I confess I’m slotting this post into the blog quite a bit of time after the fact but thought Quinn’s 6th birthday was a good reason for a backpost!

I took the day off work and, after getting through the present opening (a new bike being the main thing), we had a day out around Canberra which included a bike ride around the lake and a trip out to Fyshwick to go on the go-karts. Here’s a photo, admittedly a bit dark but the best we have, of Quinn on a go-kart. Yes… at 6 he is allowed to go on by himself and he was actually very good at it! The staff there even commented it was quite impressive to see a 6 year old concentrating so hard on correctly steering the go-kart (usually they head off in a straight line into the tyre barriers apparently).

I guess the time he has spent on Mario Kart Wii wasn’t all to waste!

Today we purchased a second-hand RoboRaptor for AU$40. Quite a bargain I think when they still retail in stores for AU$129 and the second-hand one we purchased was still in its box and hardly seems used. I’m not too surprised though, it is one of those toys that is good for a while but then probably ends up in a cupboard collecting dust… this also seems supported by the fact that on EBay they don’t seem to sell for very much either.

Anyway, not sure at this stage how much use it will get… so far only I have had a play with it just to test it! The toy is really for Quinn as a swap for one of the Microsoft VX6000 WebCams he won in the Aussie Photo Festival competition as what the heck is a 5 year old going to do with a webcam? We have therefore listed a webcam for sale and are effectively swapping it for the RoboRaptor for him and, although we would have given him the RoboRaptor today, his behaviour as hardly been deserving of getting a new toy. Anyway… works better this way, I got to play with it in peace when he was in bed!

My personal opinion, I’m quite impressed… the robot seems a bit wobbly on its feet but no matter how hard I tried I could not get it to fall over. Will be interesting also to see the kid’s reactions to it… not sure if it will scare Zoe and Leon. The latter I can quite easily see being terrorised by the RoboRaptor being controlled to follow him around the house!

Here’s a photo of Quinn with some, but not all, of the prizes he got from the Aussie Kids Photo Festival.

The prizes included the following and, because he won both 3rd place in Friends & Family and the Peoples Choice Award it meant we got some duplicate items which he could share with Zoe:-

2 x Microsoft Showbags - each containing a VX6000 Webcam, Drink Bottle, very tacky Microsoft bear (not in photo) and a Microsoft Cap / 2 x Nickelodeon Showbags - each containing Patrick plush toy (sporting the T-shirt stolen from the Microsoft bear), Nickelodeon cap, T-shirt and blow up ball / A Twister Dodgeball game (quite fun actually!) / a transformers car / a large transformers robot (do people really pay AU$90 for this crap?) / A cheap fujifilm camera / 2 x T-shirts containing the winning photo he took of Zoe / A printed canvas containing Zoe’s photo (not yet received but should be posted to us soon) and last but not least a nice FujiFilm Finepix A900 9 megapixel digital camera with leather case and 1gb SD card.

Some of the stuff we don’t intend to keep… the Microsoft teddies I think will end up under a Xmas wishing tree, the webcams will probably be sold and to be honest, Quinn has no real interest in the Transformer toys. I’m just glad he won the digital camera though as I was intending to buy him one regardless so this saves me the bother and gives him a camera better than I would probably have brought him anyway!

Today we spent the day in Sydney so that Quinn could collect his prizes for the Aussie Kids Photo Festival (see earlier post). I’m very happy to say he also won the Peoples Choice Award (thanks to Muppet and her mobilisation of all friends and family she could get to vote!). This meant he won a huge amount of loot including a brand new digital camera that puts my own camera to shame!

Quinn seemed a little bit bemused by the event (which to be honest seemed a little bit disorganised) and I think he was also not that interested in meeting Spongebob (we have a suspicion that he is already aware Spongebob was just somebody in a costume and not the REAL Spongebob) however, luckily we did get a couple of nice photos of Quinn with the presenters of Nickelodeon Australia, Kyle and Maud. This photo was actually taken after the ceremony as Kyle and Maud were leaving and it was nice to see they still had time to chat and have their photo taken with Quinn… they genuinely seem like nice guys who really enjoy dealing with kids… ie, I can’t compare them to Krusty the Clown!

Quinn, Zoe and Leon also thoroughly enjoyed visiting the Sydney Aquarium again and so did we given the fact that it was free thanks to having free entry to attend the award ceremony. And in addition, as part of Quinn’s prize we also now have another free pass to the Aquarium and the related wildlife centre and Sydney Tower to be used by the end of the year… nice!

