Christmas is approaching fast. The Christmas tree is up and Kim is busy shopping for presents for the various people.

The other night I managed to slot in 10 minutes for the first set of Christmas photos of Aiden and Lucas.




I was shooting these with a 50mm f1.4 lens to get the nice blurry Christmas tree lights. This also meant that I didn't have much room to play with when it came to focus...almost impossible with two moving kids whily trying to get the right mood with facial expressions, tantrums etc. Aiden couldn't sit still and Lucas refused to wear his hat. What do they say...never photograph wild animals and children!

The other day it was Aiden and Lucas Christmas concert with their daycare centre.

This year they were supposed to dress up in some country's national clothes.

We borrowed some Chinese clothes from KC and they looked very cute in it.






The concert went very well. We were especially impressed how well Aiden was able to follow the instructions and the moves to the various dances.








It was especially funny when they were singing this song with Konitchiwa...Namaste....BULA!!!!




Lucas was also in the first part of the concert sitting down the front with one of the carers.

Aiden is still playing soccer once a week. Last week he insisted on wearing my shoes instead of his own.



Maybe he was hinting that his old shoes are getting too small.

We have had a lot of rain lately. On one of the days I was showing Aiden and Lucas how to make a pair of funny glasses out of an egg crate and a piece of string.

They got to paint the glasses afterwards.

The other day I picked up Aiden and Lucas pretty late from daycare.

They were in the process of cleaning and Aiden was eagerly waiting for them to turn on the vacuum cleaner so he could play with it.

I have already gone out too far. I cannot return and jump over the stream because it is growing inside of me and is becoming a roaring river.
What are these strange thoughts I am having?
Were these free farmers in the hills above Varde Aaa more free at year 900 than they were in year 1100?
The only difference was christianity.

Off to the library
The landowner at Noerholm
The Herredfoged.
The Bishop in Ribe
It is all written here

I start thinking about hunting
A good hunter makes sure that they keep a healthy game on the property. He will feed the game during tough winters and make sure that the the overall health is there and have to most productive game survive.
No, it is not right to have these thoughts here in the library when it is the farmers I need to find information on.

Queen Margaret..
Make a claim on Noerholm..
Maybe there is something here..

Wasn't it the landowner of Noerholm that owned Noerholm?
Has he just built up Noerholm and then put his filthy hand on every surrounding piece of land and property?
Which the church was claiming that it should own?
Or was it the Bishop in Ribe?

This was not what I was supposed to find here at the library. It was the farmer - farmers!

Hunting...

What rubbish was that. I must get rid of these thoughts, this has nothing to do with hunting.

It wouldn't have been the lord who was out there beginning to move large boulders.

And not the bishop -

Christianity had just been introduced but building that many churches required a lot of workforce.

My thoughts are diverted.

Has this big change in faith based activity created communities, something in common because surely it was the farmers who built the churches.
This introduction was it something that made the existence easier for the farmers, my old roots.
It must have been, a lot of other things to believe in has been forgotten and the church is now a gathering place.

You should never start researching your ancestry.
You encounter one surprise after another and will never finish. There is always more.
There is changes in ones beliefs for every new discovery.

Of cause it was the farmers who built the churches. Who else would have?
They probably started with the words; "On the day of honour I am with you".

My thoughts are again left astray.

Russia build the aswan dam in Egypt.

Yes, I saw it myself with my own eyes. I drove in my car along the large canals they were digging.

How was it that they explained it to me?
This canal was to be dug 5 metres deep, 100 metres wide and should extend 800km out into the desert.

There were thousands of workers, it all looked like a large ants nests.
Men with baskets full of soil on their heads.

There was not a single Russian in this ants nest.

- Who actually built the Aswan Dam? -

Farmers

My grandads memoirs.

-

My Memoirs.

-

But there has to be something before us.

Our family of farmers from Kongeaaen at Toboel to Lyngbakkerne across Varde Aa - Mejls - Hornelund - Sig.

How did they live in the last 1000 years?

I rush to the library but it feels like hitting a miss in the lottery.

Have my ancestors, the farmers, not accomplished anything that made it worthy for a couple of pages in the danish history?

Yes, they have of cause not walked about killing each other to get hold of their neighbors possessions. Rather the opposite, from the looks of it, it was the farmers that were killed.

