ben can now count up to twenty fourteen. admittedly he misses out twenty thirteen but i think for a two and a quarter year old he does pretty cutely, i mean well. ben is full of energy these days. so i took him out to look for camels in the desert by the motorway as i do on occasion. unusually today there were none to be found. apart from 'no camels' coming from the back seat the mood in the c.r.v remained upbeat. ben decided we should just get out and play. and we did. first we sat down to down our drinks. his was a chocolate milk in a carton and mine was a weird iced coffee thing in a can. we drank and drunk. we ran up and down the sandy dune laughing at that funny feeling when your feet sink into the sand as you run. i read in a book last night that young boys need to Qdo new activities with their dads. so i decided that instead of driving ben straight home i would take him through some soft sand, get stuck (twice), phone jono and duncan and get ben home 105 minutes late. why not? ben seemed about as bothered as i was when i found out that sergie ventura and plg were skating vert at the x games last year. one over bothered. inverse bothered. bothered to the power of negative one.

i missed my brother's birthday this week. i never meant to. he just turned twenty ten. david is one of those blokes who everyone has a favourite memory of. i have hundreds. like the time he decided to clarify for us all over tea the difference between being pissed and being drunk. not bad for a tenish year old. i remember when he landed a backside boneless at the karori ramp for the first time. awesome. i felt so happy to not only skate with him but be friends a brother too. i still feel this way when we skate together. and even when we don't. when i just skate around. david is a great sakter. loads of tricks. he never snakes and usually has enough coins in the car to buy a round of milk afterwards.  i thought of david the other night. being world class parents, we brush ben's teeth each night. i say we but let me explain. ben prefers it now if one of his puppets does it for him. the choice is the usual: mr. cow, mrs. bear, wags, hopper, elmo or panda. it's usually wags. the green dog. there was a time (i use the past tense tentatively)  when us bucks could really only communicate with david through a UN approved translator. this was usually cookie. feel free to comment, kylie.

this past week i have lost track of dates because we were very happy to have a good friend sue kemp stay with us. sue has remained working is nepal for the past decade. we met her when we worked in pokhara in two thousand. it was strange to hear myself complain (my new hobby) about little things. they don't have a digital camera in their school. i have three on my person. having sue here provided not only another much welcome chance to head again to oman to mussandam but also a much needed opportunity to have a reflective moment like you would if you just watched a twenty five minute world vision ad in the dark. 

jenny and i will desperately miss seeing new zealanders this july and august. our new baby is due early june. our lives are about to literally turn a corner.