Woohoo! This photo of Zoe, taken by Quinn, has won 3rd prize in the Friends & Family category of the 2008 Aussie Kids Photo Festival!

What does this mean? Well, it means we all get to go to Sydney and visit the aquarium for free as well as meaing that Quinn wins some other goodies that will be presented to him by none other than Spongebob Squarepants! Yay!

Also, it means Quinn’s photo is now on display at the Sydney Aquarium where visitors can vote for the photo in the “People’s Choice Award” - I’m therefore asking everybody I know… and even some I don’t…. and even those people who might read this blog!… to go to the  Aussie Kids Photo Festival webpage and register a vote for this photo… go on… go there now! Please!!!!!

I’ve been rather slack in making any posts this last week which is not so much because I have nothing to blog about but more so that it has been so busy that the week has just flown by.

It has been Quinn’s first week at Kindergarten so a whole new “big school” environment for him to get used to and for us to get used to as well! Luckily, and probably not too surprisingly, he seems to be taking it all in his stride and his first week appears to have gone rather well. No tears or upset and he seems, from what comments I can get out of him, that he is enjoying it.

Also it has been Zoe’s first week at playschool… this is just a one day a week affair but it is the first time Zoe has been left with “strangers”. Zoe is also very unlike Quinn in personality so we figured she may be more of a problem… neither myself nor Muppet could be sure how she would react. Luckily though it appears our worries were unfounded and she seemed to thoroughly enjoy herself, telling the teachers when she left “this has been a good day” which in Zoe speak means it must have really been very good!

As if the above two events were not enough it was also Leon’s 1st birthday this week! Yes, we have now survived a whole year as a family of 5. We had thought about having a proper party for him but as time got away from us with everything else happening we just had a small family event with the ever popular kid’s favourite…. pizza and ice-cream. The latter of which Leon must have ate 3+ bowls of!

I usually do not talk about work in this blog and keep it more family and leisure related but I’ll make an exception with this post to note that, in addition to the above events,  several people resigned and left work this week including one of our tax gurus who I did a lot of work with. Yours truly has suddenly discovered himself as the firm’s sole “tax effect” contact by default… will be interesting to see how work now pans out over the next few weeks although hopefully next week will be quiet on all fronts!

As I am always playing Wii Sports Bowling with Quinn and Zoe we decided yesterday we would take them to a real bowling alley for the first time. The little guys both loved it and, with the aid of the rolling ramp and side buffers they managed to post scores that competed with myself and Muppet! In fact, it was embarrassing for myself that, although I have a high score of 245 on the Wii, the highest I could manage with the real thing was 112!

The scores we all recorded, so that I can refer back to this post if we ever do it again were:-

1st Game - Dave 112 / Quinn 76 / Zoe 70 / Alex 104

2nd Game - Dave 85 / Quinn 75 / Zoe 88 / Alex 104

So we can derive from these scores that I obviously got tired on the second game, Quinn and Alex are obviously consistent and that Zoe was getting into form! And yes it does mean I got beaten by a 3 year old! Tsk!

This afternoon I played both Quinn and Zoe at the Wii version of bowling and Zoe, still obviously improving scored an impressived 183 which was her new personal best! It was so funny to see this little 3 year old get 2 strikes in a row twice during the game plus a continual barrage of spares! In that particularly game I think I scored about 176 so accept gracefully defeat at the hands of a 3 year old yet again!

Tonight with the kids in bed early and the wife away at work I decided I would make amends for the fact that the kid’s webpages had not been updated for a long long time. I have therefore been busy uploading photos and comments on all their pages so if you are interested please visit the pages of Quinn, Zoe and Leon to see what they’ve been up to over the last 6 months or so.

I’ve also been quite busy on Facebook these last few days… I must admit I had signed up to facebook a long time ago but dismissed it as being of no interest to me however I will now confess I have changed my mind about it! Having spent the last few days tidying up my page there and adding a few new friends I have to say it really is a very clever network and I suspect I will be utilising it a lot more during 2008. It has already allowed me to catch up with some old friends who I had slipped out of touch with previously.

If you haven’t used Facebook before I recommend you perhaps give it a go and, if you have tried it but dismissed it as I originally did, now might be a good time to give it a second go. And… if you know me, don’t forget to look me up and add me to your friends list!

I suspect anybody who reads this post who has kids will know how, much to your determination not to accumulate useless toys, you will find your house slowly becomes home to rubbish toys from the likes of McDonalds Happy Meals etc. As parents we’d all love to throw them in the bin but to our children they are amongst their most prized possessions.

