Kim likes baking too and these days she will ask Aiden to help her.

Her cakes usually looks much better than any of my efforts.

A couple of weeks ago I tried to bake Ciabata bread.

It is a long process that takes about 24 hours (first you have to make this yeast and flour sponge which you then later use for the end result).

I substituted normal flour for wholemeal. This was the end result.



The taste was ok, but it was too dry for my liking...so will have to try again one day.

Light bulbs are really rare now as you can't buy them in the shops any longer.

We still have one in the cupboard so I decided to have a bit of fun with it one evening...

Vivid Sydney was on again this year and in my opinion better than the previous years.

Because of the kids it was hard to find the time to explore, but I did manage to head in there one evening to get some photos from the classic angles.

Lucas is now 9 month old and the other day we went to the park to do some Autumn photos with him.

The photo of the day was definitely this one of Kim and Lucas having a moment together.



It was hard because he wanted to crawl around and play and because it was the middle of the day the light was pretty harsh.



We also tried to take some at one of the small bridges in the park but they were shooting a commercial shoot there and Lucas was more interested in trying to get into the water than posing.



And when we tried a family photo he didn't want to sit still.

For Lucas 8 month photo we decided to do a profile photo of the four of us just like we had with Aiden.



A bit more difficult this time because there we two kids and getting them to look in the right direction and keep the right face expression.

Last week it was Aidens 3rd Birthday.

We celebrated it by singing happy birthday and having cake.



For his birthday he got a new car as well as some new shoes.

The other day was in the park with his daycare group to play at the playground.

While he was there he was bitten by some unknown insect and the morning after his whole face was swollen.



Fortunately he was happy enough and it didn't require any visits to a doctor.

Last weekend it was our Niece Emma's first birthday.

This was celebrated with lots of cakes and a jumping castle on which Aiden had lots of fun.

I just updated the map of the countries I have set my foot in...now 69 countries.

Africa	Rene(69)	Kim	Aiden	Lucas
Kenya	YES
Tanzania	YES
Uganda	YES
Egypt	YES
Tunesia	YES
Morocco	YES
Gambia	YES
Senegal	YES
South Africa	YES	YES	YES	YES
Zimbabwe	YES	YES	YES	YES
Zambia	YES	YES	YES	YES
Europe
Turkey	YES
Spain	YES	YES
France	YES	YES
Swizerland	YES	YES
Austria	YES	YES
Greece	YES	YES
Italy	YES
Lictenstein	YES
Vatican	YES	YES
Yougoslavia	YES
Croatia	YES	YES	YES
Slovenia	YES	YES	YES
Bosnia	YES	YES	YES
Montenegro	YES	YES	YES
Poland	YES
East Germany	YES
West Germany	YES	YES	YES
Belgium	YES	YES
Holland	YES	YES
Denmark	YES	YES	YES
Sweden	YES
Norway	YES
Finland	YES
Portugal	YES
Luxenbourg	YES
San Marino	YES
Monaco	YES	YES
Cyprus	YES
Hungary	(YES)	(YES)	(YES)
United Kingdom	YES	YES	(YES)
Americas
USA	YES	YES
Canada	YES
Mexico	YES	YES
Chile	YES	YES
Peru	YES	YES
Bolivia	YES	YES
Argentina	YES
Brasil	YES	YES
Asia
Japan	YES
Russia	YES
Malaysia	YES	YES
Thailand	YES	YES	YES	YES
Singapore	YES	YES	(YES)
Cambodia	YES
Laos	YES	YES	YES	YES
Phillipines	YES	YES	YES	YES
Burma/Myanmar	YES
Hong Kong	YES
Yemen	YES
Qatar	YES
Indonesia	YES	YES
Diego Garcia		YES
Vietnam		YES
India		YES
Australia/Pacific
Australia	YES	YES	YES	YES
New Zealand	YES	YES	YES	YES
New Caledonia	YES	YES	YES
French Polynesia (Tahiti / Bora Bora)	YES	YES	YES	(YES)
Vanuatu	YES	YES	YES	YES
Fiji	YES	YES	YES	YES
Cook Islands	YES	YES	YES	YES

Sunday I convinced Kim that we should go to the Beach. I wanted to try my underwater casing for my pocket camera in the waves to see if I could get some good photos. In 2000 I went to the World Press Photo exhibition and saw these great underwater photos from the surf and was inspired to see if I could re-create them.


Kim insisted that we picked up a beach shelter on the way there so that she would have some shade. We found on in K-Mart and then went on our way to the beach.

The first few minutes folding up the beach shelter was a disaster (It was one of those quick fold out ones where you just pull a string...junk!!) and eventually we just threw it all back in the bag deciding to return it on the way home (we'll get a pop-up one instead).


