Yet again, as the year approaches its inevitable conclusion it is
painfully apparent to all and sundry that we have completely failed to find
time to update the family webpage throughout the year. Therefore as has
become our custom we'll cover all bases at Christmas time with this
collection of photos of our family throughout the year.
For a larger version of a photo simply click on the thumbnail.
As an added bonus we also have two summaries of the year,
placed online to save paper and printer toner. The first was
written by Laura with the other
being Kylie's Christmas
letter.
7 January 2007: With New Year out of the way the year got going
quickly with Ilias' baptism. This was squeezed in at the end of the holiday
period before various extended family spread out across the country.
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16 January 2007: Right from the outset Matthew has been very
protective of and helpful to Ilias - so much so that at times there seems
little need for Ilias to learn to do anything for himself.
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January/March 2007: When he's in the mood Matthew quite enjoys craft
time. Extending the attention span to a tad longer than the first 30
seconds is however sometimes a problem - especially when there's a house to
construct with his blocks.
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January/February 2007: Matthew's helpful streak isn't limited to
Ilias though. He likes helping with the washing, vacuuming and cooking with
mummy. He is also always very concerned on Sunday nights that the correct
bins are taken out for collection on Monday morning.
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22 February 2007: Laura celebrated her 6th birthday with a family
gathering at home. She enjoyed it immensely and then immediately started
planning her 7th birthday.
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4 March 2007: Meanwhile Ilias started his brief association with the
jolly jumper. He mastered it quickly and started becoming rather apt at
"walking" all over the place. This combined with his healthy but rather
rapid weight and height gain meant he graduated from the jolly jumper after
a few months. |
11 March 2007: One of the joys of being in Laura's year 1 class was
that the children took turns at having "Moppit" the bear stay overnight. In
term 1 Laura scored Moppit on the weekend that Jonathan was helping with
bumpin for Northern Light Theatre Company's production of "Singin' in the
rain". Laura and Moppit went along to bumpin for a while and managed to
convince Matt Curtis to let Moppit loose on the FOH desk for a while.
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30 March 2007: Sports' Day was a highlight for Laura in term 1 where
she participated in a number of games. If you look closely at the second
shot you'll notice that Laura has mastered the levitating egg and spoon race
- a skill that usually takes years to pick up.
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1 April 2007: A few pictures of our three wonderful children
miraculously captured while looking at the camera and not being distracted
by any of the hundreds of things visible only to children under 8.
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April 2007: Ilias showing the first signs of being interested in doing
something other than lying on his back and tummy for the rest of his life.
Truth to tell, he was never very happy about being on his tummy - learning
to push himself up was probably his way of avoiding tummy time. At about
the same time Ilias demonstrated his enthusiasm for dismantling things.
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1 May 2007: Matthew's 4th birthday was something eagerly anticipated
by him since before Christmas 2006. Overnight his favourite number became 4
and whenever anything to do with numbers came up the answer was suddenly
always 4. It was at Matthew's party at home that Ilias showed an attraction
to money and cards which we hadn't anticipated.
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1 May 2007: Ilias ready to say grace before having a bottle in his rocker.
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May 2007: Matthew's drawing ability has improved significantly during
the course of this year. Here he drew Ilias in the jolly jumper. For the
entire time that Ilias used the jolly jumper Matthew insisted that it was
the jelly jumper and nothing we said could convince him otherwise.
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5 June 2007: Like his brother Matthew, Ilias has shown an interest in
percussion. What is it with boys, sticks and the hitting of defenceless
objects?
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2007: Laura just loves playing with her little brother and does so
very nicely most of the time. Ilias really seems to admire his two
older siblings, except of course when they overlook his much smaller
relative size and accidently bowl him over.
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26 June 2007: A cute picture of Ilias captured in the brief time he
was small enough to fit in this tub. Ilias is a big boy for his age -
something which becomes apparent when you see him against other children of
a similar age.
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5 July 2007: Ilias really loved this car until the rear wheel was
broken by his brother (don't ask - you don't want to know). He also has a
very good memory: when the car reappeared nearly 6 months later after
Jonathan finally had time to fix it he was immediately drawn towards it and
knew exactly what to do with it.
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12 July 2007: Eventually Ilias became tolerant of drinking his milk
by himself. This was no mean feat - for most of the year he couldn't bear
Kylie leaving his sight at any time, let along meal times.
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14 July 2007: A visit to the Port Dock Railway Museum on a "Thomas
the Tank Engine" theme day remains a fondly remembered occasion for Laura
and Matthew. Even Ilias joined in the fun. The ride on Thomas will not be
forgotten in a hurry.
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28 July 2007: Ilias started swimming lessons with Mummy. For the
first two weeks he was rather subdued as he got used to the new surrounds,
but by the third week he was extremely enthusiastic. So enthusiastic that
he became very upset at the times he had to sit on the sidelines while Laura
and Matthew had their lessons.
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August 2007: Both Laura and Matthew have taken to the construction of
elaborate setups with their wooden train set, blocks, cars and whatever else
takes their fancy at the time. The constructions are very intricate and we
often get detailed tours of the houses, particularly from Matthew.
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28 August 2007: For book week Laura dressed up as a princess and loved
every minute of it. The inspiration undoubtedly came from the novels she
has read over the course of the year. Laura's read a huge number of novels
("chapter books" as she calls them) during the year, including 50 over the
course of the MS Readathon. If Laura ever asks you to sponsor her on a
per-book basis, think long and hard about making a fixed donation instead.
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2 September 2007: As time moves on so does Ilias' abilities. Not
long after he started his bunny-hop crawl he started walking while holding
onto any conveniently located support. He is always so proud of himself
when he's standing up.
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8 October 2007: Building cubby houses is one of Laura and Matthew's
favourite activities in the back yard and sometimes the resulting
construction is large enough for them all to fit. On this particular
occasion they utilised the trampoline so there was plenty of room for
everyone.
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15 October 2007: With his new-found locomotion Ilias quickly learnt
that he could get things himself without having to communicate his desires
to others (who usually hadn't the faintest idea of what he wanted).
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19 October 2007: After a countdown lasting many months, Matthew's
first day of kindy pre-entry finally arrived. He loves going to kindy and
can't wait to start going 4 days a week in term 1 2008. The excitement
level was very high on this morning as is evident by the pose in the second
photo (and no, we don't know what they're doing either).
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29 October 2007: Matthew and Ilias playing twister, albeit with a
rather flexible definition of the rules.
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10 November 2007: Ilias likes books, he cares for them - he really
does. Trust us.
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10 November 2007: By Ilias' first birthday, his interest in money
(first noted at Matthew's birthday) had become well and truly entrenched -
right down to preferring a $50 note over a $10. Oh yes, he dealt with his
birthday cake in a way only a one year old can.
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16 November 2007: "Heroes' night" at school gave Laura the opportunity
to show daddy around her school. Among other things she displayed some work
she'd done in her storywriting book (which she had specially selected) and
demonstrated her climbing abilities on the big kids' playground.
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8 December 2007: Laura and Matthew were both involved in their
music school's concert and did very well. After the concert they cooled off
in a wading pool at a nearby park. As is evident by their attire in the
pool, this particular exercise was not part of the initial plan for the day.
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