Ookky ookook, ookle ookook.

Because everybody needs a monkey.

Update from us

As usual, it's been a while since we posted anything on the bandwagon, so I thought I'd give a bit of an update. This week has could have best been described as Hellishly busy. After a few weeks of not much going on at work, suddenly a client came to us with a massive job and a really tight deadline.. today being said deadline, and I'm writing this over my lunchbreak while awaiting any more feedback from them. Unfortunately, this was also the week in which I've got two Iaido demos.. one on Sunday, and the other yesterday afternoon. This basically meant that the last few days I've been starting around 6 or 7am so I can get the work done and also so I could leave early Wednesday for the demo. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but the sum result is I'm pretty tired :)

So the demos. Yesterday afternoon Takeo and I were at a big park in Adelaide for a half hour or so. We did some kata together, then faced off against each other with Takeo attacking and me defending.. then we did five each alone (we were clapped at the end!) and finished with some bamboo cutting. The crowd actually built up to be pretty large. Cheryl has posted photos, and I'll chuck a couple in here.. you can see it's fairly sparse in the first one, but by the end there's people behind us watching as well. The demo Sunday should be a bit less stress.. it's just for my Dojo in Reynella, so myself and a couple of students will do about 3 kata each and that will be all.

If you want to see all the photos you can see them here.

We hung around at the Moon Lantern Festival after the demo to eat some delicious Korean food and watch a few of the shows on the main stage. Oscar also tasted his first ice-cream.. which was Cheryl's ice-cream, but he didn't want to share ;) We got it off him when we offered him a banana instead.. he loves his fruit!

Oscar is growing up so quickly and learning a lot. He's gradually adding more words, some from us (like "nan" and "up") and some from childcare (like "ta" and "more") and some he just seems to pick up himself. He started saying "nose", "mouth" and his favourite "eye" suddenly one day. He really likes to mimic us too.. sometimes you wont realise you're doing something (like scratching the top of your head) until you see Os doing it too.

He's becoming much better at feeding himself.. some foods are easier than others of course, but he loves using a spoon, fork and knife when he can. He also loves reading books.. I think that's his favourite quiet time activity. Sometimes he'll even sit down and look through the books himself. We play a lot, he loves chasing and hiding games, and really likes exploring outside. He can get a bit quiet and shy with new people, but I reckon it takes about 20 minutes for him to get used to them (and it took about 2 minutes with Sam :))

We're looking forward to seeing Mum and Nana next week, even if there is a fair bit of cleaning the house still to be done. I'm getting Wednesday and Thursday off work (which I appreciate even more after this week) and then Friday Cheryl and I will go out for a few drinks with friends to celebrate my birthday. Gotta make the most of the experienced babysitters :) Monday is a public holiday too! It's going to be a good week :)

Hmm.. I think that's it from me. Hopefully Cheryl can pop on and say how her work is going, and anything I might have forgotten. I'd better get back to work!

Oscar's first trip to the pool

We have just gotten back from Oscar's first ever trip to the pool! It's been a bit cold and rainy this weekend, but the pools were indoor and heated, so it was quite warm when we got there.

Initially we took him into the baby pool. I'm sure mum and dad can guess his first reaction - he kicked around like he was in the bath :) However after a bit of that I think he realised he was somewhere different, and spent the remainder of the time studying everything he could with a detached expression of mild curiosity.

The pool we went to has these weird mushroom things which rain water down, and he rather enjoyed that. It also has a sea creature which sprays water from it's head and he really tried to grab that water, even though it just made it spray into his face :D

After a bit of a play in both the baby and the kids pool (he was a bit weirded out by floating I think) we changed him, wrapped him up and he instantly fell asleep. He's still asleep now that we're home :)

We didn't take any photos at the actual pool, but there are a few shots of his cute little outfit on flickr and facebook, so check them out :) He looks very tall in that first one..

We're going to the zoo zoo zoo...

It was a vaguely sunny Sunday, the middle of a long weekend - no better time to take a trip to the Zoo. Vicki, Steven, Bruce and I all jumped into Bruce's (mostly) shiny new car and off we went. About an hour later, we arrived and parked on the grass (?!) as directed.


