Lattice.

A poster for your office :)

:)

:)

What''s important.

Have wheels will travel, this is an older shot of TLOML and Caitlin at East Coast Park, no matter how tired she is she always takes the girls out either to the park or even just a walk downstairs EVERYDAY. I reckon my 3 girls are lucky as hell to have a mother like this, and i am lucky to have a wife and best friend like her as well.

This is my daughter. She is a child that has huge personality. When she was born we were worried that having a pair of well not very quiet parents she might just become quiet and shy but on no she holds her own. mightly.

Below is my little Bella, she is already into books like her parents ok so currently she just wants to eat them but hey thats a start. Her biggest obsession is not milk, or chewing stuff. Its pepper anytime she hears peppers tiny little paws she will get excited, she even has her own cry for the dog and i reckon like Caitlin her first word will be peppa. The other day both girls were in their beds about to sleep and i could hear them both singing, is there any greater sound?

These are my pals, some of them anyway. I have been blessed with having some great friends who are always there for me and my family. They make me angry, annoyed, happy, sad, excited and most of all laugh. Here we are squeezing into the car and below we are trying to squeeze into a photo booth at the airport. We share each others triumphs and failures, we encourage each other on and help each other along the bumpy road that is life.

If your wondering is that all? NO there is more. We have two great families that i am going toblog about real soon. And we have Pepper, she deserves a post all on her own.

So work may not be the best, money may always be tight but if you think i am poor? look above at my family and friends and think again.

LOVEFEST - Twenty Ten!

Its Love Fest 2010! Yes thats right the annual love festival here on my blog. It started in 2007 (http://doomedtroll.blogspot.com/2007/11/lovefest07.html to read more)
and has been an annual affair ever since. This year I hope lovefest will be the biggest ever!

The original premise of LoveFest is to say to someone you don't normally tell "I love you". I think it has evolved to being overtly nice to someone you may not even know but also share lovefest with family and friends! Remember love is all around us! ;)

Updates

Once again, I have edited my blog. This time it was much easier as blogger has been updated and i used a generic background. I find this one rather pleasing. Let me know you my single dear reader what you think

Enigma - Return to innocence

I always liked this song. i know most people think its crap but I always liked it and until now i never sat down and read the lyrics.
Read it.

Return To Innocence"

That's not the beginning of the end
That's the return to yourself
The return to innocence
Love - Devotion
Feeling - Emotion
Love - Devotion
Feeling - Emotion
Don't be afraid to be weak
Don't be too proud to be strong
Just look into your heart my friend
That will be the return to yourself
The return to innocence
If you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself don't hide
Just believe in destiny
Don't care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don't give up and use the chance
To return to innocence
That's not the beginning of the end
That's the return to yourself
The return to innocence
Don't care what people say
Follow just your own way Follow just your own way
Don't give up, don't give up
To return, to return to innocence.
If you want then laugh
If you must then cry
Be yourself don't hide
Just believe in destiny.

10yrs on.

Its just a thought, how different things would be if you were still here. Its been 10yrs. I remember the call that Sunday morning to say you had gone. I remember claiming you as my family and giving you the send off you deserve. I remember our last conversation, I was at the botanical gardens, i rememeber the exact spot i stood. I remember your laugh and the way you gave all you had to us. I remember long drives in your car, plane trips and hotel stays. I remember monday mornings when you would make breakfast for us. I remember our fights. I remember your gin and tonics and you standing by me when i lost my father. You got there before the ambulance did. I missed you at my wedding and the birth of my children, i miss you at easter and christmas. I remember your search for that perfect cup of coffee, i remember everything. 10yrs on, it hurts just as bad as that sunday you left.

BY Caitlin

The Nanny by Caitlin

5 yrs.

