Houston. . . We have a problem!
Posted on January 31st, 2010 by Peter
Just getting ready for our tour of the NASA
Preom - Preom. . . . Mission control to James Speight.
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Filed under: Family
Secret Santa cought on camera!
Posted on January 31st, 2010 by Peter
OK, everyone ready for the xmas photo?
Ahh um, there is a kid missing!
Still Richard is busy posing for the photo and didn’t notice! 
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Filed under: Family, Funny, James
Passport Photo Attempts
Posted on December 5th, 2009 by Peter
Ok, so it sounds pretty easy. Just go to your nearest pharmacy, take a face front and eyes open picture against a white background and resize them for the passport. I think we went wrong with timing the photo shoot during is morning nap time!
Here are a few photos taken from my camera after the girl couldn’t take enough photos fast enough on the pharmacy’s point and shoot. I put the camera on sports and took around 70 photos to get this selection.
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Filed under: James
Message to my Brother
Posted on November 12th, 2009 by Peter
Since I have a week of school and need to practice writing I decided to write a little message to my brother today. Here it is. . .
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Filed under: Family, James, Richard
James Leo Speight
Posted on November 12th, 2009 by Peter
Lawrence wanted to us to name him Novomatic for free pampers for a year but we passed up the offer when he wouldn’t add 100grand to it. So without another major gaming company coming forward we settled on James Leo.
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Filed under: Family, James
Baby Daniel, William, David, Jacob, Russell, James or is it Leo is born!
Posted on November 8th, 2009 by Peter
Hi All,
Today at 1030am US Central time our baby was born. At 18 days ahead of schedule we are having difficulty with the name and even a spare 6 hours in the car driving up from Monterrey today didn’t change anything. Anyway, he came in at 49cm and 2.98kg. Elena is doing well, she just went in for another dopler on her leg to see if there is any remaining clot from the DVT. Results will be in tomorrow.
Here are the first few photos.
Oh, there you are.
3 seconds later. . . Comon u guys, I'm hungry!
another 3 seconds. . . OK, I'm getting tired now.
the final 3 seconds of the process. . . OK, u missed your chance and I'll nap instead.
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Filed under: Family, Medical & Health
Uncomfortable Plastacine Man
Posted on September 13th, 2009 by Peter
- Uncomfortable Plastacine Man
Well not sure Richard really meant to create such an eye opening experience for the poor plastacine man but we did have a very good laugh
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Filed under: Family, Funny, Richard
Costa Rica, River Pacuare, White Water Rafting
Posted on May 18th, 2008 by Peter
Well today was the day. While our jobs in Cost Rica hung in the balance Ian and I decided to dip our feet a little deeper into the water and try out white water rafting instead of pondering our future. What better place to do this than the Pacuare River in Costa Rica? Here is our story. . .
The scene was set beautifully with a two hour drive through some of Costa Rica’s perfect landscape of rolling volcanic hills. We set off from our hotel in Escazu, San Jose at 6am on the dot. Of course quite a bit earlier than we were used to however, the breakfast stop just near Bueno Vista at about 8am was a picture perfect place to wake up and smell the super fresh air.
Scoffing down eggs, fresh fruit and Pinto Gallo (some local dish consisting of mushy rice, meat and beans) which they assured us was a normal local breakfast, we spent most of our time marveling at our next one day trip, the volcano Turrialba.
About 30mins after breakfast we arrived at our launch point into the river Pacuare. Suited up in our geeky but all important safety gear we listened intensely to our guide, Ali from Cost Rica Expeditions who was explaining the commands that would help us to Read more…
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Filed under: Costa Rica, Travel
Scott McGreggor’s Trains
Posted on May 1st, 2008 by Peter
When I was in high school (Deakin High in Canberra) I made a few trips to Jimmy Davey’s farm out just beyond Mudgee in Central NSW. We had great times there that’s for sure however one of the most fascinating places we visited was a farm where Jimmy’s uncle (Scott McGreggor) kept his train set. A few weeks ago my mum found this link about what has transformed from a couple of carriges on the side of the hill to something fantastic. Check it out!
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Filed under: Travel
10 Things Every Parent Should Remember
Posted on December 16th, 2007 by Peter
I found these helpful hints from Focus on the Family on a tag stuck to some clothes. I liked it a lot so put it up here to share with you. I didn’t ask the authors, James Dobson, Inc. for permission but I’m guessing they will be ok with me sharing thier thoughts amoungst my friends. I had a look for thier website too but couldn’t find it. Maybe they will contact me if they get upset with the reproduction???
- Children thrive best in an atmosphere of guenuine love and undergirded by reasonable, consistent discipline.
- Heredity does not equip a child with proper attitudes: children learn only what they are taught!
- The footsteps a child follows are most likely to be the ones his parents thought they covered up.
- Praise and criticism at home should be distributed as evenly as possible.
- It is through loving control that parents ecpress personal worth to a child.
- If you never allow a child to want something, he’ll never enjoy the plreasure of receiving it.
- There are so many necessary “no’s” in life that we should say “yes” whenever we can.
- Grandparents can be invaluable to the world of little people. For one thing, “They are the only grown-ups who have time.”
- trying to control children by yelling is as utterly futile as trying to steer a car by honking the horn.
- Loving discipline cncourages a child to respect other epople and live as a responsible, constructive citizen.
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Filed under: Family
Who changed my socks?
