Hello world

Having been a blog lurker for more than a year and having found no reason to express myself in any way I finally stumbled on the reason while talking to my colleague Alistair Bruce.

Alistair has a blog and while it may be many things the one thing that it definitely does is communicate pictures and commentary about his small son. Alistair is, like me, an expat with family far away in Scotland (he lives in the US). When you have small children this is especially challenging as it is so important to keep your wider family in touch with these growing and evolving little people.

After being a singleton family of just Lara, Emma and myself for more than 8 years we are now expecting an addition and I'd like our wider family in South Africa to have a way of keeping up with us and their new grandson/grandaughter, nephew/niece, cousin etc.

We left South Africa when Emma was a year old in 1998 so our family could at least observe that critical first 12 months of her life in person. This time they will meet the new arrival when s/he is already a year old in December 2006. Until then this blog will be the link.

So, hello world is both about this blog and the new arrival due (tentatively) on December 18th 2005. I hope that Lara, Emma and I will jointly keep this going.