A huge Happy Birthday to Ben today, who is not only celebrating one more candle on the cake, but also that he became a Dad only one week ago!

Baby Ted was born on the 17th of August, tipping the scales at a very healthy 3.75 kg. The whole family is back at home now, and from all reports, they’re adjusting quite well to having one extra member living under the roof.

Happy Birthday Ben! Congratulations to you and ‘Chellsie! And welcome to the world, Ted!

View more photos in the Ted photo gallery on Picasa.

Oh man, there’s been so many birthdays at the moment, and I’ve been terrible in getting a “Happy Birthday” message out to people on time! I’m so sorry to everyone whose birthday I missed; we haven’t had enough time to sit down and give attention to where it’s due, but I’m trying to catch up now!

First on the list is Lou, whose birthday was Friday. She and Steve invited Team BaM and us around on Saturday night for a “birthday BBQ” at her place; little did we know that she had actually planned a bit of a welcome home party for us instead! Boy was I surprised when Ian (and kids) and Mel walked in; then Micah and Sarah, and then Mel and Ben. It was awesome!

Second on the list is young Nick, whose birthday it was on Saturday (followed by his sister Victoria’s on Sunday!). We were very sad to have missed out on Nickfest 2010, and I’ve no idea what the festivities entailed – though I’ll bet it was something awesome. Consequently, I have no photos from the day; so here’s a file photo instead!

Young Amy Durham shares Nick’s birthday as well, so it’s a party on both sides of the world on the 14th of August! We haven’t seen young Amo since our visit to Castle Durham during last year’s visit to Australia! But we’re looking forward to seeing her (and all the Durhams!) again, and you’d better believe there’ll be copious amounts of coffee to consume!

And finally, it was Grandma Harvey’s birthday on Sunday – and ringing the bell at 90 rounds, she’s older than all the others combined! To celebrate, a huge clan of her friends and extended family gathered for lunch at Kedron Wavell Services Club.

The dauphinoise potatos were especially awesome.

As you’ve probably guessed, we joined Kirsty’s posse in Düsseldorf last weekend to celebrate her 30th birthday. Note here, it was Kirsty’s birthday, not Kristy’s birthday. Lots of people seem to get them confused, though I have no idea why. For further visual clarity, I have included here a photo of the two of them – my wife, Kristy is on the left, so by a process of elimination, that makes the other bird on the right, the lady of the hour Kirsty:

Oh my, Düsseldorf was cold! We managed to leave the warm comfort of John’s apartment for a walk around the city on Saturday morning. I can see how it would be quite a nice place to be in summer; however we could barely stand still for more than a few seconds to enjoy the scenery! Instead, we mainly spent our time scurrying from restaurant, to cafe, to bar – basically, anywhere that was heated and indoors!

In the afternoon, we took a train to Köln (“Cologne”), to check out the Christmas markets under the magnificent Cathedral. With dusk settling in, the Christmas lights coming on, and the smell of mulled wine and roasting pork in the air, it was quite the feast for the senses! (Well, not so much for poor old “touch”, as Köln was even more freezing than Düsseldorf!).

Probably the best thing about the Christmas markets was that Kristy was finally reunited with Kartoffelpuffer – deep fried potato pancakes covered in apple sauce. She’s been raving to me about these things ever since I’ve known here, so I was pleased to finally see what all the fuss was about. Just look how happy she is!

I have to admit… they were gooooooood.

We hit up some of John’s recommended evening hang-outs when we got back to Düsseldorf. Well, not all of them – the bouncer wouldn’t let Roland or I in at the first club that we went to (Roland since he was wearing cargo-pants, and me because I wasn’t wearing dress shoes). Still, there were loads of places that were happy to take our money, so we went to them instead.

One thing I really noticed in Germany was how profuse smoking is. Worse still, you’re allowed to smoke inside certain restaurants, so when you come out, everything wreaks of smoke. When you’re not used to it, it’s amazing how annoying it is! Still, it didn’t tarnish our otherwise good night out.

Unfortunately for us, it snowed heavily overnight, and the snow continued for all of Sunday. Going by the beer-bottle index, we got about 6 to 8 inches.

And, as you’ve (possibly) read, this meant that all flights out of Düsseldorf were cancelled, so we were stuck there for one more night. I won’t go into the details about how terrible it is – frankly, it could have been a lot worse (like the people that got stuck on the Eurostar in the channel tunnel for 16 hours) – but suffice to say, we were pleased when our rescheduled flight at 7:30 AM the next morning had taken to the skies.