And for this the killers deserved a rather prominent mentioning in the history.

Yes, there was built a number of churches in the 1100's, but my relatives, the farmers are not mentioned.

I start to think.

- Who actually built these churches? -.

..as a couple of cows and a bull out on the feeding grounds. Something that can work and reproduce.

There is an old say like this - The devil looks after his own.
Let me immediately point out that the Devil didn't look after the farmers in the area around Varde and it was obvious that it was the met in power that were looked after by the Devil.

Here I would like to jump forward to 1300-1400 in the Danish history (Queen Margaret I). It is like my ancestors roots here start sprouting quickly. It is not quite clear who owns then, the church or the landowner at Noerholm.
Queen Margaret interfere in the argument and this gives the farmers a bit of breathing space.
A few farmers become more established and become independent (owns their land).
How should all these farmers see all the trouble ahead? Yes, even the Danish history has forgotten them.
It is only all the bad evil, power hungry people that are written about.
The more bloodthirsty the more pages they get in the book.

How mush is described about the farmers fight for independence against Kristian the 3rd?

The farmers at Varde invaded the river fortres at Varde and destroyed it but then had to retreat north with Captain Clement pursued by Johan Rantzau the kings right hand.
The farmers were at last defeated at Aalborg so that they would not appear in the history books. Not even crying and mourning by women and children behinds the hills at Varde river.

Honour becomes he who should be honoured.

I am stuck.

There is something peculiar about this study.

Why do I still return to - in a time of hunting?

Right! I remember, there is a book by that name.

I tell myself to think about something else - And he thoughts saw wide views.
And the neighbours wife said to her mum - That decease looks just like...

No, this is enough...

Were the farmers the hunted game or not?
Were the king, the lords, the church, the bishop the hunters?

Were the farmers the game and the hunting so good that the hunters couldn't agree on splitting the game?
Was it like that all over Denmark? Of cause it was. the Varde area was no exception.

It is something strange you are getting involved in when you study your ancestors.
The farmers had to live, otherwise there was nothing to hunt, but when the land owner was about to loose his hunting rights then the hunting escalated to the point where the game was about to go extinct.
The hunters would then loose interest and start hunting elsewhere.

Here we can mention the war against Sweden with its following plague as well as Napoleon with his Spanish troops in Denmark.

The farmers always recovered, because they were the lifeline for Denmark.
Children are born and new generations grow up between the marshes and hills without knowing whether they in years to come will be valuable as game and hence again be hunted to extinction.

It is the owners of the hunting grounds, their mentality and actions that is written into the Danish history. They have been lifted onto the podium for their dishonest behaviour.

On the contrary is just mentioned as an afterthought...

During the winter we went for a walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Here are some of the photos from the walk.

On fathers day we used the opportunity to do some family photos with the boys as well as Kims dad.

Aiden and Lucas sometimes loves to play with boxes and other items that are in the recycle bin inside.

One morning they had used the boxes to create a farm...not bad!






...and then there is the silliness...

Years ago Aiden got a little fluffy toy tiger as a gift.



Over the last couple of years this has been the most treasured toy to the degree where him and Lucas is sometime fighting over it. They sleep with it and they bring it to school to do show and tell.



It reminds me of the comic called Calvin and Hobbs - with a little boy and his toy tiger often getting up to mischief.

Now that Aiden is a school and Lucas at daycare they are invited to heaps of birthdays.

One evening Kim took Aiden to a birthday and in the meantime I took Lucas for a little desert treat at Choc Top in Rosebery.

The menu looked delicious and not know that they were so big I ordered one for each of us. They also gave us a free ice cream because they were slow.



I felt so sick afterwards and we didn't even finish it.

It has been a while since we did a family trip with the family. Kim's dad is getting older and it is getting harder for him to do longer extended trips.

The family found a nice house at Scarborough just an hours drive from Sydney. It was a beautiful coastal home with room enough for the whole family and with the conveniences of a large kitchen, a fireplace and TV for the kids.





The inlaws recently got a dog and she made it on the trip as well.



More importantly, it was just a short walk to the Scarborough hotel for coffee in the morning.





And also plenty of beaches nearby.

