News from Down Under

We've been here in Australia now for almost a couple of weeks, so there should be something new posted... I couldn't agree with myself more! So below are a few recent photos of some of Steve's family over here, I'll post more when I take more, but for the past week I haven't been able to take any pictures as Steve took the camera with him on the road to Brisbane. Yup Steve & Nicko have been on the road for the past week (well tomorrow a week), they should be back this evening. And tomorrow Steve & I and Rob, with Jolie of course, will be going on the road down to Melbourne.
Its going to be really fun as we are getting a camper van down. They do this thing called "Relocatable Campers" where you get a camper van for free,petrol allowance puss a few days of course, to move the Camper from one city to another. So it gives us enough time to go slow, enjoy the ride and witness along the way!

Trip to Oz

So here they are, a few photos of our trip to Oz. We did a bit of an extended trip and went a bit early so that we could stay with my brother, Steve, in London for a day. The last time he saw Jolie was when she was about 2 weeks old. So we took the ferry & train to london, my younger brother, David, came along to visit Steve & help us carry our stuff. We stayed a night & day there and in the evening went to Heathrow where we caught our first 12 hr flight to Shanghai, where we waited 4 hrs to take the next 10 hr flight to Oz.
It was a long trip, but quite a good one, no dramas to speak of thank God!

Sorry... :-D

Sorry.... it was not my intension to not post for the past 20 days , same old excuse - to busy! Well I do have some news for you all, we arrived safe and sound in Australia on the 26th, 10 am. We had a 26 hr journey, Jolie took it well so that was nice for us. Rob & David (Stevo's brothers) were there to pick us up. And the best part about everything is that we got to surprise Paul & Joy (Steves mum & dad) as they thought we were coming on the 7th of December...
Anyway, I'm going to upload the photos from our trip to the computer soon so I'll post a few as soon as I do that... bare with me!
Catch ya later..

Stevo!!!!

Don't have much time to write much, but I thought it would be fun to post some of my favorite photos of Stevo. These are just a few that came to mind on the spur of the moment, I didn't have very long to sort through them all, but I like these ones!

Please Pray...

Hi All,

Just wanted to put something up quickly, please keep the little girly in your prayers as she is not feeling so well. Thank the Lord her fever broke last night, so she is getting better, but she still has quite a bad cold which makes her all congested and miserable :( so please pray that it heals up quickly and is not one of those long drawn out colds. Thank you so much!!
Have a great day!

Strongbow's Castle

So, I made it back safely from Portugal. I had a great time! .... But this post isn't going to be about Portugal, the next one will be when I get the photos together. I'm posting some photos that I took right before we left.
We found Strongbow's Castle!!! I read about Strongbow when I was a kid, an English knight that married an Irish princess and made Ireland his home. Very romantic to say the least. I always loved the story but never knew that I would find his Castle... one day some one told us they were going to take us out to some ruins and low and behold Strongbow's castle!
I didn't take very many photos of the ruins.. Jolie was to cute!


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Oh how she grows!

Well I am off to Portugal with Jolie on Saturday for a week. We are going to go to a parenting meeting, and poor Steve is going to be left behind in rainy Ireland.
I don't know if I am going to be able to post any photo's before then, so I'll just post a few up dates on Jolie and what she has been up to.

- She has weaned her self or dummies... first sign of independence. When I first got PG I was quite happy with the thought about an independent little child.. but now I'm not quite sure if I like it all that much.

- She cut 2 teeth (about 2 weeks ago). The teething time wasn't to bad, she did have a number of fussy days, but thank god no Fever or anything like that.

- She says "Ma ma ma ma ma" & " Da da da da da"... although I don't think she yet associates it with Steve & I .... soon though.

- She fell of the bed for the first time the other day :( hopefully the last although with her being the Aries that she is I have my doubts... they always seam to have plenty of adventurers and manage to hurt them selves along the way.

- She is not yet crawling but she will very soon! With her determination to to put everything she sees in her mouth I'm sure any day now the crawling position scooting backward (which is what she douse now) will turn into the real thing!

- She has already been to 2 continents (N. America & Europe) and 5 countries (Ireland, Germany, Austria, Canada & U.S. by Saturday 6)!

The making of Jolie

Sadly, I didn't take as many photos of the different stages of when I was PG as I should have :( Oh well, we'll just have to make do. I put together a few that I could find for fun.... to give you a bit of an idea of the 'Making of Jolie'. They go by order... The first, what it starts with, second 2 months PG, 4 months PG, 4 and a half, 7 months, next two about 8 and a half and last two 9 months, a week or so before I popped!

A few from the Emerald Isle

Here are a few recent ones from the past couple of days.. You'll see some of Stevo & Liam (my youngest brother) stacking turf, Lots of work! The Irish use it like wood or coal, and burn it in winter. A true Irish experience!

Some more

Sorry it's taking awhile to get these pictuers up... but here are some more from our time in the U.S.

From Canada

OK, so here is the first batch of photos. These are a few that we took up on our trip to Canada. We loved it there! The country is beautiful (at least the small part of it we saw), the people are genuinely friendly (a refreshing brake from... well other countries :D), we would love to get another opportunity to go there and see more of the country as our trip was, regretfully, short.

On the plane the first thing the stewardess said when she saw Jolie was.... "IT'S A CABBAGE PATCH DOLL!!" I've always thought she looked like one to...




