At the start of July we spent a week up at Mount Hotham getting in some early season skiing & snowboarding.

One of the most exciting parts of the week was seeing Cooper learn to ski for the very first time. He only turned 3 a few months ago, but he was very excited about hitting the slopes and he really enjoyed his two half-day ski lessons with the "Mighty Mites".

Here's a short video I put together highlighting Cooper's first ski lessons.

I have put some new photos of Lucy, who is now 4 months old, and Cooper, who will be 3 in a couple of months, on flickr. Enjoy.

Our second baby has arrived! This time it's a girl and we've called her Lucy. We're very excited, and you'll be able to find more photos of Lucy here.

A lot has happened since I last posted an entry! Let's see if I can remember it all:

• In October 2007 we relocated back to Australia (Melbourne) after nearly 6 years of living in London. London, the UK, and visits to Europe were a lot of fun, but by then we'd done & seen all we wanted to do & see and, with Cooper getting much more mobile, we wanted to get ourselves a lot more space. The easiest way to do that was to return to Aus.
• After moving back we lived a semi-gypsy life in Australia, staying with relatives (and babysitting a friend's house over Dec/Jan) while looking for a house to buy. I continued to work during that time, staying on with Locayta, who I'd been working for in London, but working remotely. The temporary/gypsy living lasted longer than we probably expected, 5 1/2 months, but it does take time to find a house that you actually want to buy.
• Eventually we did find a house to buy and a bank that would give us a loan, and on March 7 we moved in! We are very happy with the place so far. It is an oldish (~25 years) house that has been partially renovated over time, but there's still plenty of DIY projects to keep us busy. The exciting feature for us is the in-ground pool, which showed its value almost immediately after moving in, when the local temperature was floating around 35C+ for over a week.

Last week I was in Vilnius, Lithuania to attend EuroPython 2007. It was a nice city to visit with friendly locals. The beer & vodka were both tasty. Oh, the conference was good too.

My photos are on flickr.

In March we spent a week skiing/snowboarding/sledding at Val Thorens, in the French Alps.

Here are some photos and some videos from the trip.

I have published photos from our Australia holiday so check them out.

Cooper enjoyed his first Christmas and naturally got spoilt with presents. Big thanks to Bern & Mel & Gemma who hosted a Christmas feast at their place. Delicious as always.

I've decided to start hosting my photos at Flickr, so check out our Xmas Day 2006 Photos.

For the first 3 weeks of December we took Cooper back to Australia to visit our family and friends. He had a great time, especially enjoying the open air, playing in grass and dirt, and swimming at the beach. We all had fun, but were kept busy by a hectic schedule with lots of people to visit and catch up with.

While there I treated myself to a Canon EOS 400D DSLR camera for Christmas and went snap-happy taking loads of photos. In due course I will sort them out and post them for all to see. It is a great camera, I highly recommend it, even if you don't know much about photograpy like me!



Update: Photos here

Cooper is now 6 months old and keeping us very entertained! He has updated his blog and posted some new photos so check them out!