Quinn currently has a box which I believe he brought home from pre-school that is basically like half an egg box although much bigger. He refers to this box as his “Disco box” and populates it with a variety of freebie rubbish toys that he has collected over the last few months. This box seems to continually move around the house from table to table and couch to couch.

This morning it found itself to his place at the breakfast table.

Zoe, who was the first child up this morning, sat at the breakfast table eating her honey wheats and looked at the box…

“Why is this here?” she asks

“Oh Quinn probably left it there” I reply, not daring to move it as all hell would break loose when Quinn got up if he found somebody had dared touch or move his ‘Disco Box’

“Hmmm…” says Zoe, “These are Quinn’s toys… Mummy says they are CRAP…. but I say Toys”

“Eh?” I ask

“CRAP!” repeats Zoe, “These are not CRAP…. they are toys” and she continued for several minutes explaining how Mummy refers to their toys as crap and it is not right!

Oh dear… it started my day with a smile anyway. Hopefully one day they’ll all have children of their own and just maybe they will remember the ‘Disco Box’

I had a few days off at the end of last week to take the family to Merimbula which, to those not in the know, is a coastal town in NSW. The plan was to primarily spend a lot of time with the kids on the beach…. did things go according to plan?

Well if your idea of a good holiday is to have miserable weather and cranky kids then yes, it was a great success! Argh… the weather was sunny, around 30c in Canberra and Merimbula until the day we decided to go on holiday… cue the temperature dropping to about 20c and bring on the grey rain clouds! Of course, now we are back home in Canberra the sun is back out and the temperature is back to 30c! Argh!

At least on the bright side we did get to the beach twice with the little guys so at least they had a little play there but, as an example of how nothing really went to plan… we decided on the Saturday morning we would make a leisurely drive back to Canberra, stop at a bakery in a town halfway back to Canberra for a morning sausage roll and sticky bun and then, stop in another little place just outside Canberra where they do great pancakes and also have an all year around xmas shop which is always fun for the little guys to visit.

Sounds simple enough? Hmmm…. what happened instead involved Quinn getting car sick as we travelled up the bendy mountain road just about an hour out of Merimbula. He proceeded to vommit up all over the backseat of the car causing us to have to stop in a layby halfway up the mountain and strip and clean the car as best as possible with makeshift materials such as shampoo, toothpaste and face washes! After this unanticipated stop and with our nice new car smelling of Quinn’s vommit we decided our original plans had pretty much gone out the window so proceeded directly back to Canberra. Oh joy!

Oh well, at least I got a couple of photos…

Quinn goes to school with another boy who lives in a nearby house who’s garden backs on to a corner of ours. Over the last few weeks they have often heard each other in the garden and shout to each other over the fence. I should also perhaps add that this little guy, called Joey, also has an older sister and two older brothers.

Anyway, the point of this post is, this afternoon I went to the shed to get out the lawnmower to mow the front garden and, as our shed is in the corner which is adjacent to Joey’s garden, it was not long before the little guys were chatting over the fence.

I wandered off to the front with the lawn mower and, before I knew it, Joey and his 3 siblings, had all hopped over the fence and were playing with Quinn and Zoe in our garden. Therefore, with Leon also sitting out in the garden, we suddenly found ourselves home to 7 children! Suddenly we knew what a truly BIG family would feel like! Argh… try keeping your eye on 7 little people!!!

Anyway… it wasn’t too long before they had infiltrated my outside rumpus room as yours truly had left a door accidentally unlocked. Oh well, now that they were in I decided I should switch on the N64 demo stand, the MAME arcade cabinet and the Gamecube connected to the TV out there too. It was like a full blown amusement arcade with the little guys playing Mario 64, The Simpsons arcade game and Mario Kart Double Dash!

Everybody played nicely… the 2 girls found girly things like dolls to play with whilst the boys happily played the video games. No fighting whatsoever! I was quite impressed… maybe we should go for more kids? 7? Hmmmm…. ok, maybe not! I think we’ll stick with 3!

We had a nice evening relaxing in the spa followed by a few glasses of cider and cooking sausages on the BBQ.

Whilst eating our sausage sandwiches the discussion moved to marriage and Quinn shared the fact with us that, at his preschool, he has 2 girls who both have told him they want to marry him! It would seem our 5 year old is obviously already the lady’s man!

Anyway, so as to not be missed out on the conversation Zoe decided to advise everybody that she would be marrying a sausage which I think led to Muppet nearly choking on her cider… I guess you had to be there but geez, little guys sure do come out with some amusing things sometimes

Quinn, our 5 year old, often tries to crack a joke along the lines of “Knock Knock” or “Why did the chicken cross the road?” only to give an extremely silly nonsense punchline that is only funny to Quinn but which nobody else understands… it was therefore with some surprise that he actually told a joke tonight whilst we were eating dinner at Hogs Breath Cafe, that a) actually made sense and b) was actually funny!

