Photo

The 70’s throwback went to the recent Marillion get together in Holland. He’s so hip he took his big sister. Together they managed to corner the singer and take this photo. Notice the slightly false smile on the bloke in the middle. Thats because the car salesman to his right has a knife poised around his knee cap. Its the only way they could get the photo.

We bought bunk beds in the January sales. The family then assembled them. Here is the photo evidence - Assembling the bunk beds. Next I can feel a fascinating photo essay showing you all how I take out the rubbish. Or not, we’ll see if the muse hits.

Last year we sent out a photo of the tin lids with our Christmas cards. You can see it to the left of these words. A seasonal theme and some (vaguely) smiling children, what more could you want? This year we had a flash of inspiration. We were off to watch the England v NSW cricket game at the SCG. We thought it would be great to get a photograph of the youngest members of the family in front of the current Ashes holders.

Or, in this case, the golf club. I’ve put my photos of Mark and Sophie’s wedding up on flickr as this set. According to my count that means I don’t have to post another photo of the day until some time in late January.

Kiddies on the beach. Hosted on Zooomr Welcome to another photo of the day. This one is of our favourite boys and girls at Clontarf beach. It was a little hot so we had retired from the water and were sitting under the trees having snacks. Which was nice. Of course, the snacks weren’t enough, and I did have to bribe the kiddies to sit still whilst I took a couple of photos. As you can tell from this picture it didn’t really work that well. But please do give me points for trying.

The youngest member of the team has been standing for a while. At the weekend he took a couple of steps. Over the last few days he has gained confidence by the minute and today he has managed to string together quite a few steps at a time. As far as we are concerned this makes him a walker. Good work little man.

We bought the kids a new paddling pool. This one comes complete with its own bouncy castle. Emma provided the balls. Our bathroom provided the rest of the toys. It has seen some serious use this weekend, where spring has finally sprung and the temperature is in the very reasonable low twenties (centigrade). I’m not saying our children are spoiled, but …

The youngest member of the team, Hollywood Todd, is pictured here with his favourite hat and the fishing rod from the worst present ever. Thanks Mr Housewife your contribution has been noted. The boy himself is nearly walking. This is one of the few photos I managed to shoot when he was not either crawling around like a lunatic or standing up and then falling over in rapid succession.

Mark and I decided to go to the Tyrrells wine tasting at the SCG the other week. Sadly it was on a Saturday morning and SWMBO and JFGP had to go to his swimming lesson. So my cunning solution was to take Hollywood with me to charm all comers whilst Mark and I dabbled with some quality vino. It worked like a charm and the boy had a great time crawling around the members bar trying to knock patrons over. The only drawback came when I had to change his nappy and discovered that there isn’t a family room in the members pavilion. I was shocked at the lack of facilities. Shocked I tell you.

It’s been a while, but the occasion of JFGP’s third birthday and trip to the Zig Zag Railway prompted a flurry of snapping. Rather than link to the odd photo or two I’ve dusted down the photo album section of this site and added a whole new page. Please make your way to A Very Thomas Birthday for some photographs and associated musings. There isn’t a space to comment on the photo album so please feel free to leave compliments on my work right here.

Thanks to the nice folks at Download Squad I’ve discovered Splashr.com a nice little service that creates presentations from your photos stored at Flickr. It’s really quite good, here are a couple of samples; A selection of photos of Alexander Oliver poses for the camera Some people that I work with

Normally I’ve got something witty or pertinent to say when I post a photo. Today I’ve got nothing. Luckily this picture doesn’t need exposition or explanation, it’s just Olly doing what he does best - going in for the gnash. He has chewed everything in our house. Next thing you know he’ll be munching his way through yours.

And I’m not afraid to use it. Thanks to Robyn’s efforts I’ve now got a nice white box to photograph things in. My first effort was a couple of test shots of JFGP’s pet monkey. Expect to see more random lightbox shots in the future. Oh, and if you want to play tennis on Sydney’s northern beaches you can’t go past Wakehurst Tennis Club.

Three will go into one boy’s small chair. Even if Oliver is more concerned with eating the television remote. Togetherness is big at Chez Todd although whether it’s based on familial love, trying to get Mummy’s attention or just a fondness for the best seat in the house is open for conjecture.

I went away for four days last week and all I managed to get out of it was 650 photos. And into trouble with SWMBO. This is probably the only one of interest, the attendees at the Lend Lease ICT Asia Pacific conference 2006 (also known as the love-in). I can’t recommend the venue highly enough though, it’s a lovely hotel if you are ever in need of accomodation in that part of the world.

A certain small boy of my acquaintance is a big fan of Thomas the Tank Engine, except he pronouns it “Thomas the Tanken Engine”. So much of a fan is he that when we went on our excursion to the Hunter Valley last week we had to take a Thomas DVD with us. The good news was that this provided many happy hours of baby sitting service for us, although the occassonal adult did get to sit with him and watch the stories.

It seems like ages since I’ve posted anything of note, for which many apologies. My excuses are many and varied, including sickness, apathy, the arrival of my folks from the mother country and the return of my new computer to the shop so that they can fix it’s wireless card. Regardless, I’m back having just had a week’s holiday including a couple of days in the Hunter Valley. We stayed at Lovedale Cottages where they have a very friendly dog. He’s called Zen and he’s pictured here getting friendly with JFGP.

Following on from our last toothy news update, last weekend I managed to catch the boy smiling. So I whipped out the camera and got this shot of the tooth in question. Of course it’s already out of date as the second one made an entrance yesterday. You’ve got to be on your toes in the fast moving world of dentistry.

Over the weekend the youngest member of the team cut his first tooth. NTHE (as he shall henceforth be known about these parts) is now proudly sporting his first incisor and the second one should be appearing any day now. Luckily for SWMBO we weaned him off the boob several weeks ago so there shouldn’t be any biting pain. Apart from when he tries to chew my finger off, which seems to be the funniest thing he’s ever seen or done.

A rather belated happy new year to you and yours. NTHE and SWMBO are pleased to be in 2006 and hope that it will be a cracking year. On an unrelated note, Emma asked SWMBO and I what our highlights of 2005 were. She was rather stuck for an answer and couldn’t come up with anything immediately. I said that I thought that having a son was quite a highlight of the year. To which the reply was " oh yeah, we did that didn’t we."