This will hurt me...

Ein glückliches neues Jahr! Feliz año nuevo! Stastny Novy Rok! Chuc mung nam moi! Xin nian yu kuai! Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu! Barka da sabuwar shekara! Shuvo noboborsho!

Ezra, Jen and Hen. Oozing sincerity. Boat Harbour. April 2013. Theme Thursday . ANZAC Day. INTOXICATE. Sad but true. Beer, flags, patriotism, narrow minded bigots. All the same.

The gang's all here. Table Cape Lighthouse, Table Cape. April 2013. Sunday Stealing: The 5000 Question Meme, The Final Part One 76. Do you prefer Disney or Warner Brothers? It depends on one's mood. For the shorter film, give me WB. For the feature length, probably Disney. 77. What is the first animal you would run to see if you went to the zoo? I do like the very large bears. 78. Would you consider yourself to be romantic? How might you define it? If 'traditional' (i.e. chocolates, wine, roses and trite platitudes) not in the slightest. If you're more practically-oriented (i.e. housework, cooking, child rearing), then definitely! 79. If the earth stopped rotating would we all fly off? Don't be silly. 80. What is the one thing that you love to do so much that you would make sacrifices to be able to do it? I make sacrifices to do the things that I want to do already! For example, 'career'. 81. If you (and everyone) had to lose one righ...

Looking over Coles Bay. Freycinet National Park, Tasmania's East Coast. January 2013. So this photo was taken about one fifth of the way through our walk in the Freycinet National Park. Basically, you climb up through a pass halfway up two mountains, get your breath back, and then head down the (steeper) other side to find yourself on the beach down in secluded Wineglass Bay, which is generally accepted as one of the world's best beaches (photos to come). Dover Beach , Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits - on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begi...

Sexy boys and sexy girls. Opossum Bay Beach, Half Moon Bay. January 2013. Another Sunday Stealing Q and A, The Mixed Bag Meme ! 1. How many songs are in your library? 25,288. Give or take a few. 2. Do you like Christmas music? Not very much. 3. What magazines do you have subscriptions to? I don't. I do regularly read BBC History Magazine and pick up The Economist every now and then. 4. What is your favourite scent? Sandalwood is always nice. 5. Do you give money to charity? Only when I know where it is going. 6. What is your theme song? Gimme Some Lovin' always gets me rocking. 7. What's in your wallet? Money, cards, receipts. Nothing unusual. 8. Do you generally think before you act, or act before you think? It is possible that I think too much before I act. 9. Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days? I am trying very hard to let things slide. 10. Do you have a good body-image? Historically, no. More recently, I'm maki...

The gang's all here! Shag Bay, Geilston Bay. December 2012. Another Tuesday, another Q and A stolen from the resurrected Sunday Stealing! This week, the The Deleted Meme Who is your favourite artist (Any field)? That’s far too big a questions to do any justice to! No, I just can’t do it. Let me limit to painters, and the list includes Caillebotte, J.M.W. Turner, Korovin, Marc, Aivazovsky, Boudin, Monet, Rousseau, Klee, Pollock, Schwitters and Larionov. Off the top of my head. Describe yourself: A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. How do you feel today? Pretty good. Describe the area where you currently live. Smokey. Very very smokey.  If you could go anywhere, where would you go? Somewhere nice and quiet where everything wasn’t on fire. Your favourite form of transportation: I do like a nice boat ride. Or a train. Failing that, my feet serve me well! Your best friend is: Already married. You and your best friends are: I said, married! Wh...

A particularly good win in Bananagrams. Home, Geilston Bay. November 2012. Sunday stealing Who Are you? Part 7 – It is Over! Part 7: Self Image 84. Describe the routine of a normal day for you: Wake up. Check my RSS feeds. Read up on what's happened overnight. Get up. Have a shower. Get dressed. Have breakfast. Feed children. Catch the bus. Walk to work. Work. Walk to bus. Catch bus home. Converse with family I. Cook/ eat dinner. Converse with family II. Wash children. Read stories. Put children to bed. Go to bed. Surf the net. Seduce wife. Sleep. 85. What is your greatest strength as a person? I have a certain firmness of resolve... 86. What is your greatest weakness? I have a certain firmness of resolve... 87. Are you going to run for President in 2016? President of the Board? It's unlikely... 88. Are you generally self-contained? Absolutely. I am an Iland, intire of it selfe ... 89. Are you generally organized or messy? It depends on my mood. I am ca...

