After putting it off for, I dunno, a year or so, we finally got around to having J's hair cut. He was fantastically brave, and was rewarded with a lollipop and the ability to see without hair in his eyes. There's some before and after photos here.
Some great news - Ange passed her recent CPA exam, which means she only has a few more subjects to go.
For some reason today Jeremy insisted on bringing one of the bikes home from school, so here's a couple of photos of us trying to get him dressed after his bath.....
Wow, it's been quite a while, and I've been quite slack. I have some excuses though - namely that we've all had various illnesses over the last month, and we've just been busy.
We had a nice relaxed day for Mother's Day, heading to our favourite cafe for a slow second breakfast and a play in the park, and had a quiet play at home in the afternoon. Jeremy painted Ange a very cool picture at school, and she was also lucky enough to get a brand new dryer. Well, not really, but after the old dryer died and we had to replace it, we didn't have much money left :)
We had Jeremy's birthday a couple of weeks early so that Rach, Tim and Alicia could come. Their second was due around J's birthday, but decided to turn up a week or so late anyway. Given the huge amount of space we have at home, we decided to have the party at an indoor adventure playground that Jeremy loves. For a quite a decent price we got the kids admission, a themed party room and enough finger food to feed the adults and the kids. Then the dads ran around after the sugar-filled kids while the mums watched and laughed. Much fun was had by all.
Ange is well into her third trimester now, and other than morning sickness hanging around for a crazily long time, all is well. This next monkey is already a lot different from Jeremy - rather than sleeping from 7 till 7 every night, this one happily sleeps for a couple of days, wakes up randomly for a little while.
Of course there's a ton of photos, broken up into a few albums:
I'm sure lots of other exciting things happened too, but that's all I can pull out of my head.
Expansion program should be completed in mid September :)
Once again it's been a busy month, with Ange's birthday, Easter and a visit from Nonna.
For her birthday, Ange was lucky enough to get 2 annual passes to the National Zoo and Aquarium, and we've spent a lot of time there since. Jeremy loves seeing the MONKEEEYS and the TIGEY, and spends a lot of time running up and down the stairs and ramps in the aquarium.
Ange put heaps of effort into Easter, and made some very nice cupcakes and some very cute chocolate bird's nests for the kids. Jeremy got a cooking set, which he uses almost every day. He also got a school bus of Nonna, which was also an instant favourite.
Another update very soon....
Here are the photos:
We decided to turn the Canberra day long weekend into a 5 day trip to the coast, so on Thursday afternoon we packed up the car and picked Jeremy up from school early. To add a touch of stylish flair to the Commodore wagon, we added a bike rack on the back.
Robert and Sam came down from Wollongong for a quick visit, and Jeremy had a load of fun playing with them.
We very quickly settled into the beach life, going for a nice walk in the morning before coffee and devonshire tea, then spending a few hours at whichever local beach took our fancy. After Jeremy's afternoon sleep we lazed around, either going for a ride or heading back to the beach. Very hard life.
Jeremy really enjoyed the beach, especially digging big holes in the sand. We all got a nice amount of sun and managed to not get burnt. Thanks to lots of local wildlife, Jeremy got to see, and then learnt how to say, kangaroo, cockatoo and kookaburra. Ange and Ben spend more time than they'd like to remember singing the kookaburra song.
For the trip back Ben loaded the car up to the hilt with half the contents of his Dad's shed, and surprisingly managed to find a place for most of it in the garage once we got back to Canberra. Of course where he'll put the rest of the stuff remains to be seen.
Not everything went smoothly - on our first day back in the real world Ange had to come home from work sick, then had to pick Jeremy up from school early because he had a temperature. A sleepless night or two and a lot of dirty nappies later, Jeremy's feeling better and Ange is finally getting some time to try and get better herself.
It wouldn't be the Zoo without some photos, so here they are
It's been a busy month since the last update. After dragging ourselves back from Brisbane with a pram, car seat, cat and 4 suitcases (we barely fitted into the taxi!) we eased our way back into work and life in general.
We made our regular Wagga trip on the weekend before Ben's birthday, and decided to make a long weekend of it. We spent Sunday afternoon at the Wagga Botanical Gardens, mostly playing in the park and looking at all the animals.
On a miserable weekend, we took Jeremy to an indoor adventure playground in Mitchell. It's huge - much bigger than our local one in Belconnen. There were cars to drive, huge slides and lots of fun things to climb on/over/through. Needless to say J loved it and went home exhausted.
The Australia Day long weekend was a good excuse for the boys to have their first camping trip. The Cotter proved to be a great camping spot, with plenty of bushwalking as well as great facilites. Jeremy spend 3 hours bushwalking in the backpack, and now wants to be taken everywhere in it. Of course Ben could hardly walk afterwards, though he did manage to take a photo or two. Ange used her time off to make a beautiful summer dress and go to the movies.
