Another Aussie in the Family

My Dad has lived in Australia for about 29years when we moved from New Zealand in 1979 but has remained a Kiwi but as he and Mum are about to start travelling more and he needed to apply for a new passport he decided to become an Australian Citizen so we headed off to official citizenship ceremony today at one of our local parks. I don't think the kids really got what it was all about but they cheered with us when Grandad got called up to get his certificate of citizenship. They also have miniture steam trains at the park at the end of every month so after the ceremony we headed over to the trains and then Jason, Lochie, Roslyn, Olivia, Grandad & Ellen went on a ride on the trains. Mum, Zach, Greg and I watched from the sidelines. Lochie thought the ride was great and wants to go back next month for another ride. We then headed back to Mum and Dad's for an Aussie lunch complete with Meat Pies, Pavlova and Lamingtons. Now all we have to do is get Dad to do the Aussie, Aussie, Aussie chant - yes well that may take some time!

Happy Boy!

Jason decided to take Lochie to visit his Mum last weekend (she lives at Laidley which is about 1.5hrs west of here) to give me a break from both boys and to have time with just Zach and him with Lochie. They had a great day as you can see from these photos and had a lovely time pushing Nanny's manual push mower - he's so strong - I can hardly push the thing, and playing with Nanny's dog Sophie.

Timeout at the Beachfront

Last weekend we finally had some sunshine after the lovely rain that we've had and so we headed off to the Sandgate Beachfront which is about 10mins from our place. The boys had a great time watching the Kite Surfers and Lochie had fun on the playground and mucking around with his Dad. He is definitely a Daddy's boy when Daddy is home on the weekends.

Four Cousins sitting in a row

Our Playroom has been a big success and whenever my sister Roslyn and her two girls come over the room is well used. I tried to clean it up a number of times but I've let my inclination to do this every few days go as of course it was just as messy the next day.
Ellen just loves Zach and you can see this in the second photo. She loves giving him kisses and cuddles and I think Zach would have to be the most squeezed baby some days. He loves the attention of course and rewards her with many smiles.

Cheeky Monkey

Mr Zachary is now 6.5mths and so I picked a fairly recent photo for you to see what a lovely, sweet, and cheeky little boy he is becoming. He is now 9kg and 76cm long (a friends baby was 9kg at 12mths) - we grow them big in the Team Eigel household! He's now pretty much sitting up by himself except for a few occasions when he slides to the side, and we've just started on solids too. So far he prefers vegetables over fruit but I'm sure that will change. We've also had a few issues with him getting his legs caught in the bars on the cot since he began to roll over at 4mths so although they advise against, so both he and I could get more sleep instead of him waking because his legs or arms were caught Mum made me some cot bumpers and here he is at the end of the cot peeping around the only bit we didn't block off.

Thomas the Tank Engine in Person

Well today Jason had the day off and I read in the paper the other day that the Queensland Railway Museum at Ipswich had a Thomas the Tank Engine Exhibition on so off we went to see what it was all about. Jason's sister Tiffany and her two children Luca & Finn also joined us. The museum is huge and we saw about one tenth of it as our kids were really just interested in the Thomas things and besides we found airconditioned areas which we stayed close to as it was so hot out there today. Lochie wasn't very keen about the museum at the start and even though Nanna had asked Lochie to get a photo with Thomas the Tank Engine for her he refused to even walk near the engine at the beginning of the day. As you can see from the photos Lochie did get a photo with Thomas by the end of the day and even through a tantrum as he didn't want to leave - so typical of a 2yr old! He had a great day playing with the trains, and also with his cousins, and of course Zach was all smiles so the day was definitely worth it.

Happy Birthday Nanna!

On Saturday night we had a family get together to wish my Mum (Nanna) a Happy Birthday. Her Birthday is actually this coming Wednesday but my brother was heading up north to Townsville to go back to work the next day so we decided to celebrate a bit early so we ordered in some chinese food (well Lochie had a Jam sandwich as that's pretty much what he likes to eat at the moment besides chips), had the ritual singing of Happy Birthday, and then as you can see from the second photo we were real party animals - not! Can you believe that we're actually sitting there watching Dora the Explorer on TV. If you had said that we would be doing this a couple of years ago I wouldn't of believed it but to get 3 very active children to calm down after being very excited at dinner and over the Birthday cake, watching Dora was worth it!

What cuties!

We took this photo about a month ago and I sent it to a few people in the Christmas Cards I sent but then realised that I hasn't put it on this Blog so here it is. It's a thing to be treasured when you get a good photo of both of them at the same time that's for sure.

My New Bike

For Christmas Lochie received a new bike as a combined present from his Nanny, Aunty Rachael, Aunty Tiffany and family. Up until now we haven't had a chance to assemble the bike but today, the first day of 2008 we decided that the time was right. Apart from Lochie trying to 'help' us a number of times and trying to sit on the bike before it was finished - without any handlebars attached - the task was completed and he loves going around the house on it. You can see from the photo that the bike has a parent handle so we can actually steer the bike when he's on it. As he gets more experienced at riding it we can then take the handle off and he can ride it independently. Unfortunately it was raining today so we couldn't go outside to have a real good go on the bike but hopefully tomorrow. Lochie was just happy to sit on the bike and have Jason push him around the house.