Uncles

Instead of our annual Oz Christmas visit, this year, we decided to ship Ray's two youngest brothers over to Singapore for a visit instead. Since Ray is usually pretty tied up with work during the course of the year, this visit was a great opportunity for some brotherly bonding and for Alicia to get to know her uncles better.

When I first met them, Glen and Dean (aka "the boys" or "the kids") were only 11 and 9 respectively. Now they're 21 and 19, both taller and bigger than Ray, who at 6 ft 2, is no midget himself.

Well, boys will be boys, and given that the McGregor folks are super duper competitive (in all things) and sport jocks, the boys (including my dear hubby) decided to challenge each other in a 100m dash. Obviously, the appeal of that was totally lost on me but I thought it would be a great opportunity to test out my new Nikon D80 and provide a photo finish in case of sibling disputes! (I did say they were competitive :)

The results were not surprising - Glen, who weighs 10 muscly kg more than the other two, won easily but old(er) man Ray still managed to keep up with a not too shabby finish.

The funniest part of this was when Alicia saw all of them running - she decided it was a cool thing to try out as well. This, coming from a "gu niang" girl that loathes walking too much and is always saying "bao bao", was a pleasant surprise.

She even looked like she was giving it 100% as well with sheer concentration on her face and arms pumping vigorously to keep up with her little legs that were working as fast as they could. It was hilarious to watch.

On another note, I loved how my photos are coming out on my new DSLR camera. I've always wanted to be able to take these pro looking shots with a clear subject and a blurry background. As I've learnt in the photography classes I'm taking with Meips and Puiming, this is known as a shallow depth of field. Cool. Here's Alicia taken with a shallow DoF.

The other thing I've realized about photography is that it can get expensive if you want to be a serious amateur (is that an oxymoron?). If that's not bad enough, I've recently picked up another hobby that's proving to burn some more holes in my pocket. Will blog about that in my next entry.

Three Christmases, Three Countries

It's that time of the year when we all get a little nostalgic and start lamenting on how quickly the year has passed and it's already the end of another year. (I also think time speeds up exponentially after you turn 30).

This is the third Christmas we've celebrated with Alicia and it gets better every year. Due to our rather itinerant lives, we've actually spent Christmas in three different locations over the past three years. The first was in New York, Alicia was just over a month old and it was the start of the bitter NY winter.

That was probably the worst Christmas we had. Saddled with the fear of Alicia catching a bad cold in sub-zero temperatures, we stayed home all day. To make matters worse, that was the start of Alicia's colicky phase as well which meant long (or what felt like a long time) periods of incessant crying.

Here's when she just woke up, still looking sleepy and grumpy. (She's still grumpy when she wakes up even now).

Last year, we braved the 8 hour flight (which is like eternity when you a have a restless toddler in tow) to Brisbane to join my in-laws for a nice big McGregor family Christmas. It was the first time Alicia got to meet all of her uncles and aunties and it was great to have so many babysitters around for when I wanted to go shopping :).

This year, we decided to stay and spend Christmas in Singapore. Ray's dad couldn't get too much time off so we didn't do our traditional Aussie family Christmas. Instead, Ray's two youngest brothers (he's got three plus one sister) are here for a two week visit.

At two, Alicia now understands the concept of the Christmas tree and of course, the presents that go under it! It was great fun opening presents with her on Christmas Day until she found one that she liked, got distracted and lost interest in opening the rest. I even managed to get her to pose for some shots.

So here's wishing everyone a very happy new year and more blogging in 2007!