Li'l lake

Moar amnimals!

Zoo photos!

The highly photogenic otters

Sun bear out in the sun

The log was getting a good gnawing

One of Dom's favourite animals - a very friendly wooden hippo!

Holiday fun

Zoo = visited 256 photos = taken Update soon :-)

Going to the zoo, zoo, zoo!

We had a beautiful day at the zoo. Matt has put up some of the photos (we took a lot - the animals were cute and frolicksome as was the Dom). Here are some more pics:

Checking out the Canadian Geese with his dad.

One of the giraffes gives itself a head rub.

The Wild African Dogs were interested in us...

...but left disappointed when they discovered it was only an apple that Dom was chewing on.

Lemurs know how to sunbathe with maximum basking.

Dom enjoys the playground area outside 'The Nest'.

Someone was offended when we made too many 'a dingo stole my baby' jokes.

Dom's favourite today was the Serval. While the servals have tended to nap through most of our previous visits, today this one was doing laps around the cage. Dom was giggling away as he watched the awesome serval on the move. It is a very graceful and beautiful big kitty when it is roaming around.

Despite the surprised expression on the Sun bear's face, it didn't actually sit down on a pine cone, just next to one.

The other Sun bear shows of its manicurificent claws.

The Red Panda was attempting to bust out when we arrived.

'Almost there...'

Then the Red Panda realized we were watching and abandoned its escape plan... for now at least.

Dino-muffins!

 Woo-hoo! My new dinosaur muffin tin worked out. We now have dino-shaped muffins (which more than meet Dominic's approval). I can now say Dominic ate a T-Rex for lunch!

Banana Choc Chip Dino-muffins!

Om nom nom. T-Rex. Delicious.

Fake tilt shift

Is a photo manipulation technique which can produce some very cool looking pictures. Basically it uses blur (and a bit of contrast/colour adjustment) to make pictures look like they're of models, rather than real scenes:


(From a photo by Jenni)

It's something I'm keen to play with some more :-)

A totally nautical day!

For the end-of-year festivities my department had a nautical dress-up theme. Some people came wearing life jackets. Others wore flippers, inflatable water-wings or tubes, goggles or wetsuits. I dressed as a pirate.



We also tried out Dom's $20 pirate outfit from Kmart. It's a size 3 so it's still a bit big for him. It's gonna be pretty sweet when it fits :-)

Prizes given, year taught, time for a break

Just one more day of school, and it's the good kind - the kind with no students :-) Actually that's not entirely true - some days with no students are very, very mind-melting. Whole days of cross-marking and Professional Development, for example, are not really preferable to a good teaching day. Still, 9.30 - 12 is a good, short amount of time to have to be at school for and all I'll be doing is: 1. Dressing up as a pirate 2. Listening to a couple of farewell speeches 3. Having a quick lesson in how to capture DVDs onto the schools video-on-demand system (something I could probably work out for myself anyway, but it won't hurt to be shown how to do it) After about noon today, it's holiday time! Huzzah!

Scrooge vs Grinch vs Grouch

 While I'm probably more at the bouncing around singing jingle bells than the 'bah humbug' end of the attitude towards Christmas spectrum, I do love my anti-Christmas characters. There's nothing more charming than a mean, cynical grump who just can't stand the noise and excitement of all the Merry Christmasing going on around them. Let's face it, we've all had moments in the supermarket or shop when they've played Mariah Carey singing 'All I want for Christmas' one too many times and we're tempted stuff fruitcake into the stereo just for some peace and quiet.

So it's time for a Christmas poll about who is the greatest Christmas-hating character of all time.

The contenders:

Ebenezer 'Even the vegetables don't like him' Scrooge

Oscar 'I hate Christmas' the Grouch

Please comment with your vote!

Birthday vegetables!

 Dominic is two years old today! Where has the time gone?

Ah well, rather than descend into a stream of clucky drivel about how my baby is all grown up, I shall get on with posting some birthday pics.

Dominic, like most sophisicated young gentlemen, likes a vegetable or two. What better way to commemorate the day of his birthday than with celebratory veges?

Just what every wee lad dreams of for his birthday, to be sure - a potato to call their own.

The birthday version of Mr Potatohead. You pull the candles in and out of your potato. Hours of fun (well, minutes anyway).

He was overcome with glee at the presentation of his majestic birthday radish (like a good little fraggle).

Alas, the noble carrot did not survive long into the photo shoot.

If only I'd had the forethought to buy a turnip for the occasion. Maybe next year...

Robo-cupcakes

With Dominic's second birthday coming up, it was time to make some pre-brithday weekend cupcakes. I used the chocolate mud cupcakes recipe out of the Cabury's cookbook and they were delicious. The decorations were mutilated licorce allsorts that were then reassembled to look like Plex the Robot (well, as close as I could get. Modelling out of licorce allsorts were harder than I expected).

Chocolate mudcake, blue frosting and lolly robot goodness.

A lone orange robot surround by yellow Plex robots.

Victory! Dom approves of his sample cupcake.

In fact, they taste so good that he licks his fingers rather than the wiping sticky hands on Mum's jeans and smearing them with blue icing.

'Hmm, I can see more cupcakes on the bench...'

Soon followed by an abrupt end to photo session as I had to flee to save plate of cupcakes. Having a wee one who is tall enough to grab whatever he wants of the bench can be all sorts of trouble.

I should probably find a hiding place for cupcakes to keep them safe from Dom and his parents...

Download a free pdf of The Event!

One of the things I've been doing over the past 12 days is putting together the pdf/print version of The Event. You can get if from lulu.com here:

http://www.lulu.com/product/download/the-event/6069847

The pdf is free and is about 1.5mb. It features awesome writing by Debbie, Jenni, Steph, Chris and me, and awesome photos of Wellington by Jenni, Jeremy Blandford of Wellington Daily Photo, and Jes Fraser, whose flickr photos of Wellington were so cool I had to email her and ask if we could use one as a cover for the print version. The print version is US$8.22 plus postage.

Jeremy and Jes have very kindly allowed us to use their photos gratis, which goes to show that sometimes you can rely on the kindness of strangers!

Dom and the Advent Calendar

Christmas countdown begins today! What better way to prepare than with a Pooh calendar and chocolate.

 

So now that he knows there chocolate behind the pop-out flaps, how long will the rest of the calendar survive?

Why am I having visions of finding a shredded calendar and a Dominic smeared in chocolate lying next to it on the floor?