Oh, and Jeremy's speach is coming along in leaps and bounds. On the camping trip he managed to say "because I want it up" when Ben asked him why the car boot needed to be open. He rather adorably calles noodles "DigDoos", and for the first time has started to try and say his own name. He's currently only managing NeeNee, but it's also incredibly cute.
Photos for the month are in these albums:
To kick off our second week in Brisbane, Nonna took us in to Southbank for a coffee and some exploring. Jeremy spent heaps of time running around along the edge of the river, looking at boats and gardens, and generally running away from us
On Friday we caught the train down to the Gold Coast to spend a couple of days with Suze and her family. We were made to feel very welcome, and were spoilt with lots of home cooking, guided tours and great conversation. Jeremy settled in very quickly, although his 6am starts at full volume were a bit of a challenge :)
On our last day we went to the Currumban animal sanctuary. We rode the train, patted kangaroos, and Jeremy ate his dinner while watching the lorikeets eat theirs.
On our way back to Nonna's house from the coast, we stopped in at Oma's for a relaxing afternoon. After Jeremy had his sleep, and we ate ourselves silly, we all headed into the city to have a wander around before jumping on the train.
Here are a few photos from the week.
Our third and final Christmas was heaps of fun. On Tuesday Ange (with a little bit of assistance from the boys) did most of the cooking for the next day's lunch, and that night Nonna kept watch while we escaped to the movies for the first time in 6 months or so.
On Christmas morning we headed off to the Hilton for a huge, laid-back breakfast, then came home and to get lunch ready. Uncle Andrew and Aunty Laura arrived just in time for Jeremy to go to bed, so we put present openning off until after lunch.
Jeremy (and the rest of us) has lots of fun openning presents. The favourites were a digger from Uncle Drew and Aunty Laura, Jack the Front Loader from Mum and Dad, and a baby laptop from Nonna.
After presents and Jeremy's lunch, we headed over to join in the Hogan's Christmas celebrations. It was great to catch up with everyone, and Oma's tractor was added to the list of J's favourite presents.
There's lots and lots of photos here.
While we've been up here we've managed to catch up with Melanie, Lissie and Mel. We're heading down to the Gold Coast tomorrow to catch up with Suze and her family for a couple of days, and will see who else we can fit in once we get back to Brissie.
At the start of the month we went to Wagga to have Christmas number 2 with Jeremy's Nan, Aunty Sue and Nan-Nan. We went down earlier in the day on Saturday and stayed an extra night, which made it a much more relaxing trip. Getting to work on Monday morning after a 3hr drive wasn't so much fun...
There's a heap of photos here. All the toys were great hits, but the car and xylaphone have become favourites. We're actually a little worried that Jeremy might wear the car out because at least once a day we have to go down stairs and watch him ride and push it around for an hour or so.
We're in Brisbane at the moment for Christmas number 3, and everyone has travelled and settled in well. Jeremy even managed his first (coherent) 3 word sentance today - "car down Mum" - encouraging Ange to drive faster down the hills on the way to visit Melanie. We'll be back in Canberra in early January, after making a quick trip to the Gold Coast.
Merry Christmas :)
We're off to Queensland in a couple of weeks, so we thought we'd give Jeremy his bigger (and less packable) presents early. So, we had a bit of a Christmas in November.
Jeremy loves his cubby house (thanks Nonna!) and is pretty impressed with his tunnel and rocking moose. There's some photos of him having some fun here.
J's a little bit sick again, but that hasn't stopped him learning lots of new things - he now says "Arnie cat", blows kisses and helps his mum blow out the light before he goes to bed
For all of the last 9 weeks or so at least one of us has been sick, so that's getting pretty boring. Other than that all is well.
After a long time Ben has finally uploaded some videos from his mobile. Here's one from a month ago (apologies for the, um, background music).
You can find a couple of other videos here.
This week Jeremy also said his first phrase - "no more". We're pretty impressed :)
We've really settled back in to our place in Canberra now. Ange has started a nice little balcony garden, and has grown her first ever rose. We put up some shade cloth too, which has made a huge difference to the temperature in the house. We've even started to get some birds visiting regularly.
We had a great time at Roxanne and Grant's engagement last weekend, but unfortunately Jeremy caught himself an upper respiratory tract infection, vommited all night, and took most of the week to recover. Plus of course Ange and I managed to pick it up too.
The latest batch of photos are here.
If you use a news aggregator or RSS reader, you can now add the Hughes Zoo feed to keep an eye on what's happening.
For those who haven't used it, RSS is a great way find out if there's new content your favourite web sites, without having to remember to visit each of them. Most news sites and blogs have an RSS feed, and there's plenty of free RSS readers around, like iGoogle and FeedReader. There's even readers built in to the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Let us know if you have any problems with the feed.
