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And as happens once a year I look back and forward. Back to the first year of being 40 and realising that it wasn’t the beginning of the end at all. Playing AFL again was great, the cycling and running is still happening, though not quite as hard as before and I can still show the youngsters a thing or two there, and coaching basketball and volleyball has been fantastic.

I think part of the reason I am hanging out with the young guys and girls so much at the moment is because there is virtually no one my age keen to have a go. Most of the Dads and people I know round my age are sedentary. Sad really. I am organising cycling trips, rock climbing and hiking events, playing basketball and volleyball and these guys just sit there and say things like”Where do you get your energy from?” and “I wish I could keep up with you”. Well the answer is – You can! join me – if you dare. I have a couple of mates who comes when they can and go as hard as I can push them. Dave is one of those. He hates me and loves me at the same time. Here is a video of him finishing a very punishing ride we did on Monday.

I took a bunch of photos yesterday. We went to the park in the afternoon. These photos were all taken with the HTC Touch Diamond. After the first few photos I decided to play with the settings and see what could be done.

Here is Erin and a shot of the kite flying. Erin climbed the light pole to the top and Mercedes got on the base of it.

Erin blowing out her candles on her birthday cake on her birthday the other day. My little girl is growing up fast. She is 7 now and a little livewire bundle. When you hold her she clings like a monkey, and you can feel every muscle and tendon is just wiry – she is bursting with energy and hardly ever sits still.

She loves to jump up to me to get a cuddle and she springs off the floor and into my arms and wraps her arms around my neck. Usually this is followed by her wriggling back down (all too soon) and she is off and running at the next thing. She has endless stamina, I think she will be a good long distance runner. Erin also loves to draw. She often comes in and borrows my whiteboard markers – making a little box on the whiteboard to draw pictures for daddy.

I love her!

I have had such a heavy workload lately that about 2 weeks ago I planned an entire day off – knowing I would need it and the family would be needing me. So yesterday was locked out in my diary as being work free. well it didn't entirely work out as thanks to Optus screwing around with my plans I had to go and do a wireless internet install and local network setup for a client in their home. 3 hours later,  5 PCs online, mostly patched for windows updates, AVG 8 installed and updated, and Live Mesh installed for some users and synchronising backups. I left for this really early so we were able to leave the house and be ready to go at lunch time! We stopped on the highway for Maccas and KFC for lunch 15 minutes after leaving. hen it was back ont he road again and off to Mapleton Falls National Park. This is part of the great Sunshine coast walks and I was on a recce for a great bike ride that we are planning.

I had used the camera heavily the previous two days taking photos for the geek girls dinner and then for the missions fund raising dinner. Check the photos and the 3D photosynth out of the dinner. So the camera batteries were on the charger and I only had my mobile phone camera. Still I took some reasonable shots. The panoramic picture picture above was created using Live Photo Galleries cool panoramic feature from the falls look out platform. I would estimate that the height was about 100 metres straight down. I also made a photosynth of the same pictures – check it out – it is way cook and allows you to zoom in heaps.

We took heaps of pictures on the rain forest walk all up on Flickr. Here's some fun ones of all our shoes and then all our faces. Click the photos to be taken through to Flickr and the rest of the photos.

After that we headed out to Coolum Beach for nachos and doner kebabs by the beach. The children jumped waves and played for a while and then it was time to go home. I relaxed with Jude for a bit before settling into code for a few hours before hitting the sack. All the Coolum beach photos are on Flickr also.