Taking the photos turned out to be a lot trickier than expected. It was fairly windy and the visibility wasn't great. Also the pocket camera tries to auto focus prior to taking the photo which was difficult with everything moving around constantly so most of the time the camera didn't take the photo.It was also quite hard to aim the camera while being battered around by the waves.








I did however manage to take these photos that turned out somewhat alright. I might try again one day when the conditions are better (and I've figured out how to lock the focus on the camera)

For the past three weeks my uncle and auntie (Eli & Henning) has been travelling in New Zealand with a tour group.

On the way home they did a 24 hour stopover with the group so do some quick sightseeing before continuing their journey.

They had a tightly packed program arriving late in the afternoon, out for a late dinner and then spend then morning next day on a tour around the city before heading back to the airport.

Kim and I managed to catch up with them in the evening for dinner at Nicks at King Street Wharf. Afterwards we went for a walk down to Circular Quay so that they could have a look at the Harbour bridge and the Opera House at night.



By the time we got back to the hotel it was midnight and they had to check out of their hotel early next morning.

We hope that they enjoyed the sightseeing the day after (it was a fairly warm day) and that they had a good journey back to Denmark. Apparently there is a lot of snow there currently so they were prepared for the fact that they would have to do a fair bit of digging to get to their car and into their house.

It is not very often that we have visiting family from Denmark so it is always a pleasure to see them.

This weekend I was cutting down the bouganvillae in the garden. Whenever I cut down some of the vegetation in the garden it is always interesting what insects I discover in the process. Because of the variety of plants there is always something new to discover. I try not to use pesticides in the garden itself...better to just let nature find a balance.

On this occation I discovered a large Garden spider and a Green Praying mantis (I have seen a Mantis before in the garden and they are great to have a pest control). Both are totally harmless.






This is what a website had to say about this Common Garden Spider:

"Now this is your classic common garden spider from Sydney. The Australian Museum page on garden orb weaving spiders tells me there is a second, almost identical species (edulis) but that that lives further inland. There must be hundreds of people each summer who can be seen jumping madly up and down in their gardens swiping at themselves just to be sure to get rid of this guy from their clothing after they've walked through a web. Although certainly large enough, this spider is reluctant to bite humans. "


Last week I did however see a redback spider on the other side of the house. Needless to say that I killed it before I got a chance to take a photo (They are extremely venoumous and the closest relative to a Black Widow). To be honest it is the first time I've seen one in the wild for more that 10 years so fortunately they are very rare.

This saturday Kim had booked tickets for 'The wolf man' at the open air cinema.



Every year in January and February Sydney hosts a number of events such as operas, concerts and cinemas.

The open Air cinema is located at Ms Macquaries Chair in the botanical garden overlooking the city, the opera house and the bridge.





It is a spectacular setting, especially when the weather is really nice as it was saturday (last year it was pouring down with rain). This years all the seats were sold out within 30 minutes, but Kim was quick to get a couple (smart cookie).

Even though we got there two hours early most of the seats had already been taken. We did manage to find two seats that were really good eventually (we were worried that we'd have to sit on one of the first rows right in front of the screen.




The movie was about warewolves and it was funny to listen to people reaction when large fruit bats from the botanical garden flew down in front of the set.

This weekend we went for an extended (4 nights) weekend to Hamilton Island with Kims Family.




Hamilton Island is located 1500 kilometers north of Sydney (2.5 hours flight) in the Whitsundays group of islands near the great barrier reef.

This time of the year it is rain season up there and the first three days it was raining a fair bit. This didn't stop us from spending time in the pool or at the beach though. In the evenings we would spend time in the cocktail bars, dining our or playing blackjack.



On the first and the last morning morning we did some catemaran sailing. The wind was a bit patchy with periods with no wind and other with lots of wind.The last day however was beautiful and I gave Kim a very basic first course in sailing after which she took over the steering.




Click here to see a video from the catemaran


One of the other days there was too much wind for them to allow the catemarans going out. I managed to convince the people at the beach to let me take out one of the windsurfers. It was a pretty short session as I found that I am totally out of shape but as least Chong managed to have a bit of a go as well.



Click here to see a video from the windsurfing


We booked an afternoon of snorkeling up near Hayman island. It was a day with pretty rough seas and even though it was a pretty big boat it was really thrown around and a lot of people on the boat got sea sick (Dylan got a bit sick, but otherwise everyone else in the family was ok). After about an hour of sailing the captain said that the seas were too rough and that the water was too murky and dangerous to continue, so he cancelled the trip and returned to port. A bit of a disappointment, but at least we got a refund and a bit of a sailing trip out of it.