Walking the dog

 

Back in town!

Hi everyone. Sorry for the radio silence but we have been in oz since before Christmas and Emma and Cami are still there and coming back next Friday (YAY!!!!) but I have been here alone with Cooba for 2 weeks now. We had a great time in oz catching up with family and showing our precious little Cami off! Em still has the camera so we will post an album when she gets back and you can see how she has developed. For me, being with Cami pretty much 24/7 was just awesome and made the trip so very special for me. I really feel we bonded so much and she is at a stage where she is interacting so much more all the time. I remember Emma telling me about a book she was reading whilst pregnant that some Dads have an instant connection with their baby whilst others grows over time. I think I fit into the latter and that is not taking anything away from the love that is so much there from the start, but I feel that everyday my love for Cami just grows so much that it is hard to know where it is all coming from! Maybe also the fact she is very clearly saying "Daddy" has helped ... poor "Mummy" is beaten by "duck", "bird", "tree" and probably many more words soon! Here is a bit of a quick photo snapshot of some of the things that we got up to. These are only some of the pics on my iPhone so don't get offended if your photo isn't included yet.

Cami became addicted to ice (the healthy variety) and just loved standing at the "esky" sucking on cubes all day long! 

 We visited sim and Clare and had a lovely visit to Flynn's vineyard in Heathcote. I highly recommend the MC Shiraz!

Cute pic of Eliza, Cami and Em in the cubby that Zac put in for the girls.

Cami spent a LOT of time in the car seat traveling around and visiting everyone.

Cute smile again in our apartment kindly lent to us by Kat and Tim (friends of Dicko and Em).

Relaxing at St Kilda beach on a beautiful sunny and warm day.

How babies should eat! Nude and al-fresco!

Cami had her 1st birthday Party 1 mth early in oz, but had a great time with all the kids and adults! here she is with her special birthday balloon from aunty Sam.

With Daddy during lunch at Claypots (Emma's and my favorite restaurant) with aunty Emma as well.

 We headed across to Perth for 3 days at the end of my trip for a work meeting. Here we are at il-lidos in Cottesloe for dinner watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean whilst Cami was babysat by my old boss Joce and her daughter Eloise.

We snuck in a quick visit to Little Creatures brewery in Freo. Had a few pints of their single batch beer Big Dipper which was an amazing hoppy IPA. Took a pic of the description of the LCPA for some good recipe stealing ideas!

My first weekend back in Stavanger and the forecast was pretty good so we organized a quick ski trip into one of the turistforening hytte - Kvinen. Chuck, Blue, Rayray and Rob joined Coobs and me.

Unfortunately Coobs broke his "thumb" claw on the trip back and had to have surgery to remove it and the other one. He has been stuck inside all week with a bucket on his head which is lucky for him as it has snowed quite a bit at home and been very cold this week.

Lots of snow in the mountains. We had to spend a fair bit of time digging out the cabin to get in and the snow was pretty much up to the roof as you can see from this picture of the snow up past the window in one of the bedrooms. 

 This was our fridge. Just open the front door and leave the beers in the wall of snow!

Now the real reason for this blog post! I have been able to get stuck into a little work on my brewing machine in the last week. Mostly working on welding up the gas beam. Here I am leak testing it. Needless to say there were a few pinholes and I needed to grind back a few spots and reweld. I need it to be completely gas tight as Propane will go through this beam (even though it is only at 0.5psi I don't want to risk any leaks)!

Using my beer gas and regulator as the leak testing system and pressure gauge. 

Soapy water checking for leaks.

This was the final leak path and now it is all pressure tested at 40 times the working pressure! Tomorrow I will start with tack welding the whole frame/stand up and then I can start piecing it all together. Good stuff! Nothing better than playing with power tools and having a beer at the same time!

Runny Noses and Lazy Weekends

On Friday night Em and I were free!! We had this annual BBQ event that was put on by one of the local welding companies (Hermes) and Em and I had a big night planned with a babysitter organized and everything. So off we went and had a lovely meal and were getting settled in when our phone rang from the babysitter. Turns out Cami had woken and couldn't be settled. Anyway we decided to call it a night and came home to sort out Cami. Turns out she had a bit of a cold and some teeth coming through (the first one is already poking out). Anyway, the best laid plans went to waste but we ended up having a lovely relaxing weekend and just looking after poor little Cami and her runny nose!

