The garden in bloom

Well, it's been a year since we had the landscaping done, so this is the first year that we've really seen some of the flowers bloom. Here's a shot of the arbor by the pond. Enjoy.

Gwyneth's health news

On Friday Gwyneth went to the nephroplogist and we got the great news that her kidneys have almost completely healed. So starting next week we're ramping her steroids down, with the aim being that she'll be off them completely in a month.

WooHoo :)

The Party in Pictures

The big oh-five

Yep, Gwyneth turned five today. We're all getting ready for her party this afternoon, but her grandparents couldn't wait to give her a present, so this morning she got her first electric Razor scooter... (it'll take a little bit of time until she's ready to ride it, but at least it'll be there for when she is) :)

The new office mascot

Kim and Gwyneth were on their way home from the doctors, when they noticed some baby squirrels running around near the road. Kim being Kim chased one down and decided to bring it home and feed it until it could go off into the wild by itself. Thankfully, when she brought it up to the office, one of my co-workers - Alison - said that she'd always wanted a squirrel as a pet, and asked if she could take it. My reply? "With Pleasure" :)

Splitting out the blog

Well, since I seem to be posting more and more about Gwyneth on this blog (and what proud parent wouldn't?), what I've decided to do is split the blog out. Posts about SEM are now going to appear on the new site - SearchEngineTigers.com - while this site is going to be dedicated to just family matters, things that are cool, and things that annoy me (yes, Mum, Kim, etc I've already compared myself to Victor Meldrew earlier on in this blog). ;)

As for where the name comes from, well if you don't know why the site has Tigers in it, you don't know me that well ;)

Gwyneth Nets Five Goals

Today was the first game of the U05 fall season. At practice Gwyneth hung back, not wanting to really mix as she didn't know the kids or the coach. We were worried that the game was going to go the same way. We needn't have been concerned. She chased down every ball, tackled well, and kept going for goal. Yep, she scored five goals, which was more than the other team scored in total (not that scores are kept at this level). She was so happy with herself after the game, and so were her parents :)

Pic below is about a second before her third goal. Gwyneth is green number 7 (click on the pic for a closer look)

First day of school

So today we dropped Gwyneth off for her first day of kindergarten... The whole school was dis-organised chaos. The idea was that we'd drive up to the front door, where her teacher would be waiting for her, and we'd wave and drive away, and they'd said to us to make sure that on the first day we did exactly the same that we were going to do each day so that she easily fell into her schedule. Well, we pull up and no teacher. So Kim gets out to walk her in, while I spend 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot... It turns out that the teacher wasn't waiting out front because it was raining and that's a special case... so much for starting the routine... Ah well, she's in class now, so we'll find out how it went when we pick her up at 12.15 (yep it's only a 1/2 day).

The Wiggles on tour

Last Wednesday I took off work and went into DC with Gwyneth for a special birthday treat... Naturally we got there way too early, so to kill time I first took her around the International Spy museum, which naturally bored her to tears, but I found it interesting. Then, after we went past the 5 police cars with flashing lights, who were cordoning off the street we were walking on,


we headed over to the Verizon Center or "the phone booth" as it's more commonly known in the area, to see The Wiggles

She had a wonderful time, despite the hour long lines to get in, the overweight yo-yo couple in front of us (you can see the back of one of their heads in the picture above), who apparently didn't quite get the concept of sitting down, and the fact that Gregg Wiggle was out sick, so his part was played by his understudy - Sam. It was the second time that she'd seen the Wiggles, so this time we were prepared, and brought along a dog bone for Wags the Dog, which they collected towards the end of the show (Gwyneth was clutching it the whole time, as she wanted to make sure she was ready to hand it over when they came round for it).