Today was a brilliant wildlife day, but a photographic disaster. This morning at one of our local parks there was a herd of dugongs grazing on sea grass around the mouth of a canal, periodically coming up for air. I've never seen so many so close by before and found myself wishing the kids were old enough to appreciate what they were witnessing.

Sadly I only had my little pocket Oly with me, and despite being close by the dugongs were too far for its zoom to handle. When I got home I discovered that my pc no longer wanted to talk to the camera and with no time to fix it I left the camera behind when we headed out to a second park this afternoon.

For the first time there (Wellington Point) we saw dolphins, also incredibly close by! And no camera... Once again, the kids are simply too young to appreciate what they were seeing. Hopefully the local wildlife doesn't disappear before they are old enough to do so.

Our kids are growing up! Mikey turned 3 six weeks ago and in just 2 weeks we'll no longer have a baby in the home. It's hard to believe.

The kids are awesome together, the play and have such a good time. A sibling with a close age gap (2 years) was the best gift we could have given Mikey. Naturally they have their fair share of disagreements, but the good times far outweigh these.

Mikey had his first birthday party this year. The plan was for one in our garden, but the weather interfered and we ended up having it at a local indoor playcentre - the kids loved it. 3 is definitely a great age, the age of reason is being tentatively entered and words like "please" and "thank you" even get offered spontaneously on occasion.

Em is a rather different child from our sensible and cautious Mikey - we've nicknamed her "Kamikaze Baby". She'll nose-dive off anything, any height and if we don't catch her and she bumps she just sits up and giggles like a mad thing. I suspect her toddler years could be slightly more intense than Mikey's were (a thing I wouldn't have believed possible a year ago :) ).

Once again I'm returning to our blog with far too much news to get down - perhaps when my kids reach school age I'll finally have some spare moments to myself again. Not that I'd have it any other way, I love being busy!

Our new home in Thorneside has had its fair share of renovations since we moved in, but we've still got plenty to do. The new bathroom and playroom downstairs are both complete but not fully painted. The backyard is refenced, but we're still pulling glass and concrete out of the flower beds (??!!). This next week we hope to carpet the kids bedrooms, not because we don't find the timber flooring attractive but because it's rather cold on the feet in winter.

Unfortunately my Dad's 3 months with us are up so Brend and I are now project managers, a scary prospect considering our lack of renovation experience!

Life in Thorneside is pretty good. The parks are lovely and there are a couple with beach frontage onto the Bay. We've joined another nice playgroup and are living walking distance to both our church and Mikey and Em's best friends. We now get around the neighbourhood by bicycle with the kids in a bike trailer which we're all loving.

Koala's continue to come and visit our backyard and Aussie bird life is nothing short of spectacular.

Right now I'd better get on with placing masking tape around the playroom in order to continue painting... hopefully next time I blog we'll be a bit closer to completing the downstairs living area!