Friday morning I had the pleasure of going whale watching on the Gold Coast broad water with a group of work colleagues.

The whale watching tour was run by Tallship, we needed to arrive at the terminal for boarding at around 8:00AM and we departed from Marina Mirage at approximately 8:30AM.

After we set off, it only took a few minutes driving north through the canals before our whale watching host was telling us about different birds that were resting nearby and interesting facts about each one, which I thought was great. Soon thereafter we turned right at Wave Break Island and started towards the Gold Coast seaway. On the southern side of the seaway you have Gold Coast Spit and on the northern side of the seaway you have the southern tip of South Stradebroke Island. It was a little rough as we moved through the rock walls of the Gold Coast seaway but it only lasted for a few minutes and then it was smooth sailing.

We continued cruising out into the open water for five to 10 minutes and before we knew it, whales! I’d assumed that during the migration period that the whales pack up shop and start making their journey north, but it isn’t quite that straight forward. They leave in stages based around their age, we were seeing the middle group which were around 12 metres in length. In the next month as the whale watching season comes to an end, the largest of the whales will make their way north past the Gold Coast and are in the 16-18 metre territory.

There are rules and regulations governing how the sightseeing tour operators behave around the whales, such as only being able to go within 100 metres of them so they don’t feel pressured/crowded. It turns out that whales are a curious creature and once the boats come to a stop – if the whales happen to swim right up next to the boat – that is not a problem. In fact, the host was telling us that last week people missed their flights home because the whales were swimming around their boat for 2.5 hours straight and they couldn’t start their motors!

The whale watching tour went for around three hours and in that time, we saw countless pods of whales. Most of the pods were in groups of two or three but the host said from time to time, they see super pods which have over 10 whales in a single group which would be an incredible sight to behold.

Unfortunately we didn’t get to see any whales breaching (ie, diving out of the water and crashing back down) but we did get lucky enough to have a whale swim right up beside the boat, roll over onto his back so we could see his underside as he gracefully glided past the boat and disappeared back into the deep water again.

It was an amazing experience to see the whales in person up close and personal. If you’ve got a morning free over the next month, I would highly recommend you take the time to get out and see them, it’ll be an experience to remember.

Hugo turned a whopping four years old last Tuesday and he has had a great week of celebrations.

His birthday started off in the usual fashion, we opened presents in the lounge room first thing. It wasn’t open season though, we had to get Evie up first so she could ‘assist’ with the present ceremony. We sat around on the lounge room rug while Hugo worked his way through a little pile of presents, some big and some small. Among the presents in the morning was a see-saw, Lego fire truck, double loop Hot Wheels track that didn’t need batteries including two new cars, Lego stationary holder, Wii steering wheel, The Gruffalo DVD, a wooden tea set and some gardening tools.

Sterle, Lorraine and Jean popped over in the afternoon and Hugo was spoiled again with some wonderful presents, a particular favourite is an amazing electric keyboard just like Grand Dad Sterle has. Since it was Hugo’s birthday, he chose McDonald’s for dinner – not our collective favourite but then again, it wasn’t our birthday – which was followed by birthday cake!

Later in the week, Hugo celebrated his birthday again when he attended Kindy. Hugo was pretty chuffed about the whole celebrating his birthday twice and there was more sweet treats consumed.

The major shindig was on Sunday morning, where we had George, Jude, Sterle, Lorraine, Jean, Nigel, Trudy, Noah, Anita, Emily, Will, Oliver, Mila, Lucy and Michael arrive for the festivities.

Hugo had decided that this year we should have a robot theme with a mix of space stuff. The hanging items went by many names but Hugo decided that he would call them planets, I’m okay with that. This was accompanied by a selection of his favourite foods like kiwi crisps, M&M’s, Cheezels and much more. Claire did an amazing job of organising, food and decorating as usual with Happy Birthday Hugo on the wall and groovy robot party hats; Evie is still wearing hers around the house three days later!

There were so many fantastic presents from family that I don’t know where to begin and the list is far too long to list out, so I’ll just say a massive thank you on Hugo’s behalf. Hugo is a loving little man and gets very excited about our extended family get together’s. He loves seeing all of his grandparents, uncles, aunties and cousins, especially since that means he gets to play with everyone.

I can’t believe next year he’ll be a five year old, look out world!

I can hardly believe it but our little baby girl has turned 2 years old.

It seems like only yesterday that Claire & I were off to the hospital for Evie’s birth. I still remember my total excitement, shock and awe when a little girl arrived as I was certain Hugo was going to have a little brother.

The day began as usual and we opened presents first thing. It was great this year as Evie understood the notion of presents and had a great time opening them up, of course Hugo provided ample assistance throughout the endeavor.

Evie received some absolutely gorgeous presents from everyone for her birthday, very spoiled indeed. She loves to play dress up and is forever wearing beads, walking around the house with a collection of handbags and wearing all manner of strange hats. Claire and I thought that a ballerinas tutu would be an absolute mash hit but it turns out Hugo was far more interested in it than Evie was. The pièce de résistance however was a toddler sized 3 wheel baby stroller, ohh how she adores that present. Evie straps her different dolls into the pram and goes barreling around the house, often chasing Hugo or being pursued by him while he pushes a shopping trolley or a walker – pretty hilarious.

A fortnight ago we had a little party to celebrate Evie’s second birthday. Last year we had a ladybug themed party, which was incredibly cute and this year Claire decided to pursue red apple cupcakes & delicious biscuits. In case you were wondering, they tasted as devilish & evil as they look – sugar overload! The kids consumed more sugar than they should have, had a great time playing with one another and managed to stay out of mischief as well!

Thanks to everyone that was able to attend Evie’s 2nd birthday party and for the email’s, SMS & instant messages from those that couldn’t make it as well.

Next up terrific three, wow!

Over the last couple of months, Claire and I have been adjusting Evie’s bottles.

According to the formula, her age and weight she was meant to have two 250ml bottles a day however that rarely happened and she seemed more comfortable with around 200ml.

During September we thought it was time that she moved on from formula and onto cows milk so we made the switch. Of course that didn’t go down all that well, so we reverted to formula and started weening her off it by reducing the amount of formula per bottle from four scoops to three and then to two.

While all this was going on she was quite inconsistent with her bottles as well, sometimes she was drink all 200ml and want more and the next time she would protest after 50ml. As we got down to two scoops of formula in 200ml of milk, we thought it made sense to reduce the volume down to 100ml as well.

Not that long after we were down to a single scoop of formula, started introducing cows milk and Evie was happy as a lark. Next we stopped adding the scoop of formula all together and Evie didn’t seem to mind to much but another month or so later and she decided that she’d had enough of the bottle all together.

Claire and I miss giving Evie her bottle but they can’t stay little forever. Now we give her a sipper cup with milk in it and she is happy to drink smaller amounts of that periodically throughout the day and in the evening after she has had a bath.

Now it won’t be long before she is out of the cot and into a big girl bed!

Returning home from work on Tuesday evening and Hugo meets me in the garage like normal. However instead of “Hi Dad!” followed by something very interesting that he has been busting to tell me about, he raised his index finger to his mouth and said “Shhh, the dinosaur is sleeping!”.

At the time I had no idea what he was talking about until I walked inside and discovered his kids sized dinosaur costume sleeping on the tiles with a blanket – it makes perfect sense really, dinosaurs get tired too you know!