We are trying to keep the boys (and ourselves) more active on the weekends. This weekend Audrey asked if we wanted to join them for an easy walk at the Royal National Park (about 30 minutes drive from home).



The walk was along an old horse carriage trail (Lady Game Trail) and was fairly level and easy walking the whole way. We made it well past the half way mark where there is an old watering station for the horses before turning around.



I think the kids eventually managed to walk almost 7 kilometers without too much complaining which is pretty far for their little feet.

For a long time I had wanted to introduce the boys to Camping. Since Kim had never been camping either and wanted a certain level of comfort we looked around for suitable location within easy reach from Sydney.

We eventually settled on Cattai National Park as it has a lot of amenities such as flushing toilets, hot showers and allows camp fires.

Kim also asked some of our friends if they'd like to join, so we ended up going three families together.





We bought a new tent which by most standards is huge, but has plenty of space on rainy days (which we didn't have) for cooking and eating inside the tent as well as air mattresses for sleeping on.
We also had a camping table and chair and amazingly we were able to fit it all into the booth of my car.










Apart from Lucas getting a little cold during the night it went very well. The boys had a blast of a time making up games, eating food (constantly), fishing (no bites) and eating roasted marshmallows.













I also tried a Danish specialty, 'SnogBroed' (Twisted Bread) which consists to of a sausage and bread dough wrapped around a stick and then baked in the fire. Mavis made one that turned out perfectly - unfortunately everyone was too full from eating to really have a go at it (Maybe next time)



In the evening and morning there were lots of kangaroos in the camp ground, which the boys quickly chased away.

For Aidens 6th birthday we invited his friends to a game of bowling.

Last night we were at Darling Harbour with my dad having dinner. They had already started the pre-Australia Day celebrations with music and a light show on the harbour.



Dinner was very nice...but too much food.

The other day I was playing around with some macro shots of Lucas and managed to shoot this photo of him...I had something else in mind, but this turned out quite nice (I think).




It was a real challenge to try and keep reflections out of his eye...and as you can see I didn't succeed using a shoot-through umbrella.

Lucas is now 4 Months and here are his monthly photos.





Kim has him started on solids hoping that he will start sleeping through and he is almost able to sit and he has started babbling when we talk to him.

His favourite pass time is to eat his fingers and play with his feet.

Today was REALLY hot in Sydney.

We have had a couple of really hot (40C++) days in Sydney this summer but yesterday beat the current longstanding heat record from 1936.

In Sydney itself they measured 45.8C and at the Airport which is closer to us the measured 46.4C. At our place we measured more than 43C degrees at midday.



Fortunately yesterday was a lot cooler and because we knew that there was a hot day coming up we managed to cool down the place the during the night to a pleasant 25 degrees...and out house maintained that temperature for most of the day (apart from our study which gets really hot because of the big windows).

In the evening a cool change arrived with very strong winds and a bit of rain...we quickly opened all doors and windows to take advantage of it and cool down the place again...unfortunately this also came with a very fine layer of dust on everything next morning.

2012 was a record blogging years for me...77 posts over the entire year...which means one new entry every 4.5 days, or in other terms something new to look at regularly.

I am hoping that 2013 will have equally many posts. I have now been blogging for more than 15 years and most if not all the posts can be seen here:

Click here

Here is another family photo that I had my Dad assist us with. It was easier to have him on a ladder taking the photo than trying to set it up on a lightstand.



It was lit by firing a group of flashes into the ceiling of the room...hopefully I will get a professional studio flash soon and will have some more power available for these types of photos.


I recon this is one of my favourite family photos from 2012.

For the next couple of weeks my Dad and his partner are renting a campervan to cruise down the coastline from Cairns back to Sydney (hopefully they enjoy the cool weather compared to the 41 degrees we had here in Sydney yesterday).

Before they left I managed to do a photo session with him and the kids to get some portraits.







I may try and do another one once they return on a darker background.

New Years day we organised a more of let spontaneous BBQ (well..it was organised day before) at one of our local parks with family and a couple of friends.


I think my dad was still a bit hung over from the day before, but we still managed to get him to do some of the BBQ'ing. They went to the city night before to see the big midnight fireworks while Aiden and myself went to Coogee to see the 9pm fireworks there with family (Kim stayed at home with Lucas).






...while Kims Dad was looking after Lucas.