Its been 5 yrs since i started blogging. Well 5 years and 2 days since my first post actually and so much has happened 2 whole lives popped up suddenly and in addition to pepper and Tloml they have made my life more then happy.
As i write this, there is a worlds greatest dad card made by my daughter for fathers, its addressed to Mr. Simon.
5 yrs so much has happened so much joy and pain, success and failure it what seems equal measure. There is so much to do and so little time to do it in, i wrote so much more before i took so many photographs and reading the comments the other day from my Bil there was a huge lump in my throat and an ache in my heart. such is life. Where will the next 5 years take me? who knows but i reckon you can read about it here.

To my 2 or 3 semi loyal readers I thank you.

Its Green and It Hops!

Coming home from dinner and I found this fella sitting on the wall outside my house. Had an appointment with me to get his portait done. It seems he felt grasshoppers were under represented on my blog.

CAITLIN TAKES PICTURES.

I am so proud of Caitlin. She took ALL THESE PICTURES! The only editing i did was to resize them. She even planned her shots, she announced she was going to take a picture of the mattress, her feet and even out the window! The only advise i gave was that she remove her finger from the flash, and we have annouced a rule that she can shoot anything she wants. I am well pleased

Pictures By Caitlin

All the photographs on this post are by Caitlin, her first pictures ever.

Bug Out

Gotta Move on

A friend of mine was talking about this guy who got caught for shoplifting, he is probably going to spend some time in jail. He deserves it. That was my first reaction, then he told me what the guy stole. 2 tins of baby milk powder.

Maybe he is a creep, maybe he is a bum maybe he is just some lazy lousy crook who took what he thought was the easy way out. maybe he deserves it.

But i just keep coming back to the s kids.

Maybe he is a good man at heart, worked for 10yrs for the same firm in a low paying job doing what he can to provide for his wife and children, then one day he looses his job maybe the new supervisor didn't like his face or the company went bust, maybe he got sick and could not work so his boss told him to leave. Maybe he has no education because as a child he didn't think it was important or he had to work to support his family. Maybe he couldn't get another job and his child was crying from hunger every night. Maybe he is a simple man who didn't understand that there are avenues for help, there are agency's for hope, Community Development Centers, Churches, Mosques,Temples and Government bodies that could help him get his life back on tract and maybe he didn't what else to do so he walked into a supermarket and took 2 cans of milk for his baby. And yes maybe he deserves what he has got for what he did.

Now imagine that you are that man, lost and scared your anchor to work and a sense of confidence gone, jobless for 6 months not knowing where to turn. your children are hungry, maybe even sick they cry constantly .What would you do.

For what its worth I hope at least the powers that be get milk to the mans kids cause they don't deserve to go hungry no matter what kind of man their father is and no matter what he has done.

The end does not justify the means. I don't condone what he has done but i do understand it. IT frightens me how easily I can understand it.

My friend ended our little chat by saying "just gotta move on" and yes that's what we do. That's what i do. And that is part of the problem isn't it? We give a bit to charity and we feel better, we don't DO anything. We sit and feel sorry for these people and we change the channel or make promises we are never going to keep or we pledge 20$ and after watching a monk or some TCS starlet prance across a high wire and curse them when we find out that the monk is a man after all.

What has changed? nothing, the man goes to jail and maybe just maybe his children wont go hungry because someone somewhere will tell them where and how to get help. Our expectations are that the government will sort out these social problems or that these people are always lazy or always deserving of what life throws at them. When is it our responsibility to step in and help make a positive difference in the life of someone who needs it but doesn't know us.

Maybe like me you will feel sorry for the guy and his kids, maybe you will give $10 in church this weekend instead of $5. I do not know what i do know is that by next week we would have moved on because that's what we do.

Richard Of York Gains Battle In Vain

a rainbow Caitlin and i watched from our window.

Yum

Dessert. After a fine meal of pasta with white sauce made my TLOML.

Firebug-Pyrrhocoris apterus

These are Firebugs, they have slight resemblance to assassin bugs but alas they are nothing as exciting. I didn't do a good job on these, i think i can do better! So get used to seeing these insects cause I reckon they may appear here more often.

You know how it works here, the second pic is a crop of the first

A Day Moth and a Grasshopper