No great story to tell… was just taking a couple of photos of Leon “watching” TV using my Nokia 5800 and decided to stick them up here on the blog just for the hell of it. Hard to believe the little chimp will be 3 years old in only a few weeks time.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Sydney primarily due to the fact we still had a Sydney Tower / Aquarium / Wildlife pass from Quinn’s photo competition haul from earlier this year.

Anyway… there are a few photos up on Facebook of the Sydney Tower but thought I’d also share this photo here on the Blog of Leon sleeping on the way home. Our little boy may be growing up quickly but it is photos like this that make us think he is the cutest baby-o in the world…

Admitedly this sleep turned out to be a 10 minute micronap and then he stayed awake for the rest of the journey outlasting the staying power of our other 2 cherubs!

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!

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!

Firstly Happy New Year to anybody reading this blog! Secondly, and more importantly, this post is to document the fact that 2 days ago we got out the old baby walker for Leon and before he could be stopped he was up on his feet and pushing it around the family room with a big grin on his face and with squeals of delight! He had already been pulling himself up on furniture for a number of weeks but it was quite surprising how obviously ready he was to take the next step.

On one hand it is a little bit sad to think our last baby is rapidly developing into a toddler but on the other it sure was great to be able to witness his first steps around the house.

Whilst I was feeding Leon his weetabix as usual this morning, the following lyrics, sung to the Bob the Builder theme song came to mind:-

“Leon the Baby, Can he eat it?
Leon the Baby, Yes he can!
Scoop up the weeties, eat them too,
Put them in your mouth, Chew! Chew! Chew!
Leon and the gang, have so much fun,
Eating together, Yum! Yum! Yum!
Leon the baby, Can he eat it?
Leon the baby, YES HE CAN!!!”

Ok ok, I don’t get out much! But hey, Leon enjoyed me singing it to him whilst he ate!

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!

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!

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!

Just a quick post to say our rolling giggle puppy aka Leon, having just turned 6 months old, made his first proper attempts at crawling today!

Although he has been getting around the family room this last month quite happily by rolling, today was the first time we saw a very serious attempt to actually bend his legs and push himself forward in what can only be defined as a crawl! Give him a few more weeks and there will probably be no stopping him!!! Yikes!!!

I’ve been a bit slack with blog posting this last week and this post isn’t really to make any interesting observations or relate a specific story… it’s just an excuse to show a cute photo of Leon taken in the bath with Mummy tonight…

This post is really just an excuse to test out whether I can successfully embed avi files into the blog! The video is of my 4 month old son, Leon, performing his favourite nursery rhyme with a little help from Muppet.

As Leon is now 4 months old we decided to test him out in the Bumbo! This is a cool little seat thing for babies that we purchased a year or so ago especially for our 3rd little bubba. As you can see, he does seem to find himself a little bit bemused to be sitting on the kitchen side next to the pots, kettle and empty bottles… however, at least it means he is out of reach of his sister which is always a good thing!

Expect to see a lot more photos of Leon and his bumbo on his webpage soon!

Well I’ve now got to the end of season 1 of Heroes and the end of season 3 of Lost and, as I had watched the end of season 2 of Prison Break a few weeks ago this now means I have nothing new to look forward to watch each week for a while!

Still, this break in TV viewing has meant I have finally updated Quinn, Zoe and Leon’s webpages… something I was long overdue in needing to do. I’ve also been continuing to tinker with LibNET, particularly in getting it some promotion to bring in a few more visitors. So far so good, the counter may only be around 450 but I’m pleased with how knowledge of the site’s rebirth is slowly filtering through the web.

Subject to the #mylene wiki which I need to kick along again soon I’m at least feeling quite satisfied that my web empire is relatively well updated at the moment and that I’m on top of things!

Maybe I’ll even find some time now to tidy up the computer room and even bother to formally apply for my Australian Citizenship… which is something else I’m long overdue in getting done.

PS - I’m currently eating a pack of garlic peanuts whilst I write this blog entry and geez, they’re strong in flavour!!!… I wonder if Muppet may notice later!!!

We thought Leon was getting big because Muppet felt she was struggling to pick him up and swing him around during breast feeding… however, it is only when we looked more closely at his weight and compared it to Quinn and Zoe that the full extent of his growth was revealed.

Bear in mind that Zoe was a 5kg baby and thus larger than Leon at birth. Quinn, although not as heavy at birth as Leon was also a good size and always showed good growth. Anyway, when we compare Leon’s weight at 3 months old he is now 7kgs. Quinn and Zoe were both around 6kgs at 3 months old! Yes, Leon is the heaviest of the 3 at this age and by quite a significant 1kg margin!

What a chunky monkey!!!

A few days ago I was sitting in the computer room when Quinn came rushing in to let me know that Leon was crying in his cot… nothing too odd about this but it was the way in which he annouced this that amused me…. “Your furry little friend is awake!!!”

I assume he probably heard Muppet refer to Leon as a furry little friend at some point because it certainly is something she’d say.

However, not sure about this next one… Zoe decided to start calling Leon a nickname… “Biscuit!”. Personally I think this is rather cute so keep referring now to Leon as “Biscuit” even if Muppet is a bit unsure about this for the moment! I’m told it sound likes the name of a white rapper!

I have no idea where Zoe got the name biscuit from and quite evidentally she has already forgotten she has called Leon this as, when I later said to Zoe, “Where’s Biscuit?” her little ears immediately pricked up and it was very clear that she was thinking food was going to be involved and had no idea I was referring to Leon!

As Leon approaches nearly 2 months old it is nice to relive the experience I had with Quinn & Zoe of seeing the first smiles and the first true expressions upon his face. I’ll put some full sized copies on his webpage when I get around to updating it again but thought I’d share this photo on the blog in the meantime.

We took Quinn, Zoe and Leon to Canberra’s Skyfire last night. This is an annual firework display over the lake in Canberra every year put on by the local radio station.

Leon slept through everything in his baby pouch whilst this year, unlike previous years, it was Zoe who complained it was too loud and was ready to go home whilst Quinn was the one who really enjoyed it. Funny how every year that we take the little people to the fireworks they react differently to it.

This year the firework display commenced with a F11 Fighter plane zooming over the lake with a full afterburn effect. Incredibly loud and an extremely impressive way to start the firework display… not sure how they will top that next year although I believe next year is the 20th anniversary of this event so I’m sure it will probably be even more impressive.

Anyway, took the camera and actually managed to get some quite good photos of the display… here’s an example…

Yay! We’ve survived a whole month as a family of 5!

Baby Leon is 1 month old today and has successfully managed to survive a whole month of being poked, prodded, rocked, screamed and sang to by Quinn and Zoe.

So as not to be outdone by his big brother or sister it seems that baby Leon has found a way to attract our attention. Virtually every time we take his nappy off and he is lying on the change bench awaiting his new clean nappy what does he do? He either does a pee or a poo! ARGH! I really can’t remember Quinn or Zoe doing this. And of course the innocent expression on his face is priceless as either I or Muppet go into a panic trying to get cloths to wipe up his mess…

Gotta love that little man!

As regards a few new pics, well, I’m having a few problems setting up a subdomain for his website but you can access via http://www.wuggleworld.com/leonxavierhurt/ for the moment.