One afternoon we made the trip to Centennial park to go duck feedking with Aiden, but also to show our visitors one of the great parks of Sydney.





Aiden was very excited playing with my dad and running up and down the hills and checking out the big trees.





(photos courtesy of my dad)

So far my Dad and Aiden are bonding very well.

The first thing AIden asks for when he wakes up in the morning is 'Play Bedstefar' (play grandad) and wants to go and knock on his door to play with him.

My dad has been very patient with letting him jump while holding his hands, so now he wants to do it all the time.





He especially enjoys the two handed jump...




...so now he also wants it when we are walking him.



The jumping has come in handy as I have used it to trick Aiden to get in the water at Maroubra a few times.


My dad also reads him his story before he goes to bed at night...we will se over the next month whether we also can get him to change nappies, brush his teeth, feed him, dress him etc.

Lucas is now 6 months and is enjoying the easy life...

On the weekend we went down to La Perouse to do these creative shots of him at sunset.

I always said that I would take a photo of him and put it in a frame...but not sure if this is what everyone had in mind.




It was pretty good fun trying to set it all up. A lot of other walkers on the beach were wondering what we were doing.

I have been planning this photo for a while.


The frame I had picked up from a garbage collection day last month outside a block of units with this particular photo in mind.

The chair and table are bath aids and foot stools from home.







It was really cool to see everything come together in the end. Unfortunately we missed just the end of the sunset as there were a few clouds on the horizon.


A lot of lessons learnt came out of it. Even though the photos came out almost as I had envisioned...I still had a few things that I could have done better....just small things such as two flashes to light frame and Lucas independently, CTO gelling the flash to match the ambient, using an umbrella to avoid hard shadows, bringing a mid range zoom to have more composition options and be able to get a bit closer, use black string to hold up the frame instead of white, bring a pillow to keep his head up and then stripping his clothes and then bring my light meter to check the setting to start with instead of chimping.

It was the first time I've used the D800 for this (in the past I've been using my D50 with a different shutter system) and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to balance out the ambient with the flash and still stay below the sync speed...but it worked out like a charm...or maybe I was just lucky!

Last night Kim made a very nice Creme Brulee...Yummiiiii!!!!

She asked me to take a couple of photos which I think turned out quite nicely.

On the weekend we went to the Sydney Wildlife Park at Darling Harbour.

It was good fun to show Aiden all the different animals (Although he was pretty tired by the end).

The highlight of the exhibition is the 4.5 meter long Saltie (Saltwater Crocodile). He is such a darling and he loved his girlfriends so much that he had them over for dinner (Ha Ha).





Aiden wasn't sure about the crocodiles and definitely wasn't happy with the big mouth and all the sharp teeth...



...Daddy came to the rescue and threw himself at the monster.



He was a bit more happy with the smaller cuddlier animals...



Such as the wombats...



...the Yellow Footed Rock Wallabies...



...or even the Tasmanian Devil.



The start of the exhibition is pretty amazing as you wank through a large enclosure with lots of butterflies flying around.



And besides from that there is of cause a lot of lizards, frogs and snakes on display.

Lucas is now 5 months and we did his monthly photos the other day together with Aiden.




This also gave me an excuse to try out the new strobe I bought for photography (an Alien Bee B800) and it worked out great...so much better than trying to use multiple flashes inside a softbox to get enough power.

Aiden and Lucas are already ganging up on us and sitting giggling together. They absolutely adore eachother although Aiden sometime can get a little rough with Lucas.




Afterwards we went to the local Park to have a bit of a play (see previous post with photos of Aiden).

The other day we visited Boralee Park to let Aiden play and to take some photos of Lucas.

Aiden is now definitely less afraid of playing and is quite happy zooming down the slides by himself...although he is a little cautious about the swing unless showing off in front of Lucas.

This Sunday we went to Sydney Aquarium with Sacha, Mavis and their daughter Sammi.

Believe it or not, but it was my first time to the Sydney Aquarium, I guess we were waiting for Aiden to be old enough to really enjoy it (Lucas is still too little).



Aiden immediately ran off with Sammi to look at all the fish tanks.





And as we descended deeper and deeper we came close to the big fish in their larger tanks.





And we could look at them walking through the underwater tubes.





