot

Vic and I are back from our weekend in Auckland and had a fantastic time.  The food at Dine was divine and we had a nice relaxing time catching up with friends and wandering around the shops.  Those that keep an eye on my Twitter feed will also know what we had to eat that evening 🙂

The title of this post comes from the experience that Vic an I had this morning.

Max got up to go the the toilet and blow his nose (both the boys have colds) at about six a.m. and then muttered someting about “going back to sleep” – yeah right! This  from a boy that usually gets up between five thirty and six.

At seven thirty we had to go upstairs to get him up and he was still fast asleep!  I don’t think he has ever slept that long but he was in a great mood this morning for a change.

I’m taking Vic out to dinner.

Slightly different in that I’m taking her to Dine in Auckland 🙂 We fly out at 11:00 this morning and get back at about 18:00 tomorrow!

I just had a “kids just melt your heart” moment 🙂

Max’s class is having swimming lessons this week and are off to the pool every morning.  Max is not a big fan of the water and didn’t enjoy it yesterday at all but this morning managed to get his face underwater which was a big step for him.

Tonight I was putting him to bed and I said how proud I was of him for doing that and that I was also really impressed with his reading skills.  He looks up at me, puts his arm around my neck, says “thanks for saying that Dad” and gives me a big hug.

I think that will keep me going for a while 🙂

The James Blunt concert last night was absolutely fantastic! I was a bit worried that the pretty laid back style of his music would not grab the audience and produce much of an atmosphere but was very pleasantly surprised! He really pumped up the energy in a lot of his songs and threw a much stronger bassline than on the albums.

Another thing that was good was the fact that he has a great voice live. It is surprisingly strong but keeps the wide vocal range that he has.

The highlight for me was the four or five songs that he sang where it was just him and the instrument that he was playing whether it be guitar or piano. Just brilliant!

So I’ve gone all modern and created a twitter feed 🙂 What is twitter? Kind of a mini-blog where you can update easily (via mobile phone for eg.) but in 140 characters or less.

Another fad? Maybe, but I found a way to do updates via email rather than SMS so I can email from my blackberry rather than have to SMS a number in the UK (at 20 cents a pop). We’ll see how it gets on but keep an eye on the right of the screen 🙂

If you twitter as well you can track me at cosmo_nz

Yep, Elliot turns three today! Every time I create a post relating to the birthdays I always comment on how fast time is passing and it’s the same this year.

Yesterday we took him and four of his friends out to McDonald’s for lunch and it was a great party – no stress, no mess and the kids all really enjoyed it. Here’s a pic of him blowing out the candles on the cupcakes Vic made that had each of their initials spelled out in mini m&m’s 🙂

It’s been a while hasn’t it? Even worse is that it’s not like nothing has been happening either it’s just that I haven’t posted 🙁

So what’s happened?

Max has been at school for about seven weeks and after a rocky start, where he didn’t want to be left, seems to be doing well. We had our first parent-teacher meeting last week and Miss Wylie, Max’s teacher, didn’t have a negative thing to say about him. He’s slightly advanced in reading and maths and really focusses well on the task at hand. We are very proud of him but realise it’s a looooooong road 😉

Elliot starts kindy next week (I know, so soon!) which is about six weeks earlier than we had originally been told. I think he’ll do OK as he spent a lot of time there dropping off and picking up Max anyway so he should feel OK……. we’ll see!

Easter was spent with a “honey-do” list 😉 which included the following: clear the bank (cliff!) of brush in preparation for the planting of native plants and trees, move about 2 tons of a topsoil/compost mix into the new vegetable garden, lay a concrete slab along the side off the house which would have been OK but we couldn’t hire a mixer on the day and I had to mix all the concrete by hand. It doesn’t sound like much but all four days off were very full and we felt pretty good about things when it was over 🙂

More travel with work. Now that we’ve hired a person in Auckland (yay!) my travel will decrease significantly once he’s up to speed which should be within a month or so.

The golf game mentioned below was good fun.  Our team didn’t win anything but supposedly we’ll all receive a really nice golf club travel bag over the next few weeks just for showing up – sweet!

I think that’s the major points. Once Vic reads this I’m sure she will point out anything I’ve missed and any mistakes I’ve made……..