Max on his sixth birthday with his new Ben10 skateboard. Here we go…….

Max turned six today!
Vic and I were discussing last night that it just seems like yesterday that he was born. I remember the frantic drive through the streets of central London after I had the call at 02:30 from the hospital saying that Vic was 9.5cm dilated and wanting to push! Now Max is reading (or trying to) almost every sign, packet and brochure that he comes across.
Where does the time go? 🙂

This weekend the family plus Granddad and Ngaire went to a jousting tournament held in Upper Hutt and run by The Order of the Boar (great name!).  There were joutsers from New Zealand, Belgium, Canada, Sweden and the US along with archery, sword fighting and siege machines.  The boys had a great time and loved all the events but were especially impressed by the pageantry and colour of the jousting.

What else do you expect?

One rare thing that happened was that on one of the runs the competitors hit each other on the tips of their lances.  If you think about all the things that have to align for this to happen you can understand why it doesn’t happen very often.  Luckily I was shooting in high speed mode…

Hi everyone and welcome to 2009! Another year down and what’s to show for it except an inch or two on each of the boys? 🙂

As for Christmas it was crazy!  The boys came in about 06:00 and we headed downstairs to see if Santa had visited.  Supposedly he had so I’m not sure which list he was reading and checking twice….

One of the most used presents on the day was a very inexpensive guitar-microphone-amp set that Santa bought for Elliot.  The boys even put on a show for us 🙂

Vic’s Mum had stayed for for the night and about 08:00 my Dad and his partner turned up for breakfast and more presents.  Showers, nibbles and playing with toys and all of a sudden it was lunchtime and a visit from my Mum.  We had decided again this year to stay at home and make everyone visit us.  This was due to a couple of things.  The first was falling asleep at the wheel a couple of years ago after rushing around all day (luckily I woke up when we hit the rough asphalt at the side of the road!) and the second was so that the boys could actually have time to enjoy their gifts in the presence of the people that gave them.

Dinner time rolled around and it was the full on dinner with Turkey and all the trimmings.  Vic’s sister and her partner both hate raisins so Vic had made them an ice-cream pudding instead.  They seemed to enjoy it although they were lucky it lasted until desert….

Boxing day was spent visiting people and then it was a full house again for BBQ on the 27th for friends that we hadn’t seen over the Christmas period yet.  Here are some photo’s from the day.

Jay and Thomas on their first visit back to NZ from London

Thomas, Jack, Elliot, Abbey and Max

Max and Abbey (after we’d caught them kissing upstairs – at 6 she’s an older woman! ;))

Max and his Auntie Ali

Larry, Vic and Ali.  These three have known each other since they were five!

Hi everyone – just a quick Merry Christmas to all our friends and family from us here in New Zealand.  The weird thing is that it won’t be Christmas in the west coast of the US for 17 hours…..

My kind of Christmas Tree 🙂

Hi everyone – long time no see!  Things have been crazy around here but I think everyone is a wee bit mad at this time of year 🙂  Here are a couple of things that you may find interesting:

• Vic had a great time in Auckland at the Kylie Minogue concert.  She had asked me a number of months ago whether or not I wanted to go and I’d said no. I suggested however that she take a few days away from the boys and go up herself (we had friends also going) while I took a few days off from work to look after the little ratbags.  The end result was that Vic had a great time shopping, doing lunch and concert-going while I had a lovely few days looking after the boys.
• Max received his first report card from school.  He did brilliantly and in recognition we bough him a small gift.  It’s really interesting the way they measure children these days and Max scored the highest score in all sections except two.  He also received some lovely comments from his teacher at the end.  Want to see it? Here’s a copy (pdf – 2.3MB)

About two months ago Vic asked if I wanted to go and see Kylie Minogue in concert in Auckland tonight.  I said no but told her she should go up, catch up with friends, go shopping and just have some time away from me and the kids. Naturally she thought that this was a good idea 😉

She left in the middle of the day yesterday and is back late tomorrow afternoon so I have taken a couple of days of work to look after the boys and am quite enjoying it so far….

The really funny thing and just indicative of my life at the moment is the fact that the boys and I are driving to the airport to pick Vic up when her flight gets in at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon.  We’ll give each other a kiss, I’ll hand her the car keys, pass over stewardship of the kids and then board a 5:30 flight to Auckland.  Very strange 🙂