They are also one of the only aquariums in the world having Dugongs in captivity.





In the old days it was though that these creatures were mermaids and you can see how that could happen.

LOOK!!!!! A MERMAID!!!!





Anyway...for the most part it is about me watching the Dugong watching the people watching the Dugong....




Unfortunately I had a terrible hay fever and probably would have enjoyed it even more without it....but we may go back in the near future.

This weekend in the Blue Mountains I took a series of Panorama and waterfall photos.

This first one is taken from Govetts Leap.



And these two are from Evans Head.





This waterfall is also at Govetts Leap.



And these waterfalls are all from the Grand Canyon walk.

On the last day in the Blue mountains we made a visit to the Toy and Railway museum in Leura.

They had a lot of old toys and movie related memorabilia such as Tintin.





...and James Bond.



and some impressive Meccano pieces.



Outside there was a garden with a Japanese inspired section



Along with a Matterhorn model railway.



And other railway stuff.

This weekend we rented a small cabin in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains.

It was a nice little place with a couple of bedrooms and a nice little fireplace. It was a cool couple of days so we had the fireplace going most of the time.



During the day we would go for nice walks in the local area much to the enjoyment of especially Aiden...






...and have lunch at cafes to the enjoyment of Lucas.




The forest around the cabin had a couple of lyrebirds.

My dad holiday is over and he is returning back to home. To celebrate their last ight we went to a Korean BBQ place in Sydney and then we had a coffee across the street later.








Hopefully it won't be too long before he is coming back!

Today we went to the Symbio Wildlife park together with some of our friends.

They don't have a lot of animals in the park, but the ones they have a pretty cool and it is a good spot to get some nice animal photos (It was especially nice to see that they had polished the glass surrounding some animals).

It was also really cool to have Aiden and Sammi feed some of the more friendly animals.

Today Luke and Alexsandra was married. She is from Serbia so the wedding itself was a beautiful traditional Serbian Orthodox wedding in a small church in Alexandria.










The church was very darkly lit and I was shooting using natural light trying to be as discreet as possible using my old Nikon D50 camera (still waiting for the new D800) but by some miracle I was able to capture the above photos (by setting it to my max 1600 ISO and underexpose 2 stops and then push and noise reduce in post...would have loved to have one more stop).


Luke has some Scotish ancestry so ourside the church there was a guy playing the bag pipe.





Afterwards the reception was in Drumoyne with about 250 guests invited. Lots of very loud Serbian music and traditional Serbian line dancing (Not sure what the correct name is).

Synday we took Dylan to the Easter show at Fox Studios. We had bought him a 5 hour pass as a reward for an assignment we gave him.



Dylan tried a number of rides, but I think his favourite was a dodge'm'cars.



While Dylan was queueing up we had a look around at the other entertainment.

Today we went to High Tea in Audley in the Royal National Park 30 minutes drive from where we live. Kim had bought a 2 for 1 deal and decided to try it.





Verdict was that is wasn't anything special and even with the special deal it was a bit over priced.

Afterwards we decided to go rowing up through the creek.



Aiden was very keen to get to play with the water which was difficult in the rowing boat (next time we will get a Canoe).

Afterwards we let him play a bit on land before heading back.

The island itself is a beautiful place. I took a lot of photos of the lagoon and the beauty of Bora Bora....so many that it would be too many to have in the previous Bora Bora post.

With the risk of creating a post full of Blue photos...I had to separate them out to prevent the other posts from getting too big.

Here they are...I will let them speak for themselves...

One of the days at Bora Bora we went with a boat around the lagoon to go snorkeling and have lunch on one of the Motu's (Islands). Along the way we went snorkeling in spots where we also could see sharks and stingrays.



Our first spot was a snorkeling spot with lots of coral and different fish.

I Even saw a big fat murray eel.



Kim also had a bit of a snorkel in the clear blue water even though the water was deep and there was a slight current.





Aiden was facinated by the fish and wanted to join mummy in the water to say hello to the fish'ies...



After this we went to a more shallow spot on the reef with lots of reef sharks.



Yes, that is me in the water with 12 sharks circling around me (and no safety net in place).These sharks would come swimming towards me and then turn around within a meters reach.