Hi all,
I'm growing a Mo for Movember, to help raise awareness of male depression
and prostate cancer (and for the fun of it!). If you'd like to sponsor
me/donote, you can do it by following
this link.
The money raised is donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative, which will use the funds to create awareness, fund research and increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer and male depression.
You all know what I look like clean-shaven, but once the fuzz starts I'll put some progress pics up in our gallery.
Thanks for your support!
Ben
Update: the first photo is up - I'll add one each week here
An office building near us is being demolished, which has provided lots of entertainment for Jeremy, especially as he can see it from the park. Here's a couple of photos of the demolition and our boy playing.
Last weekend we (finally!) made the trip to Wagga to catch up with Jeremy's Nan, Aunty Sue and Nan-Nan. Although the car trip didn't have as much sleep involved as was originally planned, we all had a great time chatting and catching up. Photos were plentiful.
PS - we recently had a few hundred photos printed at SnapFish. The quality was really good, but best of all it's only 20c per print, and you get 20 free prints when you sign up. If you want to print any of the Hughes Zoo photos, send us an email so we can send you an invite (that way we get some more free prints too).
Our good friend Suze headed off today for a 7 week trip overseas, so we
went and had a little goodbye afternoon tea with her before dropping her
off at the airport. We wish her lots of fun and safe traveling.
As usual, here's a couple of photos.
It's been a big weekend - thankfully it's a long one too :) 2 grand finals, Forumula 1, and today a visit to Floriade. It was a nice, relaxing way to spend the morning and of course a great opportunity to take a ton of photos. J had a great time running around, touching things and having a bit of a picnic.
It makes a lovely change to last weekend, when we all had the worst bout of gastro imaginable.
On the weekend we decided to go up to Mt Stromlo for a picnic. It's a beautiful, quiet place to spend an afternoon, and the burnt out buildings from the 2003 fires are great to poke around. Here's a couple of photos from the day.
Fathers' Day was the first day that we had the chance to go out and have some fun since moving back to Canberra. In the morning we went into the city, had a look at some of the new development, and marveled at the average coffee and deserted streets :) J had fun running around, pushing his stroller and paying with the sheep.
In the afternoon we went up to Telstra Tower for lunch and a look around. Very windy, but lots of fun. Of course there's plenty of photos.
What a busy, busy month! Jeremy started walking a couple of weeks ago, although he did his best to only do it when we couldn't see him. Now he's fully got the hang of it, and walks more than he crawls. Plus he's getting quite tall and lean, for him at least :)
Last week we moved back to Canberra, and have almost finished unpacking and setting the house up. We're always surprised by just how big out little 2 bedroom place is - we've managed to fit pretty much all the furniture from Collingwood in. The garage is full of boxes and the odd bookshelf or 4, but everything we want is in the house. It's also nice to be close to each other all the time, instead of being spread over 3 storeys!
As you'd expect, there's a fair few photos from the last month. They're split into a few albums:
Somewhere in there I also found time to mess with the photo gallery software, and it's now quite a bit different. Let us know if you have any problems.
We'll send out emails/letters soon-ish with our new contact details. In the mean time it's probably best to chase us up on our mobiles.
Lately Ange has started knitting, which everyone thinks is great. Arnie and Jeremy are very interested, and as you can see from the latest set of photos, there's a fair bit of fun involved.
Other than that, it's hard to remember what's been going on. Ange passed her CPA exam, which is just fantastic. Jeremy's sort of walking - pushing boxes around or holding our hands etc. And all of us have started to think about and prepare for the move back to Canberra, which is now only about a month away.
On Tuesday night, Fuggles the wonderfish/axolotl died. He'd been sick for a couple of weeks, and despite lots of effort we weren't able to help him.
He was a great friend and a big part of the Hughes Zoo. We'll miss him.
Due to being inundated with presents, and parents working at annoying times, we decided to give Jeremy a whole week to celebrate his birthday. That way, we got to spend birthday time with him, and he got to appreciate his presents.
We started on the week on the 6th, so that Ange could spend a birthday day with him. They went for a huge hour and a half bike ride along the Yarra, and J even managed to have a nap in the bike seat.The 7th was the regular Dad and J day, and they managed to fit in a trip to the dragon slide park for a birthday lunch. Friday was nanny day, and as usual they both had lots of fun, especially with the new toys.
By the end of the long weekend we were through all the presents, and now J is surrounded by them. He loves them all and says a big 'thank you' to everyone.
Photos for the whole week can be found here.
PS, we've made some small changes to how the photo albums work. If you have any problems let us know. Part of the change means that if you'd like a less flashy way to look at the photos, you can now find them all here.
Well a few weeks have gone by, and of course they've been packed with drama and activity. Jeremy's growing up more and more - we've lost count of his teeth (though there's at least a couple of molars now) and he's outgrown most of his size 1 clothes. We adjusted his car seat to its largest setting... lets just hope he slows down a little!
