On one of the days we took my dad to Maroubra beach for breakfast.





It gave them a chance to check out what out local beach is like and also Aiden a chance to have a bit of a play in the sand.

At around Christmas time Kims dad asked me if I could take some more photos of him and the grandchildren.

Last year I took some of him using a blue background and he asked for something similar (although I am not a big fan of blue)

Every year I like to take a Christmas family photo.

This year having my dad around meant that I could get hime to assist us with taking the photo as I needed someone to stand on a ladder taking the photo while we as a family was lying plat on a bed.

Merry Christmas 2012 Everyone!!!!

Every year some of the houses in Matraville puts on a spectacular christmas light show.

Every night there are hundreds of visitors and it is worth seeing.

Here are some of the lights from this years show.

This holiday season my Dad and his partner is visiting us from Denmark.



It has been a while since he was here and in also a while since we were in Denmark, so Aiden had grown a fair bit since.

The first couple of weeks we bought then some trips to various places such as Hunter Valley and the Blue Mountains.

One the weekends we would treat then to various dinners Thai, Indian, Moroccan, Brazilian, Aussie, Chinese etc. as well as try to make time to take them to see some of the sights around Sydney.

The first weekend Aiden was sick so we had to cancel our trip up the Northern Beaches to Barrenjoey Lighthouse so we had to stay home and let them explore by themself. On the second weekend we managed to go there and bring Aiden along as well sitting in his little backback.



It was a warm day and the climb is fairly steep so especially my dads partner was pretty hot by the time we reached the top where the light house is.






The view was definitely worth it.



Walking back along the beach we decided to make a drink stop to clench the thirst.

First of all Merry Christmas everyone!!!


With a bit of arm twisting Kim finally agreed to let me do a series of 'sexy' Santa photos.




A lot of work had to go into these couple of photos in terms of getting the outfit, but the right colour wrapping paper, wrap all the boxes, set them up to it looks nice, getting all the lighting right and not least convince Kim to do the actual shoot.

Then I had to sort out the photos I needed and then do all the editing...I think the end result is pretty good and very much in the spirit of Christmas.

And did I mention that I am married to the most beautiful (and sexy) Santa there is???

Lucas is now three months young and the other day I did a series of monthly photos of Kim and him on our bed.

The first Christmas for Lucas is approaching. This also means that he is being subjected to all kinds of Christmas rituals such as posing for his Dads Christmas photos.

This year we celebrated Kims Dads birthday with a big lunch for the whole family where everyone brough along something to eat.

Afterwards we did some family photos with Kim and all the grans children as well as my Dad and his two grand children Aiden and Lucas.

I finally had to bite the bullet and get my eyes checked out for glasses.

I had started developing a headache if sitting in front of the computer or reading for extended periods of time



So I now have some reading glasses that I can use...makes me feel old.

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.