Family Christmas pic 2021

 

LtoR; Josh, Coco the dog, Mandy, Karla, Simon & Brad. 

If you scroll through the posts of our family website, you'll see that every Christmas morning we sit down in front of the tree for a family portrait.  The difference this year is that we are in our new house and there is a new member of the family - Coco the dog. 

We moved into the new house back in late March, and a common topic of conversation since then has been about where the Christmas tree might go.  We found a spot between Mandy's display cabinets, but we had to push the couches out of the way so we could all sit in front for the photo.  Maybe we'll find a better spot for the Christmas tree next year.

Coco is a Miniature Dachshund (Sausage Dog) who joined our family back in September as an eight week old puppy.  Now we can't imagine not having her running around the house. 

Christmas morning 2020

Our annual Christmas morning family photo - 2020

Our Christmas morning family photo is looking a little different this year.  Thanks to his chemotherapy, Simon has lost all his hair and is now a baldy.  

Thankfully, though, we are all still together.  Josh turns 21 next week, but is still living at home, so the family is all here Christmas morning for our traditional family portrait.

Lockdown Family Photos

What do you do on a weekend during COVID-19 Stage-4 Lockdown when you're not supposed to leave home?  Yesterday we decided to have some fun taking family photos.  

There was another reason for getting some new family memories, apart from being stuck at home with nothing to do because of Corona Virus.  Despite six months of chemotherapy last year, Simon's Pancreatic Cancer has returned and he needs to start a different chemo programme.  This new treatment will make him lose his hair, so we wanted to get some photos before he becomes a baldy.

L to R:  Joshua, Bradley, Simon, Mandy & Karla

We also made a video of the fun we had taking our latest family photos, 
you can watch it on YouTube here... https://youtu.be/kF4osIdGz2Q 

Christmas Morning 2019

2019 has been a huge year for our family, as I have fought (and hopefully beaten) pancreatic cancer.  With all of that behind us, before you know it, Christmas morning is upon us. 

Since 2010, we've had a tradition of taking a family photo in-front of the tree on Christmas morning, before any presents are opened.  With our eldest son, Josh, almost 20 years old, I'm not sure how many more Christmas mornings the five of us will be all together for a family portrait.  After such a stressful year, I'm so glad we were all at home this Christmas to continue our family tradition.

Embarrassing the kids

We recently spent some time going through some old home movie footage of the kids as they were growing up, and put it together for a video on YouTube titled "Embarrassing my Kids".  The title probably gives you an idea of what to expect, but thankfully the kids are good sports and had a good laugh at themselves when showed the finished product.

It's not a short video, but take a look, I think you'll get a laugh out of it as well.

Karla's Gymnastics

Last year Karla started doing gymnastics.  She has progressed really well and has this year done a few competitions.

This year Karla (aged 8) has also developed an interest in making videos for YouTube (with Dad's help of course), so we've combined the two.  Check out these couple of videos we made at two of her competitions. 

Needless to say, Mum and Dad are very proud.

Christmas, done and dusted!

When I posted our family photo with Santa last week, I mentioned that I hadn't realised that this site hadn't been updated for almost 12 months.  So today I've gone through the various Blogger options and given this - our family web page - a bit of a spruce up and new look.

To top it off, below is our annual family photo in front of the tree on Christmas morning.
Hopefully it wont be another 12 months before I post another update SMJBK update!

Simon.

Family Christmas photo 2012

It's the festive season and the year is drawing to a close, so it must be time for another family photo in front of the Christmas tree.

Here's our family Christmas photo for 2012;

2010 Santa Photo

It's that time of year again, here's this Christmas Santa photo.

New SMJBK.COM home page

I was frustrated with our custom domain home page that I set up through Google-Sites, the service is just not user friendly.  Even though we bought the smjbk.com domain name (only $10 per year) to set up custom email addresses (such as simon@smjbk.com and mandy@smjbk.com) through gmail, I wanted to have something decent as a home page for that domain.  I was already using Blogger (another Google service) with custom domains (http://simonsays.smjbk.com/ and www.simonsweblinks.com/) so I thought I'd give Google-Sites the flick and set up www.smjbk.com to point to a new Blogger page instead.


Below is what I've written to appear in the "About this page" section of our new home page.




The smjbk.com domain was aquired through Google Apps to allow us to have sensible email addresses with a custom domain (it's so hard to get a decent @gmail email address!)

With the custom email names set up through gmail and Google Apps, I thought I'd make a family home page through Google-Sites, but unlike most Google services, Google-Sites isn't very user friendly and I was never happy with it. Blogger (another Google) service is much easier to use and update, so smjbk.com is now blogger based. 

(The old home page can still be found within Google-Sites here.)