There's lots of standing going on - J can balance now with only one hand resting on something for suppport. One of his latest tricks is to crawl over to us and climb up our legs when he wants a cuddle. Talking of climbing, the other day he managed to crawl up 1 and a half storeys of our stairs, with virtually no help. All the extra standing and climbing has meant we've had to do some furniture rearranging, like ocky-strapping the speakers to the TV cabinet.
Last weekend we bought a couple of push bikes and of course a baby seat for one of them. J loves going for rides, and we're really enjoying being able to explore a bit futher in the small gaps between his daytime naps. Some picture of the limo-bike and riders will follow, once we can find the camera!
Because Ange was studying last weekend, we decided to put off Mothers' Day for a week. So, today we headed to Fitzroy Gardens for a bit of a picnic and a play on the very cool playground equipment.
Now that Ange is back, we actually remember to take the camera with us, which of course means more photos.
Although you can't tell from the photos, Ange actually had a bit of a break while Ben and J had lots of turns on the giant concrete dragon slippery dip. For a laugh, check out the crazy little-un on the swing next to Ange and J.
Last week I took the week off work to look after J while Ange studied for her CPA exam. Somehow, miraculously, all three of us managed to survive. Being back at work this week has almost been like a holiday, except they actually expected me to get things done.
J had a very productive week while I was home. He's added a few words to his vocabulary, including Mum and Duck. He also decided that the best place to practice standing up was in the bath. Luckily he's quite good at letting himself down gently. Before long he'd moved on to using his toy box and anything else that seemed about the right height.
Crawling is coming along at a rapid pace, as are (even more!) teeth. I think we're up to number 11 or 12 now.
We made a few trips to the park in between chores, and I snuck in a photo or two on one of our expeditions. You can see them here.
After much (much!) drama, we finally have childcare arranged so that Ange can start back at work next week. Jeremy and Ange spent today with the lovely lady, and J seems to have taken to her really well.
The last week has been a busy one. Jeremy's doing all sorts of exciting things, like pulling himself up on furniture and even getting out a word or two (currently Cat, Dad, and Hat). He loves waving to people, animals, vaccuum cleaners and other inanimate objects, and has also decided that getting filthy is heaps of fun, whether it be at the park, in the garden or at the dining table.
J has managed to grow his first back tooth - number 9 over all. 10, 11 and 12 are following close behind.On ANZAC day we took the morning off and went for a nice picnic. As you can see from the photos J thought my camera bag was just as tasty as his lunch.
We've also (finally) made up our minds to go back to Canberra after the Census work finishes up. Melbourne is beautiful, and we love it, but Canberra is where we need to be, for a little while at least.
Last weekend we went to Altona beach, and liked it so much we
thought we'd go back for a picnic lunch this weekend. After lunch and
a play in the park we went for a wander along the pier.
In the afternoon, rather than the usual trip to the park, we decided
to let J (and Arnie) have a bit of a play in the front garden. Arnie
had a ball - it's the first time we've let him out since he ran away
for 3 days in January. J seemed pretty happy too, and managed to
make himself filthy. On top of that, he decided to crawl up and down
the step into the house, another first.
As usual, I may have taken a photo
or two.
PS, forgive us if the colors on the website are a bit crazy at the moment, we're mucking around with a few things.
Today was another special development day for J - he worked
out how to open the kitchen cupboards. He's had the bottom draw
sorted out for a while (and even uses it to keep some of his toys
in) but until now the cupboards have alluded him.
Apparently it's usually the tuppaware cupboard that's popular,
but our boy decided it would be much more fun to play with
the potatos, garlic and onions. He had a ball, and was quite
upset when Ange cleaned it all up.
To see some of the action, here's some photos.
To start off Easter Sunday, we went to an Easter Egg hunt
at the Collingwood Children's Farm. We didn't do much
hunting, but Jeremey had a ball meeting some cows,
chickens, ducks, horses and goats. We took 1 or 2
photos
while we were at it.
Before the family afternoon rest, we decided it might
be time to open some presents. J developed a strong
attachment to the present he was meant to give to
his Dad. As you can see from the
photos
he hardly let go of it the entire time.
We had a few places at Chelsea Beach lined up to look at today, so
we decided to make a day of it.
We weren't particularly sold on the houses, but the
beach was incredible. We stopped at the local shops for
J's lunch and some coffee, and got into trouble for
eating our own sandwiches. Oh well, we're parents now :)
We also took a couple of photos.
Our lease runs out soons, so we've been keeping ourselves busy looking for somewhere new to live. Melbourne's full of interesting places, so it's a big decision. We've been looking at a few suburbs - Collingwood, Altona, Chelsea... but so far nothing's really grabbed us. The good thing is we're getting to see a lot of Melbourne that we wouldn't usually.