She also tried Vegimite for the first time today sharing some of her daddy's toast! She seemed to like the salty goodness!

Anyway, here are some pics of her eating pâté on bread as well as going for walks today and some from dinner on Saturday night at Ostehuset.

We have a lovely warm fire going tonight and a cozy evening planned. Time to crack open another bottle of red and relax.

Summer Holiday in Fayence, South France

We returned a couple of weeks ago from a fantastic holiday - 2 weeks in the South of France. We were so lucky to be able to take Cooba with us - Joel drove our car down there and Cami and I flew down and met him and Cooba in Nice. It was such a wonderful holiday shared with two other families - Aud Trude, Kristian and Oliver, as well as Mari, Kev, Oscar and Elliot.

One thing I realised when compiling this album is we've become the typical first-time parents and taken 500,000,000 photos of Cami and hardly any of anyone or anything else! We will be sure to remedy this next time. Seasoned Campaigners Mari and Kev are clued onto this and have a much better set of pics showing the house we stayed in and lots of photos of the whole crew, the link to their blog is in the list of links in the top right so feel free to stop by there for some other photos. But boy do we have some cute photos of our little girl!

In other news, Sally arrives tomorrow, and I'm pumped!!

Double click on the photos to view the slideshow.

Is this not the cutest little labrador you've ever seen?! Joel shot this in October last year making use of his company's studio equipment (backdrop, lighting etc.). Super cute!

HAPPY 4th BIRTHDAY COOBA

Cooba turned 4 today. Happy birthday little fella. Here are some pics of him through his 4 years and also a movie of him at 8 weeks when he came home with us for the first time. He is obviously a big part of our lives and we enjoy every moment we have with him. Have a good weekend.

Det snø, det snø ... tiddlebom!

Even though it is now all back to normal (i.e. wet and non-white) Stavanger has had a truckload of snow lately. We always love to get out amongst it and it makes everything so pretty. Cooba in particular loves it and loves catching snowballs! We even went walking on the lake a little while ago! Here are some pics of the fun!

Summer (sort of) in Stavanger

In 4 days time, Emma and I leave for Frankfurt, Germany to commence our month long degustation, cycling, relaxing, and exploring tour of France (and surrounds).

We pick up our bobil in Frankfurt and cruise roughly around in an anticlockwise direction around France. Coincidentally, the 2008 Tour de France route also takes in an anticlockwise direction (I am not sure if Emma is aware of this). So it should be a very enjoyable month of travelling.

Our first stop will be Epernay in the Central North East of France which is the home of Champagne (well it is Champagne actually) and home to Moet and Chandon. It should be a good start to our tour. We probably won't get a chance to update along the way but we promise to provide a good blog when we are back.

In the meantime however, here is a glimpse of our last couple of weeks in Stavanger.

We (well Emma mostly bless her - I was out riding) finally got around to painting the wall between our place and next doors.









































We went to the volleyball the other night after work with some good freinds. Stavanger has a round of the world cup beach volleyball each year (we went last year also and we posted some pics back then). We went along which was enjoyable as always, and then went across the harbour to a lovely outdoor bar and had some fresh prawns in a bucket washed down with more than a few beers. We then caught up with some other friends later in the evening at the lønningspils (pay check beers) evening at a local bar. Lovely evening.


















Here is me - we had OK seats this year, but we also had a great view of the harbour where there were 2 big cruise liners in. I got to watch them both leave also. Tough life!
























After the prawns on Friday night, we went for a shop to this amazing gourmet food supermarket. Got fresh prawns, fresh baguettes, chorizo sausage, mozarella, salmon, dips, cheeses and quiceish paste and washed it down in the sun with a bottle of our favourite Cloudy Bay.


















It was just like training for what will come in France.
























The lovely spread.
























The lovely company.


















Cooby also got a taste for the good life and Stavangerske prawns