Now for something a little less depressing, and not nearly as wet

On something to have nothing to do with the floods, here are some photo's from Xmas thru to Feb... 2011 is moving very fast, and it will be April before we know it and then I'll have to start all over again with a new llcoolb girly edition.

Hudson is fascinated by large machines... however he likes them from a distance, being inside the truck was a little too close for comfort.

How do you keep a 2 year old and a 6 year old quiet during a hot day?

Strip them off and feed them and give them both a set of headphones and watch Polar Express on the iPad... dur.

Hudson had just told Halle how pretty she was... Which impressed her no end.

Smooth Huddo Smooth!

Looks like Santa Claus threw up in my living room.

Ummmm, if you can't tell, this is Hudson's impressed face. A Train table, with tracks and trains, already set up by Santa Claus... How does he find time to get all this done in one night.

Santa brought Harvey a new bed. Its just what the dog who sleeps 22 hours a day needs.

Not sure what I was opening, but the Brown boys were very interested.

Hudson discovered that the good chocolates end up at the bottom of the stocking. Hopefully he'll grow into this stocking, it was massive.

Harvey also got a perennial favourite. A rubber chicken. Which had its squeaker torn out in less than five minutes... but that's what we do with them. And yes, that is a rubber chicken wearing a bikini.

Dad bought Hudson a soccer goal... And Scored!!!

Sorry, but you don't read this and expect a scintinllating read, you read this to see what terrible pun I'm going to write next... so this sort of joke should be expected!

If I was asked what I miss the most about America... I'd say Chipotle... But if I was asked what I missed the 2nd most, I'd probably say my friends... but followed behind them would have to be Modelo Especial. The beer of the gods... This is my impressed face... (now can you see the resemblance between me and son number 1, I'm talking about Harvery here)

A new bike, and helmet... The helmet got a workout, but not on the bike, I think shortly after this we bumped into everything in the house... and no tears... Gotta love a good helmet.

Hudson was meant to be taking a photo of me, taking a photo of him, taking a photo of me.... But he hasn't quite worked out how to aim the camera... yet.

So you see Grandpa, the 451 Express has a small problem with its foofle valve, causing the 328 Trackmaster to catch up with the 2:15pm Passenger run. This is in turn causing unexpected delays and overruns on the fuel consumption of the late night freight trains. I'm just not sure what to do about it. Thoughts?

If Elmo dancing like a chicken won't get you a smile, nothing will

My GG came to visit. So we both decided to look the same. Sleepy, yet happy.

Ready for the beach. Boardies, Rashie, Towel backpack and wrap around sunnies on my head. Can I get any cuter?

After a long day of swimming, I just like nothing more that posing in a towel for a photo with my Auntie J.O.

I love my GG, or yes I do, cause when she visits, we see the Choo Choo's...

This looks suspiciously like another photo from an earlier blog... the reason for that... Hudson really only has one dance move, now to be known as the Bouncy Castle Running Boy.

Having seen Polar Express for the 56th time, Harvey decided it would be better to fain interest, but fell asleep instead. Hudson did not mind.

I'll let you work out this one... But its the family Brown at its best.

Blog soon.

K.out

The washup...

So we got lucky... it didn't peak as high as first expected and the Brown household was spared. Thousands of others were not so lucky, and I'm sure by now you've all seen enough footage and pictures.

However, if you want to see what happened around our place check out the presentation below.

Our place is the one with the pool in back and lots of solar panels on the roof. (should be in the centre for most pics)

This is the low quality version in PDF format, approximately 2.5mb

http://www.adrive.com/public/ec67909694765c54d264cbee347b872d7f0170d3cf303e94b3f7473450e7665a.html

and this is the high quality version with transitions (looks better) at 20mb.

http://www.adrive.com/public/a391f7de47b3c3d9001e8e448f3418e1deb38b9ba521e8d4e6c769954fc11357.html

You will be downloading this from Adrive an external site, so it will probably cause your browser to ask you are you sure you wish to leave and then you will likely need to select the yellow bar at the top of the browser and select download file. The download will start and then as long as you have Adobe PDF reader for the small one or Powerpoint for the second one, you can save it and run it once the download is complete.

We are all safe, and have cleaned up and helped others clean up. The task will take months however to return any form of normality to Brisbane and South east Queensland as a whole. Feel free to share these files or this link. Thanks to http://nearmap.com/ who took the photo's and put them up.

You can help by donating to the Flood Appeal at http://www.qld.gov.au/floods and clicking on the Donate button.

K.

And the peak...

It came and peaked at 4.6metres so about 1 metre below predicted... meaning we were fine.

Here are some photo's from our street. Still lots of water. But no real major damage in our area.

River views from the Brown Balcony now...

The top of our street. Towards the Norman Park railway station

The neighbours backyards.

Seems like the worst has past. I'll be leaving the Brown Fortress in place for a couple more days. Otherwise we're good for now... now for the cyclone around Australia Day...

Be good. And thanks again for the support.

K.