Click here to see a video I uploaded to Facebook with the Sharks getting close














After lunch we stopped to feed the Stingrays in the lagoon.



They are fairly harmless and I was feeding them dead fish. While doing so I was bitten by one of them that mistook the camera I was holding in my other hand as a fish.

Bora Bora is a beautiful island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Kim and I had promised eachother that we one day we will go there.

It is about an hours flight from Tahiti and along the way you pass a number of other Polynesian islands and atolls. When we landed we were met by the stunning blue lagoon and the very characteristic mountain which is an old extinct volcano.







Aiden especially was mesmerised by the view going on the boat from the airport to our hotel.








On arrival we were met by traditional Tahitian music and someone blowing a seashell.



And Aiden immidiately got into the mocktails.





Our hotel was on the main island itself and we had a small hut facing the lagoon and had a beautiful view every morning waking up.




Every morning we had breakfast overlooking the lagoon where Aiden would stuff his face with fruits, bread and youghurt.




We spent a lot of time at the small beach close to the hotel just swimming in the clear water of the lagoon.









The locals were out on the lagoon showing off their skills.






Aiden loved the calm clear water and the beach...it was a pleasant 27-28 degrees. Every time he saw water he would point at it and shout BoBo (Water)...and insist on going swimming.








One evening I did a couple of sunset portraits.






Aiden again insisted on going in the water.




I also went for a swim after we finished the photos, which was absolutely magical as the light was surreal and the water was absolutely calm.




Across the lagoon from the hotel we had a little island (Motu) with beautiful place to go snorkeling. First I went in the water and notices a small reef shark circling around the corals...being kinda shy. I mentioned it to Kim and as soon as she also spotted it later in the day she rushed out of the water (A couple of days later she had a similar experience with a large stingray at the beach).




It was hard to leave all this beauty behind

I took a lot of photos of flowers...enough to warrant a separate blog entry..

If you are not a flower person then just scroll down the page past these...lots of other good stuff there.


Anyhow...I will let them speak for themselves...

This Easter we decided to go to Tahiti and Bora Bora in French Polynesia in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

We were supposed to have been going to Japan, but we decided that we instead wanted a more relaxing holiday and changed it to an Island holiday enjoying the sun, sand, water and sunsets.



Tahiti is the main island of French Polynesia and is not larger than it is possible to drive around the entire island in a couple of hours (appx 120 km).



On one of the days we rented a car and did just that. We could have joined a day tour, but I am not very keen on the 5min photo stop kind of tours and much prefer to be able to travel independently and take time to see what we would like to see.

It is reasonably easy to find your way around the island. There really is just one road and the entire road is marked by kilometer markers and we had the distances for most of the sights we wanted to see. We didn;t go too much into the interior because of time restraints and some of these roads are only accessible by 4WD.


First we stopped at one of the old Tahitian temples which was interesting





After that we headed to some large caves full of freshwater (would have been convenient in the old days)...very damp and very dark.



After this we tried to find the road up to a lake and supposedly large waterfall. Some of the locals were very helpful with assisting us with directions but unfortunately the road was closed.

Fortunately we did find the nearby gardens which Kim wanted to visit (I will do a separate flower blog posting).



We did find some waterfallson the island (and saw several from a long distance away high on the mountains).





After this we headed to Point Venus where Captain Cook in 1769 supposedly saw the passing of Venus ...now this houses the only lighthouse in French Polynesia.

The next passing will be 6th June this year...243 years after the previos passing (can be seen as a shadow against the sun).




We decided to skip the museums as we would rather experience the outsde rather than objects behind glass.

The other days we spent around the hotel and the marina, just relaxing, swimming and dining. Aiden loved spending most of the time in the pool at the hotel.

Yesterday I did another photo project. I wanted to do something different with composition.

I had this idea of a guy being attacked by hand-spiders (I hate spiders) and thought that the garage would be a good location for it. I had an old T-shirt and some tomato paste to add some drama.




It turned out to be a lot harder than expected as it was almost impossible to get the right composition, focus etc. when I both had to appear in the photo as well as take it (my head was cropped off on the first series which meant that I had to reposition the camera and then either re-shoot the series or try and stitch them up in post production...I chose the latter because of time constraints).

I could definitely have done a better job if I didn't have to be two places at once, but I don't think it is a total disaster.