Three blokes under a cliff minding their own business. Spring Beach, Orford. Tasmania's East Coast. July 2012. It's a very special Theme Thursday today, but one filled with many DISTRACTIONS. It is young Ezra's birthday today, you see. Yes, my dear little baby boy is FOUR ! FOUR! Where did the time go? That's the problem with time. Life is so full of DISTRACTIONS that you sometimes fail to notice that every second time is ticking away and suddenly it's 2012, you're thirty-five years old and your teeny-weeny baby is FOUR. It doesn't seem that long ago that he was a mere 27 seconds old an in his mother's arms (you can click here and view the original post ). Or the time on his first birthday when he tried to eat the candle (you can see that post here ). Or the time on his second birthday when he nearly took off because of all the balloons he was holding ( click to see that here )? Or even the day of his third birthday, where we demonst...

Ezra, Jen and Henry contemplate their race to the Casino (and back)...

Henry is surfing. Ezra is a crocodile. I am not sure what Jen is doing.

Jennifer explains the kind of advanced interview techniques that she practised during her time with the C.I.A. Henry was staunch in his belief that Elmo needed waterboarding, while Ezra retained faith in the good old fashioned "squeeze his nose until he talks" approached perfected in the 1954 Guatemalan campaign.

Here is a self portrait of the family out on the very same tidal flat featured yesterday afternoon. Can you pick who is who, from left to right?

Sometimes the process of lining kids up for a photograph can be a more interesting photograph of some kids lined up.

The notion of visiting a train yard and riding the rails as a holiday treat might seem odd to those readers blessed with active passenger railways. Alas, here in Tasmania, we've not had any passenger rail lines active since the early 1960s! Thus, Henry and Ezra felt blessed to experinece the brief ride on the Don River Railway just outside of Devonport last week. Indeed, Henry paid a visit to the driver mid ride, and got to experience driving the thing first hand. As a bonus, we all survived! I will admit that I am a fan of rail. Travelling the tracks, the clickety clack, whistles and all that jazz fires me up . Anyone who has ever had the privilege of making love on the night sleeper from Venice to Vienna will know what I'm talking about here. However, we are here to talk Theme Thursday , and the theme is most definitely not “how to prevent severe leg cramping on the overnight sleeper from Venice to Vienna”. No, the theme is SURFACE. Which brings me to today’s photograph. T...

Here is my family, on top of the world Hobart!

Henry takes his role as big brother especially seriously. I am not sure whether this fills me more with dread or pleasure ...

How about this motley crew of chancers? Fair dinkum, trying to take a photo where these three are even vaguely all looking in the right direction, with none of them pulling a silly face or looking off their nut, is a big ask! This is even more difficult, when the camera these days has assumed an almost mystical ability to draw children's hands to it the moment that it appears!

It's hard work getting everybody to stand still long enough to snare a photo. This is the best that I could manage!

What compels them to find the highest point, and then endeavour to stand bolt upright? I don't know the science that might be able to explain it, but I do know a little arithmetic: heavy rain + cranky baby compelled to climb + toddler oblivious to rules = not a lot of fun .

Here s the gang quite a few months back now. Henry didn't look like a roadie for the Greatful Dead and Ezra still had a basketball head. Jen pretty much looks the same, however. I myself have a few extra grey hairs. Pros and Cons of Toddlers Part Six Pro #5: They're EASY TO BEAT . Henry loves competitive games: hide and seek; chess; Connect Four; Brandings; Catch and Kiss; Scrabble; anything really. Him being a toddler means that I have an unsurpassed win ratio, as he isn't very good. Con #4: They're TOO EASY TO BEAT . Winning without a challenge is just not fun. Seriously, this evening I had a good half hour of hide and seek, and Henry hid in the same two places over and over. Compounding this poor strategy was a tendency to giggle the whole time, and then shout "I'm here by the drawers" half a second after I start looking for him. He's just rubbish at it. Where's the glory in that kind of victory?