A couple of the awards received by Aiden and Lucas

Every year we are allowed to spend a certain number of working days on charity events. Last year I did some with a group from work, but this year I was offered to join Cisco on their charity for "Cure our Kids".

This is an even that mainly focuses on providing a support framework for parents whose kids have Cancer with the thinking that if there is a good support for the parents then they will be able to support their children better.



The work we did consisted of going through pallets of boxes with parent folders and then from these remove unwanted items and inserting new leaflets. A team was also going through other boxes to sort through what could be used for xmas and what needed to be ebay'ed off.

This weekend Kim and I met met up with the mothers group for a christmas meet.

Because the weather was nice we decided to meet at the local playground and at the same time I could take some photos of the kids.

The playground has a plastic boat which makes it nice and easy to keep them contained in one area.

On the weekend I was cutting down some of the bushes in our garden. Very quickly Aiden discovered that it was fun to play in the pile of leaves that I'd left behind.

On the weekend we went for a walk in Centennial Park. We stopped at this old stone bridge to take a couple of photos, but Aiden was more interested in taking mum for a walk and a swim.

They have now set up the christmas tree in East Gardens. I was trying to find a goot spot to take a photo from without use of a tripod and without being chased away by security.



This was the best I could come up with.

The other day we were at Eastgardens shopping centre.

Lego had an area set aside where the kids could play with Lego (obviously to get the parents to buy them Lego for Christmas).


Obviously Aiden (and Dad) had to play for a while.







And Aiden also did some drawing (or at least he was playing with the colour pens)

Last weekend we went with Lachlan and Na to Darling Harbour for dinner.

This also happened to be the night of the Christmas parade in Darling Harbour.



So there was a lot of entertainment such as the Three Wise Men.





And lots of people dressed as Santa.



And Elves.

On the weekend we went tot he beach. Initially Aiden was a bit scared of the waves (although he loves the sand and the water)...but after a while he didn't mind the waves splashing around his little legs (I found the water cold but he didn't mind).




As usual he threw a tandrum when we pulled him out of the water.



Afterwards we spend some time in the sand and I was teaching him how to build really cool sand castles and he was teaching me how to demolish them.

The other weekend we took Aiden to the swimming pool.

He is really happy with water now and loves splashing around. He is no longer afraid of it and doesn't mind getting his head under water.



Only problem now is that he throws a tandrum every time we have to leave the pool.

This year I didn't get a chance to go to Sculpture by the sea during the daytime, but I did have some time to go there one evening after we had put Aiden to bed.

I had seen some daylight photos from the exhibition from Tamarama beach where they had these 'Easter Island' type statues. I thought I could do some really cool night time Off-Camera-Flash photos using just ordinary flashes.

When I got there it was almost pitch black darkness...perfect.

I got my gear set up and managed to take the following shot which was exactly what I envisioned in my head.



While there I had a look at a couple of the other sculptures in the area...I did shoot the following photo of this 2 meter tall red chinaman sculpture.