It was fairly cold and windy for the first part of the day - but that didn't stop us enjoying watching the elephants! They were so funny! Initially they were messing about in a little pool. It had a small waterpipe and they were stepping on it to make the water spray everywhere (clever things). Next thing, two of the elephants ran into the pool by the waterfall. One moment they were there, the next they disappeared - they didn't teleport somewhere, it was just the pool was a LOT deeper than it looked! It was fantastic to watch them playing.


We didn't follow any particular plan - we just wandered around the zoo, watched random animals and took lots of photos. Well, I took photos until my batteries went flat. :-( My photoset is here. And since Vicki's batteries didn't go flat, her photoset is here. Sometimes it's sad to see animals in cages but it's obvious that Chester Zoo looks after the welfare of the animals - they have inside and outside spaces, there are toys to play with (even HUGE toys for the elephants) and at least some of the habitats are designed for the animals. It's been ages since I'd been to the zoo - think I might not wait so long until the next visit (probably to another zoo). :-)

We're going to the zoo zoo zoo
You can come too too too...

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everybody. I hope you all have had an enjoyable long weekend.

(more new photos over at flickr)

Oh, and big thanks to Auntie Dayna for the present, you can see him enjoying it here

Happy Birthday Cheryl!

Happy Birthday! I hope you think of something fun to do before tomorrow ;)

Housey house stuff

Today (after a minor freak out with the car and a call to RAA, but that's another story) we picked up the keys to our new house! We took out some stuff, and we'll take out more as well before the removalists arrive (7am tomorrow)

Here's some photos we took while out there... there's not many inside the rooms because really, all the rooms look pretty similar :)









Also, they're not in the photos but Cheryl's friend Bron bought us a couple of garden gnomes! We put one in a clear place, and the other is hidden a bit further back. I think the house really has character, especially that back yard. Plus the second shed is huge! I'm already planning a gym/games room in there ;)

We look forward to all of you visiting, and we'll add some more photos when our rooms actually have furniture in them :)

House update

Hi all,

Cheryl and I are well into packing boxes now. For example, exhibit a - our spare room:



Of course if you think that looks bad, you probably shouldn't look at our lounge room at around 3:30 this afternoon, which I like to call exhibit b - armageddon:



It doesn't look quite that bad now.. close though :)
The reason we are in a flurry of packing is that the truck comes to pick up our stuff on Saturday 15th, giving us less than a week to get everything we have into cardboard.. and we seem to have a fairly large collection of stuff. Where does it all come from?

We have a moving date!

Our finance has been finalised, and it also looks like our settlement date will be changed from the 21st Dec to 14th Dec, Yay! We just need to send back the form that we have signed and it'll be official :) Finally we can start organising things like annual leave, a removalist, carpet cleaning ... and start packing everything. Eep! It'll be great to finally be in our own home with a real kitchen, a lounge and dining room (although I can see us still eating in front of the TV Haha!), and a yard with plants! It's quite exciting now that things are moving along again.
So we're going to be very busy and maybe a little poor, but it'll be a very nice Christmas present for us! :)

Movember Week 3

I'm afraid it's all the untidy stage from here on in. And I'll be very glad to shave it off in December.. it's so hot :(

In other news, why isn't there any other news? Come on guys, I've been posting about the fact that I'm not shaving, surely you all have more interesting things than that to blog about.

Gorge Wildlife Park

After my surprise picnic a few weeks back, Cheryl had told me she had a day trip planned for today. As it turned out, the trip was to Gorge Wildlife Park, about an hour or so north east of the city, up in the hills.

It is like your typical wildlife park - you can buy food (peanuts) and feed wallabies, see all manner of Australian birds, and even have a turn holding a koala (which is awesome!). However this park has something different, something very special..

MONKEYS!



And man, these aren't just any monkeys. These are monkeys who will reach through the bars of their cage to have you hand them peanuts. And stare. Some of them would roll the peanuts to break the shells, others just ate them. They certainly fared better than the wallabies, who kept having their peanuts pilfered by long beaked (and very bold) birds.

So yeah, it was an awesome morning, And I took a stupidly large number of photos. You can see the best of them over at flickr, including a great shot of Cheryl with the baby koala Poppy. We managed to get some good shots by getting right up close to the cages and shooting between them too.. like the one below, in which I think the monkey looks so sad to be trapped.



And now I fail to see how I can top this day for the next surprise day trip. Hmm.. maybe something with monkeys...