I think Kirsty enjoyed her 30th celebration, and it was great to be part of “the crew” that helped her celebrate!

A few more photos in the Dusseldorf album.

We are in Düsseldorf celebrating Kirsty’s 30th.

It’s cold. Really, really cold.

One of the presents that Jason and Susan sent me for my birthday was a KeepCup. I’d never heard of these until I unwrapped it, but the concept is fairly simple – a reusable coffee cup, that looks like a disposable cup. Genius!

For some reason though, I kept forgetting to take it with me to work, so for the last two weeks, it has been sitting on the shelf at home, looking at me shamefully. Thank goodness Stacey kept nagging me to send her a photo and a review – I finally packed it yesterday for it’s inaugural coffee run!

I’m pleased to say that the cup performed swimmingly! The girl at Costa clearly wasn’t used to people bringing in their own cups, because when I asked her if I could use it, she defensively asked, “What’s wrong with my cup?”. She was equally unimpressed when I told her that her cups were environmentally unfriendly; but eventually she gave in and used my cup. I kept a careful eye on her to make sure she didn’t spit into my coffee.

Besides the obvious environmental benefits, I also love that they’re a “standard” size according to Australian baristas. This means that the ratio of coffee to milk much closer than what it usually is over here. And, since the cup is smaller than the Brit’s usual “small” cup, the coffee is cheaper, too!

All up, and absolutely excellent present – one I can’t recommend highly enough for the take-out coffee lover in your family. Thanks, Jason and Susan!

(Happy now, Racey?)

No doubt you all know this already, as I’m sure the 25th of October is well highlighted in your calendars, but last Sunday was my birthday. Once I passed 30, I figure that a year here and there doesn’t make much difference, but for those of you that are into the whole “counting” thing that the kids these days seem to like: I’m now 31.

The day was a fairly low-key affair, with a few phone calls from Australia to kick off the morning, followed by a long testing session of one of my presents: Uncharted 2 for the PS3. Kristy also made me a delicious birthday breakfast of lamb rogan josh! Yum!

We had a table booked at The White Horse at Parson’s Green for lunch, where we were joined by way more people than I had expected, given how last-minute we were with organising anything. I had the beer-battered fish and chips, and I might say it was absolutely splendid – some of the best I’ve had in the UK, I think. Time seemed to fly past and before I knew it we’d been there for over three hours, much to the disdain of the waiter who were eager for us to vacate the table.

We were quite exhausted when we got home, if I’m honest. Poor old Kristy was starting to come down with a cold, so instead of making me an amazing birthday dinner feast, she tucked up under a snuggle rug on the couch, whilst I slaved away over a sausage pasta. The things I have to do!

Of course, a special Happy Birthday also to David, whose birthday was the 25th of October a couple of years before mine was. As it turns out, there’s another three people at my work with the same birthday, too – one even in the same year! Pretty amazing for a company of less than 200 people!

A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated Suzie’s birthday at Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium. I had never been to see “the dogs” before, and I must say it was an experience like no other. Actually, I was amazed at how popular it is – the place was packed!

Our party of 14 sat at quite a long table, which wasn’t really great for chatting to each other, but it did give us an excellent view of the whole track.

Before each race, a dude came around to take our bets. I figured that picking the favourite every race would be a decent enough tactic, but also felt it was a little like cheating, so I always went for a different horse dog. Stupidly. We didn’t win once! 14 quid that we’ll never get back again!

Most people seemed a bit meh about their meals, but I quite enjoyed my lamb shank. Still, it seems as though the stadium really only does one thing well – dog racing – and everything else is a bit of an add-on. At the end of the day, there’s only one real winner, and that’s the bookies. Nick would argue differently, coming out with a whopping £1 profit; but I think he was in the minority.

If I find myself back at a Greyhound Stadium sometime in the future, I’ll do my darnedest to bet on the rabbit. That little guy wins every race!

One of Kristy’s birthday presents this year was two tickets to see The Mousetrap – the longest running show in the world, having shown more than 23,000 performances over 57 years!

Unfortunately for Kristy, she didn’t know that she was going until about an hour before, which really limited her choice of people to take along. But, I was quite sporting and upbeat about the whole thing, figuring if a show has been going for 57 years, it has to be good…

And good it was! In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s the first play that I’ve seen which I thoroughly enjoyed! It’s basically a murder mystery, limited to a cast of about 7 people, so its very easy to follow. I even picked who the murderer was, well before they revealed themselves to everyone!

