Elke's 2nd Birthday

Elke turned 2 on the 6th November 2011.  We had a party at home the day before and invited all her friends. They had a ball! and luckily it wasn't raining so the carnage was mainly contained to the backyard!  Elke is thriving, talking lots and even in little sentences now.  She's currently 91cm and 13.7kgs... she's tall for a 2 year old, must have the Mowbray genes there :)

RIP Pete - 16/09/11

Top bloke. You'll be missed!

Citizen G

I have become a dual citizen in this year of our lord 2011 :)

Elke inspecting the flowers at the Five Dock Ferragosto Festival 11/08/2011

Elke had Mummy and Daddy running around after her this afternoon, and it was tough as this was the same day we'd both completed the City2Surf 2011 (Daddy's 4th and Mummy's 2nd)

Elke and her bubbles

January - Shellharbour Beach

Popped down to Grandad Frank and Nana Sue's for the weekend - it was a lovely hot one so we went to the beach and Elke loved it this time. On Sunday cousin's Charlotte Mads and Zac were there doing nippers so she got to have a paddle with them too. Got to love Sydney in January!

Christmas 2010 - UK

We had a great trip back to the UK for Christmas, and for Don and Anne's wedding in Tetbury - the Cotswolds. Plenty of snow the first week made it fun. We spent Christmas in Bristol with temperatures not getting above freezing - then back to Watford for some catch ups with friends and even managed a little trip on the Eurostar to Antwerp with Matt and Tash and were shown around by our friends Ivan and Annika - it was a fun holiday!

What's been going on lately

Elke has been keeping us busy, she's now nearly 10 months old and changing a lot - shuffling around on her bum, rather than crawling yet, making lots of different sounds that are getting close to words - mummum and dada and ta are about the limit of the recognisable ones. But I was impressed the other day when I said "Elke clap" and she did - so she understands more than we realised already - so can follow simple commands like that or wave. She still has a tendency to wake in the early morning around 3-4am and chat away to herself - but K assures me she is sleeping better than the rest of the kids in her mothers group.

What else - we've been unsuccessfully, so far, trying to sell our flat in London, we did find an investment place that was going to buy it and they pulled out a week from completion *sigh* So we're giving it six more weeks then looks like we'll have to rent it out again until the market in the UK improves so we can sell the bloody thing!

K and I both did the City2Surf 2010 - where I managed to put in my PB at 70:10 (5 minute K's booya~!) and K managed a respectable 2hrs7mins in her inaugural City2Surf race.

Work wise - I'm three months into my new role in the Engineering Workplace Services team and K's doing 2 days a week at her new investment job - with one from home, meaning Elke only needs to go to childcare 2 days a week.

That's about it for now - I'll leave this post with a Wordle I created from plugging in my Blog url (Wordle.net):

Elke - The First 6 Months

A collage of 0ur little girl over the last six months! She's now sitting up and interacting with everyone and everything. We're still working on the sleeping through the night part - just don't seem to be able to get enough milk in Elke during the day to keep her asleep all night - there's just too much going on that needs her full attention! :)

I've been uploading pics to fb for people to see her development over the months - here's a link to the album Elke Laureen Mowbray - Pics

Well she'll be 6 months in 4 days and K is off back to work, just two days a week, so it's off to childcare Monday-Tuesday's for the little one - lots of people to meet and toys to play with there so we're sure she'll be fine - it's in the city and costing a small fortune so I hope she likes it.

Christmas 2009

Big Sis, Christine, Robbie and the girls came to visit for Christmas with us this year. We had some lovely weather the first week and made a trip to Taronga Zoo and Chris and Rob managed to catch up with some friends. We had a lovely Christmas day down in Shellharbour with the rest of the family then a quiet New Year (as Chris had gone back up to Queensland with her brood by then :))

Elke is now 8 weeks old and is continuing to thrive, lots of smiles and gooing going on lately and she's managed a number of sleep through's from 9pm-6am which has been great! Looking forward to her development over 2010 - Happy New Year!!

Elke Laureen Mowbray!

Born 22.21, 6th November 2009 at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Sydney, weighing 3.89kg (8.6lbs) and 53cm in length. It wasn't an easy start and after an 18 hour labour and with the help of some forceps little Elke came into the world!



K only spent the Friday and Saturday night in the RPA and then we were allowed to bring our little girl home. The first week was busy but great as we got to know our little girl and she got to know us!

Sydney to Gong 2009

K was due the next day but I had to do the Gong ride this year so Andrew had someone to ride with :) and so we could do the whole 90km this year. I managed to borrow a road bike from Phil at work so at least I wouldn't be struggling bouncing up and down on the hills on my suspension like last year.

We started at round 6.20am from St. Peters near the city, we were riding in the Westpac team hence the shirts. Thinking we'll take it easy at the start to pace ourselves we didn't really hold back and rode well.




We did well in the end - thinking we'd do it in around 4 hours we managed 3 hours 19 mins inclusive of forced lights and police stops - pleased with that :) and K didn't even go into labour once.

City 2 Surf 2009 Training has begun

I've managed two training runs over the last week in addition to my normal boot camp routine. The training runs have been in the form of the bay run plus 2Kms. Tracking this in MapmyRun.com Check it:



Although I'm some 3 mins off the pace of last year I have had over a years break from long runs since completing the Sydney Half Marathon in 1hr50 at the end of last May.

