Hopefully we’ll be able to sort out an internet connection for the church. With any luck you should be able to watch the wedding here live. (press the little icon in the bottom right corner of the video window to go full screen)

Update: I’ll be testing the set up throughout the week so there might be a few clips of random things to watch before the big day.

We haven’t updated the web site for ages, I know. We’ve still been updating our fickr page, mainly from our iPhones, but I’m planning to Tweet, Audioboo, update Flickr and post here as much as possible while we are away on our 5 week long trip.

We’ll be putting the wedding photos up on Flickr too so stay tuned for them, there will be a lot of activity on our Flickr page over the next 5 weeks or so.

So we leave tonight, just a bit of a last minute drama with letters from priests that we didn’t know we needed.

If we can get wi-fi during the trip at the airports I’ll be tweeting our progress.

Ok, off to finish packing my bag.

The factory had burnt down, for the second time, so they were investigating the questionable reasons behind the fire. The detective asked me if I worked there at the time of the fire. Fortunately I hadn’t as we’d already moved up to Queensland by then.

And that was that, but I was just wondering today and thought I’d Google the story to see if anything might have appeared in the news recently. So I stumbled upon this video. Thought I’d stick it up here for the curious.

We’ve had our friends Robbie and Kylee staying with us for the last three week.

They’ve left now and flown back down to Sydney for some more adventures. It was fun having them stay and the girls really loved having some other people around.

Here’s a little story from the last three weeks.

The girls and I had been out for the afternoon and as we arrived back at the house Robbie told us that Kylee had some strange itchy lumps on her body and was having difficulty talking. They suspected she’d been bitten by something in the garden, but weren’t sure what. It was obvious that she needed to go to the hospital. So Robbie, Kylee and I jumped in the car and headed to the local casualty ward.

To cut a long story short, when we got to the hospital she was having real trouble breathing, they pumped her full of anti-histamines and adrenaline and was released from the hospital about 8 hours later.

She was lucky though, the doctors said if we had been another 40 minutes or so she might have not been able to breath at all.

An “acute allergic reaction to whatever it was that bit her”, they said. Could have been a spider or an ant.

We suspect it was spider though, and I took this photo of a spider that was on the chair that she was sitting on in the garden.

We had pest control out to the house two days later and had the inside and out treated for bugs.

In other news,

• we had a family picture taken yesterday by a proper photographer, so stay tuned for that to appear on the site soon.
• I sold my two old computers and got a brand new super-cool laptop that I now love like a third child.
• My Mum will be here from England for two weeks this weekend, and I’ve got the whole time off from work, happy days.

We had two very busy weeks with visitors, Michelle, Gary Tadgh and Caoilinn came to stay for a week followed by David and Laura the week after. You’ll find all the photos on our flickr page as usual.

It was Val’s birthday last Friday and I surprised her with a weekend away in Byron Bay. We stayed at a place called the Byron Bay Rainforest Resort. We had a great time Check out the flickr pictures of that too. Probably lots more I could tell you here but it’s Friday and and I’m about to leave work and go home to all my girls.  ‘All my girls’  ha ha, who’d have thought.

Couple of other quick things. You may have seen the odd photo pop up on the flickr site at odd times, these are sent directly from my iPhone, if you were wondering. I’ve also been Twittering a lot more resently, so if your thinking of trying Twitter out (I highly recommend you do) you can find me at www.twitter.com/simonpither

Now,  its the weekend, what shall we do?

My amazingly talented Aunty Lynn sent us this beautiful painting for Christmas.

It’s a picture of Ella and me entitled “Paddling With Daddy”

I thought I’d show it off here. It is now proudly hanging on our living room wall. You can see a few more of her paintings here including the full size picture version of Paddling With Daddy.

Thanks again Lynn, it was the best present ever.

Boxing Day at the Mcauleys

We’ve been having a lovely Christmas, mostly taking it easy with our newest family member.

Great to have Mum and Carlton here, as its making everything a lot easier while we get used to being a four member family.

We dropped in at the Mcauleys earlier this afternoon. They got the Nintendo Wii and the game Rockband for Christmas, so we all had a bit of a laugh pretending to be rock stars. It was a lot of fun.

New pictures up on flickr of Mums visit so far.

New Pictures up on Flickr.

We’ve managed to avoid the worst of it, but areas around us have had big floods and roofs ripped from houses. Lots of people not made it into work today due to the flooding.

Amazingly Ella managed to sleep through all the thunder and heavy rain last night, even though it woke Val and I a few times.

In baby related stuff. Val has a huge belly on her now and looks ready to pop. We are both getting nervous and excited, although Val is probably more nervous than excited.

I think Ella is beginning to realise something is up. With mummy’s tummy getting so big and our constant pointing to it and saying “baby” and putting her hands there to feel the kicking. She knows something strange is going on. She will be getting a shock in a couple of weeks.

It’s a shame that Twitter stopped working with SMS messages because it would have been the perfect way to keep you all informed, blow-by-blow when Val goes into labour. But having said that the Twitter updates I send still go to the side bar to the right of this site and I will be sending pictures directly to the site from my phone after the baby pops too.

So I guess I’m saying if you want the baby news hot off the press this is the place to get it. If your interested in signing up with Twitter you can find my profile here.

Also, I have some pictures to get up on Flickr from David and Laura’s visit 2 weeks ago too. I should get round to that in the next day or so.

It was very windy down on the beach, but Ella had a little splash around in the pool of water that was left behind on the beach when the tide went out.

Took a picnic with us and ate at a nearby park to escape the wind. Then we headed back to the Macauley’s for a swim in there pool.