We had absolute prime seating, right in the centre of the first row of the dress circle. Unfortunately though, as with all old, unrenovated theatres, the seats are so small and close together, that I was very uncomfortable for the whole show. My knees were jammed up against the balcony in front of me! Ah, well… such is the curse of being tall.

Still, it hardly detracted from what was otherwise a fantastic night out. Highly recommended! gerrod.com rating: 8/10.

Time – 3:12, Size: 22 MB

Most people wouldn’t have believed that young Nick would ever make it to 30, but on Friday he proved the critics wrong and celebrated in style!

His super-duper uber-organised girlfriend – Suzie – arranged for a gaggle of his friends to stay with him at a beautiful old house (built in the 1500′s!) in Bedfordshire. It was massive!

It was easily the coolest house I’ve ever stayed in! There were lots of crooked hallways, winding stair-cases, rooms with views, and extremely low ceilings – people in the fifteen hundreds must have been very short. It’s a good thing no-one bumped their head too hard, otherwise there could have been some terrible injuries!

Everything required for an awesome weekend was there – great company, and loads of food and drinks. The meal highlight was definitely Saturday night, for which Suzie had organised a massive BBQ of marinated chicken, burgers, sausages, corn, veggies, bread, and salads. Being the only Aussie in the group, I proudly stepped up for the position of of tong-master.

One of Nick’s friends – Ray – had brought along a bunch of sky lanterns, which are basically mini hot-air balloons. The idea is that you write messages on them, light the fuse, then send them off on their merry quest for the heavens. This seemed like a fantastic idea – and it was – however, a few of the balloons didn’t have the greatest of starts, and got caught up in the trees around the house. Depending on who you ask, this was either “unfortunate”, or “it almost burned the house down”. I’m more on the former side, but I’m glad that we managed to escape without incident!

Overall a fantastic weekend away, and also a lovely test for our new car which drove four of us there, and five of us back, effortlessly!

The main reason for our visit to Jamaica was to celebrate Uncle Martyn’s 70th birthday. He’d organised a massive party for over three hundred people, at an old youth-camp site, right on the beach. Uncle Martyn and Jenni gave us an opportunity to get intimately acquainted with the site beforehand, by getting us to help out with the setup. We moved some tables and chairs around, and Jason and Susan offered Jenni some of their event planning advice; but Dani was the real star of the show, weaving palm fronds into a nice roof for the food huts!

It was extremely hot in the sun, so it didn’t take long to work up a sweat. One of the locals cut us some fresh coconuts – turns out coconut water is extremely good for you, as well as being extremely tasty! And fresh coconut jelly is better than eating ice-cream! (Well, better than coconut ice-cream, anyway.)

The party started mid-afternoon, and we rocked up around 4 PM to find the place already filling up. It was a bit strange being the “delegates” for Mom, as heaps of people kept coming up to us and saying things like:

Lady: Are you Kay’s son?
Me: Errr, yes, yes I am.
Lady: Oh! That’s wonderful! I’ve known Kay since she was 3 years old!
Me: Wow, that’s quite a while!
Lady: Ohh, yes. You’ll have to tell her that I said hello!
Me: Err… ok… and you are… ?

By this point though, most of the people had unhelpfully walked away. Later on, I figured out a better tactic – as soon as someone started talking to either Jason or I, we took a photo with us and them to later send to Mom for facial recognition. I’m not sure how well it worked, but I maintain that it was a solid idea. On the upside, it was fantastic to catch up with so much of our extended family – some who we had never even met before!

The party itself was a roaring success. Uncle Martyn had arranged heaps of food, including jerk chicken, jerk pork, tempura prawns, fried conch (tastes kind-of like calamari), and prime rib. It was a vegetarians worst nightmare, so suffice to say we were in flavour country – and it’s a big country!

As the alcohol flowed, the dancing began, and sooner or later just about everyone had a stint on the dancefloor. Young Sam and Dani were rather obviously the best dancers – so much so, they somehow developed a cult following of children – but it was great to see everyone giving it a whirl.

By 11 PM, things seemed to be winding down a bit, and we turned in about half-an-hour later. I’m sure that some of the “hardcore” folks would have been there until the wee hours of the morning, but at that point we were certain that Uncle Martyn would get his birthday wish – that we’d all wake up with a hangover. Yes, really, that’s what he asked for.

Some more photos from the evening in the photo gallery.