So, without further ado, here is Quinn’s joke which he told us he heard on TV…

Q:  ”Why is six scared of seven?”

A:  ”Because seven eight nine!”

Get it? Cracked us up anyway…

I have no idea where the phrase “Dude, where’s my head?” comes from but it is something Quinn keeps saying quite regularly… I always thought it was Dude, where’s my car? But anyway… if anybody knows a kid show where this phrase gets said please let me know!

Talking of “Dude, where’s my head?”… bit of a shocker on Prison Break this week! Very sad but I don’t think, based on the uproar from many fans on the Prison Break forums, that it will spoil my enjoyment of season 3… enjoying it very much so far!

Yesterday was Quinn’s 5th birthday! Half a decade old! All downhill from here little buddy!

Luckily Quinn was fit and healthy for his birthday, having had the flu the week before. Unfortunately his younger brother and sister were not so lucky and Zoe was particularly unwell. To demonstrate just how unwell Zoe was, at lunchtime, whilst we were having fish and chips for lunch (Quinn loves calamari rings) Zoe vommitted up all over the table which, not surprisingly put Muppet totally off eating her lunch… as for Quinn… well… as we cleaned up Zoe’s mess all he could do was continually ask for more sauce!!!

Anyway, I think we made the best of a bad day as regards the health of the household, and I think Quinn enjoyed himself even if we were housebound. A robotic dinosaur from my parents was particularly well received and very much enjoyed by the little guy

Something or somebody had created an odour that proved unpleasant to Quinn’s nostrils at breakfast this morning. Unfortunately Quinn believed the best way to solve this smell problem was by taking two honey wheats out of his cereal bowl and pushing them up each nostril! One instantly fell out but the other got stuck in his nostril for several minutes as he leapt out his chair and threw an absolute fit! Myself and Muppet didn’t realise what he had done at first but soon discovered the cause for his distress as he jumped around the room screaming about something being up his nose! Finally it fell out but obviously gave him quite a scare… I don’t think he will be doing that trick again in a rush!

To test our new Kia Grand Carnival we decided to go on a daytrip to the coast today and set off at the crack of dawn… sorry, I mean 9:15am!…. for Batemans Bay.

We made the compulsory stop at the Braidwood bakery on the way for a sausage roll and a few scrolls and then continued on to Batemans Bay where we decided to continue firstly on to Mogo where we visited the Zoo. The zoo isn’t anything special but it is a nice little zoo and Quinn and Zoe certainly had a good time there even if Zoe did end up falling over and grazing both knees.

After the zoo we then visited Mogo for an icecream and drink before going back to Batemans Bay to find a beach for the kids to play on for a few hours. The beach was particularly special as it was Leon’s first visit to the seaside! At first as he crawled across the sand I don’t think he knew what to make of it but he did seem to enjoy himself and didn’t seem at all bothered by the sound of the sea.

We then took a trip back into Batemans Bay for some fish and chips (yummy!) before driving home. The trip home, particularly as it was in the dark, seemed a lot longer drag than driving to the coast and I must admit I was struggling to stay awake! I never thought I would say it but I was actually glad to see Queanbeyan and know I was not that far away from Canberra.

As for the car, it drove beautifully! It really is going to be a great car for these sort of trips. The kids cannot kill each other now that they are more spaced out and the fact that we have taken out the middle seat on the second row meant we could effectively walk up and down the center of the car. Made it very easy to deal with the kids and the disovery that folding down one half of the back row made a great change bench for Leon was just icing on the cake! Yes, I think it is safe to say that myself and Muppet like our new toy very much!

Quinn likes to practice his writing… here’s an example of his handywork on the back of an envelope…

I wonder what I did wrong?

Quinn has spent quite a bit of time this weekend taking photos using Daddy’s old Olympus C-420L digital camera. I therefore decided I should share some of his photos on line in the gallery. (Click here)

Actually this is not the first time he has taken photos with this camera… I knew he had taken some about 6 months ago so I also found and uploaded a few of those earlier photos into the gallery too.  Here’s one of my favourites… a beautiful photo of Zoe! This photo by a 4 year old puts some of my efforts to shame! Well done Quinn.

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If you have ever tried to take photographs of either animals or children you’ll hopefully appreciate how hard it was to get this photo of all our children looking at the camera together!