Jolie with Carol, I'm not quite sure how you would say they are related.. but they are some how.



Chillin' with her Great U. Bill.





Below are photos on Fred & Margos farm... beautful place, and beleave it or not they keep lamas on there farm!

About time for another post I think!

What can I say, I know I have been delinquent in updating this blog recently, but just give me a second to explain my self :D ... Last you heard of me we were in L.A., a few of days after that we flew up to Canada for a week to visit Steve's relatives for a week, and of course to show off our cute little pumpkin, who (of course) won hearts with her smiles gurgles and kisses. (Yup she kisses now.. well its more kinda of an open mouth on any random spot on your face with a bunch of slobber... in fact just recently she managed to leave not only slobber on Steve's nose but leave parts of her regurgitated lunch to! The joy's of fatherhood. Your a great dad Stevo, I love you!)
We had a great time in Canada, that parts we saw of it was beautiful and that was just the parries!
We said good bye to Canada only to meet up with Joy, Steve's Mum, whom he hadn't seen in almost 4 years! We spent a wonderful 5 days with Joy & Ange, and all the beautiful people on that side of the world! Wish we could of stayed longer! Part of the time while there I had a fever:( but thank God I got better the day before we had to fly back to Ireland!
So now, yes, we are in Ireland once again, helping out with things over here as the home is very short staffed at the moment. It took a little while to get back on schedule with the Jet lag and all... that part wasn't so fun with Jolie as she is also teething which means she is a lot fussier and wakes up a lot at night (thus keeping Mum & Dad up) but I suppose a set of pearly whites is going to cost something, so in the end its always worth it ( I just have to keep telling myself that when she wakes up 5 times a night demanding on no uncertain terms that she MUST have comfort boob.. oh did i fail to mention that she has a VERY good set of lungs?)
So that is just a thumb nail of what has been happening recently... Sorry about the long silence, I'm just still learning how to juggle things at the moment.
I will also be updating this blog with pictures from the past month in a day or so, to be honest I have been so busy that I haven't even uploaded the picts on my cam for the past month! Shame on me.

Well, thats all for now, it's way past my bed time... and I'm thinking that I would like to loose these bags under my eyes. Bye for now .. I'm off to lala land...

Tell me what you think..

Seeing as this Blog is for all you dear visitors.. what do you think of the new back ground? I can't decide weather I like this one or the previous. What do you think?

Toes Are In!

Well the latest thing Jolie has been doing is devouring her toes at every opportune moment! It's so adorable! Its even a comfort thing for her, if I put her down and she starts to cry the first thing she go's for is her toes!







They start early these days!



This is her 'Snowflake' look, with the naughty gleam in her eyes, lol.

I hope you Dance!

I've been meaning to post the words of this song for some time now, just never got around to it. It's a song by Lee Ann Womack , & the moment I heard the song I loved it! What the song talks about are choices that we all have to make in our lives at one point or another, and the tougher choice usually seams to be the right one.
You tell me what you think.


I Hope You Dance

I hope you never loose your sense of wonder,
Get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed.
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance,
I hope you dance, I hope you dance.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance,
Living might mean taking chances but there worth taking,
Lovin' might be a mistake but its worth making.
Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to selling out reconsider.
Give the heavens above more then just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance,
I hope you dance, I hope you dance.

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the oceans,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance,
.........DANCE! I hope you dance.

Lost in the L.A...

Yes yes, I agree completely with you all, its about time that I put up a new post! So here are the latest. We were looking to get lost in L.A. and this is where we ended up, a beautiful little nature reserve which helped you forget that you were in a big city! Believe it or not it worked!




To be honest I think this is the best picture of Jolie & I yet! What do u think?



Eli displaying his 'Spider-man' skills, or so he told us.



Who said Tarzan is fiction?!!



Here is the little Aries protégé, Josh showing off as usual (is that an Aries thing or is it just me?) he's great fun!

Some good shots

OK,so this is the story. One of the girls on our team, Sharon, met and witnessed to this man who turned out to be a professional photographer. He then offered to come over and take shots of our team. Here are a few of them.







Our beautiful Brazilian, Sharon.



Dylan & Jolie, the third generation on our team. Soooo Cute!









One of all the girls on the team...Hot bunch, hay?



Here are our Gentlemen.



Me & my good friend, Grace (Jolie's Godmother).



One of the whole gang.



Daddy's girl...

Chunky Monkey!

Recently it has been so hot here that we've just had Jolie in her dipper. It's sooo cute cause she is getting all these roll's & a little belly which makes her look like a little Buddah!

Pool Party-Happy Birthday Amber!

To celebrate Amber's 25th (Happy Birthday Amber, how does it feeling being a quarter of a century? Don't worry i'll be there pretty soon..)we had a pool party at a friends house! Below are some of the shots.

Taking Jolie in for a dip, don't be deceived by her grouchy face, she actually LOVES the water!



Beautiful Grace doing what Frenchie's do best.





The girls taking the opportunity to witness to the neighbors..



Steve showing off.. (teehee)



Mexican Tequial! 1 Tequila, 2 Tequila, 3 Tequila, Floor... no I didn't have enough to do that to me.. i'm a responsabul mother now remember?!



Steve having some personal time with the Ladies!

Bathtime!!

Ok, once again I am SO SO sorry for not updating more frequently. But as I explained and will say again, recently we have not had a lot of access to the internet. So to make up for the lack of picts.. here's a bunch more!