Update:
I managed to run in 74 minutes even though I pulled a ligament in my left heal a week before - running on pain killers works though I wouldn't recommend it I've been hobbling around in the morning for months! once it warms up it's not so bad, hope it is well recovered for training for next years run, as I'll be in the first group!!

Boarding in Japan

The last week in February saw us heading to Hakuba, Nagano region, in Japan. We were meeting up with Nige, Si, Jane (16 weeks pregga's at the time), Mart and Rhona. K and I had a quick night in Tokyo then it was off to the mountain via a 5 hour Bus Ride from Tokyo.

It was our first trip to Japan and I can safely say that "We Loved IT!!". The Japanese people and their culture is amazing. People are so considerate of each other it makes the rest of us look like a bunch of... lets face it.. Wankers!

We had a week boarding / Skiing - minus Jane, due to the growing lump in her belly, and plenty of vending machine beers and interesting meals out. Apparently the snow was the worst it's been there for years, but we certainly didn't complain. Compared to Threadbo this place was a dream!

The girls and Si headed off to the Snow Monkey's mid week, while Nige Mart and I battled with the worst weather of the week. Still the following day was magic and "Hukuba cam" attached to Nige's head got the best movies of the trip.


After a fun filled week in Hakuba we all had a few days to explore Tokyo before heading our different ways home. We'll definitely go back.... a little surprise was K was actually 5 weeks pregnant when we were there, which was confirmed on our return. So "Jellybean" as it was then had a very early trip and snowboarding lesson ;)
This had to be the best meal of the trip - Hakuba Sushi night..... uuummmmmm Sushi.... eye poppingly good.

For more pics check out the links below:

Part 1:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=79893&id=524261120&l=4b280c7080
Part 2:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=79899&id=524261120&l=58e4402ff3

"Big Stuff" Sydney to Sunshine and back!

Karen and I have just returned from our christmas trip up in QLD
Budrim on the Sunshine coast to stay with Christine, Robbie and
the girls. It was a great relaxing trip and good to catch up with
friends up there too! Cheers to Ja, Cass, Mick, Clare, Tina and Aron

On the trip up and down we thought we'd see how many 'Big things'
we past en route. As you can see Oz still loves it's "Big Stuff"!

Super Dude

Thanks Kumar,this is gold!

http://www.makemesuper.com/r.php?i=3_8cd34-165221-m-Dude

The Finishing Touches

Vine to hide the fence. It'll all get oiled the same colour once it's a nice weekend again with no threats of rain.

The Finished Deck

Well she needs a good oiling, we've done all the jokes about coming around and giving my big deck a good oiling etc.. but it needs to stop raining for more than 3 days, lucky we built it last weekend is all I can say.

I also need to get an electrician around to wire the deck lights to the other outside light, they're all working though.

Job done, she turned out pretty good I think!

Gordon's Big Deck!

Karen finally won, so I decided to build my own deck over the top of the grass I laid less than a year ago!

Site Preparation: Luckily Ja and Cass were down visiting a couple of weeks ago, and with Ja's expert advice in hand the designs for "Gordon's Big Deck" (said in a Kiwi accent) were drawn up.

Last weekend I prepared the site for the deck.

I managed to save one of the small trees and relocate him to the front of the house.

During this site prep weekend I bought most of the materials I needed and ordered the wood. K and I had a fun trip from bunnings with 27 4.8m long pieces of decking pine bouncing around on the back of bunnings borrowed trailer. Luckily we are only 2 minutes down the road and Paramatta road is normal at 30km an hour ;)

Build Weekend: Day 1

With a slight hiccup of the main structural timber order falling through on Thursday arvo we thought it was going to be off for this weekend. A few quotes later and albeit $100's more the lads from Bankstown Timber were dropping the 190x45mm H3 treated pine at 10am sat. The main frame of the deck was going to be tricky, getting that bad boy level was what it was all about, so I enlisted the help of an 'old' deck hand, Andrew for Day 1 of the build.

The other great thing was that Andrew is a tool junky! and by that I don't mean he hangs about Darlinghurst on a Saturday night.... well he does sometimes ;). He has the drop saw, the jigsaw and the industrial looking hammer drill. So we were set.

After impressing on Andrew the importance of time management, we swiftly got the two 'pole faces' level and anchored to either side with the use of 22 M12 Dyna bolts (gal).. don't ask?!

After lunch the work flew, we even had K in measuring up timber ready for the chop and the frame took shape.





The end of Day 1 and the frame was up and solid as we could make it.

DAY 2: Decking and Lights

Karen was my deck hand on day 2 and once we started, we flew:



The deck lights are LED and only require 0.8w to run each one so I allowed for 6 around the deck and cabled up underneath before we began laying the deck planks, I think I'll get an electrician in to wire the transformer to the house though.

The end of Day 2 and we had an, almost, completed deck. Just the front edge, square on the side and oiling to go!

Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon

Sunday 18th May 2008 - 07:30am Start - 21.1km - Taking in some of Sydney's best views.
I completed it in 1hour 50mins, which I was pretty pleased with seeing as 15km had been my longest run to date.