Lifestyle

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Recently Maya and Connor had a photo session at the excellent Elzee Photography, who specializes in photos of newborns and children. We got a fantastic set of photos back, and it was totally worth it in every respect. We are definitely planning to take them back there again for upcoming milestones!  I have uploaded the photos to my flickr account, available here (web versions) and here (print versions). ...

*very* early, when they were only a hundred or so cells in size. Of course, we have no idea which is Connor or Maya.

On August 3rd at 9:30pm, after a long and arduous journey, our twins Connor (left) and Maya (right) were delivered at the Baptist hospital of Miami. The three weeks since then (and it only seems like this all happened a couple of days ago) have redefined how much sleep you really need to survive, although recently it’s pretty obvious I am ‘broken’ and find myself walking around in circles due to constantly switching between all the tasks I need to get done. Although we’re extremely exhausted, we’re also overjoyed and are so unbelievably happy. The fact that Maya and Connor are our children is slowly starting to sink in - for a while it felt like we were renting them. They are both very, very distinct in their movements, the sounds they make, the way they feed, and right now it’s hard to see how they could be brother and sister. However, Maya definitely has some of Adriana’s traits and Connor… well, his head size reflects mine that is for sure. ...

Adriana and I were out with friends at Markham Park in Broward on Sunday. It’s a pretty cool park that has a model airplane field, mountain bike trails, areas for jet skiing, a shooting range, and a Jamaican guy with a van that had a fully sick subwoofer, a couch, and 420,000 miles on the odometer. I got distracted by a very active jumping spider, which was indifferent to my efforts to try and get it to ‘sit’ still. When you only have a depth of field of several millimetres as I do with my macro lens at its closest focus point, shooting a moving object can be frustrating. Having a speedlight handy gives some extra light so you can increase the f-stop and get a much larger depth of field, so I was happy I brought my whole kit along. ...

The last Australia Day I hosted was back in Australia and it involved beer, cricket, couches in a park and a TV with a looooong extension cord. I’d yet to host one in the United States, so I thought this year would be as good as any. Planning the full menu for a party of around eight people turned out to be a bit of a huge task, but I think it turned out fairly well (even though I was preparing and cooking food for nearly four hours… although I must admit, that time did fly). I’d nearly forgotten how many fantastic dishes there were to choose from, and thanks to the Internets, choosing the right recipe was made so much simpler. ...

Seen at the Hybrid DJ set at Revolution, downtown Ft Lauderdale.

I have created a Flickr collection containing photos from each of our wedding events. These are the full-size versions of the photos, much better for printing than their counterparts floating around on Facebook. Click here to go to the collection.

My parents have arrived back safely in Oz after their trip over here for the wedding (I’ll post another update about that later tonight), but before they left we took them to see Key West. Although we didn’t get to see the ideal sunset at Mallory Square because it was too cloudy, we did get to see some awesomely massive bubbles, and a nice gimmick where the dog would go around collecting tip money. The next night at Bahia Honda state park we watched the sun set in a completely cloudless sky. Here are some photos, the whole set is here. ...

Well, I *was* on a boat. A few days before the wedding we had the opportunity to go on a boat around the bay of Miami with my family, courtesy of friends of Adriana’s parents. It was awesome. The full set (including a few photos from Wet Willie’s beforehand) is here. Here are some sample photos from the ride: ...