Posted on November 22nd, 2007 by Peter
It seems a bit strange but our boy, Richard doesn’t like changing his socks!
If there is a way out of it he will find it and if there is a way to do it Babuliya will find it. Two great minds at war over socks!!!
It has gotten to the stage where he will wear a pair of socks from bath time to bath time and avoid taking a bath for as long as possible to extend his time in the socks. They just don’t get removed for anything! The usual cycle is going to sleep with socks on, not wanting to change them in the morning, then walking to school in the same socks, then sports at school, then home, then to bed again and so it continues. Just keep the socks on at all costs.
What seems to be the major problem with changing socks? Well as it turns out it is the seems in the toes of the socks. If he can feel them even one little bit then he gets very, very agitated and getting a pair of shoes on him in this condition is like trying to . . . I don’t know what it’s like, there is no comparison!!!
So Babuliya has devised a very engenious way of getting fresh socks on to the kid, at his most volunerable moment! When is that? When he is asleep! She waits until he has fallen asleep and then quietly swaps the old, in need of a change, socks for crisp fresh new ones.
Now today the plan went as usual and completely un noticed by Richard until. . . He got to physical education at school. When he was changing into his sports shoes he noticed that his socks had changed and was of course bemused about how it could possibly have happened, after all this was the first time he had even noticed that his socks had been changed without his knowing. Later that night Babuliya asked him “Richard, did you notice anything different today?” He replied calmly “yea, you changed my socks while I was asleep!”
So now it looks like we are going to progress to gettting almost fully dressed for school while asleep to avoid any early morning conflicts.
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Filed under: Family, Funny
Dictation for 7 year olds???
Posted on September 30th, 2007 by Peter
I can’t remember so far back but I don’t think that 7-8 year olds were doing such complicated dictation at school. Maybe someone who supervised me at school can can correct me?
Anyway Richard had a difficult time about
a week ago and achieved a 3- out of 5
for his dictation at school.
I can’t go into the details of what the mistakes were because I really have no idea. My Russian reading is OKish with the big letters but the little ones get confusing. I mean take a look at the last word in the picture below right, what the hell is that? Well I can tell you, it says ‘mishi’ which means many mice!
So getting back to the dictation, after getting in trouble from Mum and Grandma Richard put in a fantastic effort and proudly brought home a 5 for signing! Now not only was there a proud kid but also an even prouder Mum and Grandma.
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Filed under: Richard, School
Scaring the life out of himself – Richard
Posted on September 30th, 2007 by Peter
The other day Richard digging in his cupboards unearthed a mask that we used in a fancy dress management party a few years back. It is a pretty tame mask really but when you aren’t expecting to see it on someone it does take you by suprize. So Richard prancing around the house creeping up on people and scaring them seemed pretty funny from his perspective until. . . .
He took a look at himslef in the mirror with the mask on. A couple of short deep breaths and then screamed and ran into the bedroom in hysterics. Several minutes of cudling and soothing brought his breath back but still sobbing some 10 minutes later. Mum asked him, “why were you scared, you put it on?” He replied “but I didn’t see it on me so I wasn’t scared.”
Now he knows better not to scare people!
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Filed under: Living in Moscow, Richard
Art on the Moscow Metro?
Posted on August 6th, 2007 by Peter
The metro in Moscow is full of suprizes. Usually not very pleasant ones but the pictures below tell a different story!
I’m not sure how long this train was running but it certainly was nice to ride on.
I’ll try to get a comparison picture in the next few days so you can see the difference!
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Filed under: Living in Moscow
Too many smokers in Moscow
Posted on June 5th, 2007 by Peter
The proportion of people who smoke in Moscow (probarbly all of Russian actually) seems much higher than it is. I live overlooking a metro station in central Moscow and (depending on the time of day) the proportion of smokers Vs non smokers is about 60 / 40! Really, it is! I can explain though.
As smoking is not allowed on the metro and people generally spend at least 15 and up to 60 minutes underground, smokers are usually gasping for a nicotine fix by the time they finish riding the long, long escalators to the nice fresh air above. As soon as the chance arrises they light up joinging those at the begining of thier journey who are taking their last puffs before making the descent into the metro. As a result of this some times frenzied smoking the average passer by has little option but to catch a couple of breaths of second hand smoke as a hazardous by product of using the Moscow Metro.
Another scene that takes some getting used to is seeing people walking and smoking. Just beyond the metro is the most obvious place to see this of course. The amount of people that I have seen walking at a brisk pace, not just wandering around smoking is amazing. It’s like a double trauma to the body, increase the heart rate and at the same time replace the oxygen that your body is trying to get with smoke???
The final most amazing scene unfolded this evening while I was cycling along the Moscow river approaching the Kremlin. It was about 24 degrees c with a slight breeze rippling the river making the sunset very impressive indeed, perfect cycling weather in a perfect setting. I approached a young girl (about 17 or 18 years old) riding along at a not to fast, not to slow pace and as I got closer I could smell cigar smoke. Sure enough there she was cruising along smoking a thin cigar! Now that is taking smoking just a bit too far I think.
Just to finish off. I’m not out to change the world about smoking I just can’t believe that people spend so much time trying to live in environmentally healthy areas, complain when nasty air conditioning systems make them sick, complain when someone has bad BO near them (especially so on the metro!) and then light up creating a mini poison zone all around them???
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Filed under: Living in Moscow, Medical & Health