More photos of Joshua

Another update on Joshua,


He's growing pretty quick and doing well. He's behaving well too and has started sleeping 'through' the night (well at least from 10.30-11pm through to 4.30-5am). We've had our first outings - dinner at La Porchetta which he just slept through but then fed for almost an hour to make up for all that sleeping when we got dessert at the chocolate boutique. Also went to Rotorua for a couple of days and he slept all the way down and back and didn't mind the night in the hotel either. He's becoming a lot more interactive too which is cool! here's some more photos of the little monkey.

Our new arrival

Joshua is here!

Finally after 9 months (plus a few overdue days) we've met our latest addition to the 'young' scheibmair family. Joshua was born at 1.56am on easter sunday 8th April and weighed 9 pounds 4 or 4.2kg. He was 56 cm long, which isn't bad given the midwife told us that Beck would probably deliver a 'small side of average' baby! A bit of a surprise for all of us incliding the midwife.

Unfortunately he arrived with his fist by his head and so Beck needed a couple of stitches for tears but otherwise it was , although very long, a normal labour and delivery. Beck managed to do it without any pain relief even - though if she would have known how big 'baby' was she would have been a lot more worried I'm sure!

Both came home sunday night after about 15 hours in hospital and are doing really well. He's sleeping and feeding OK and Beck is recovering quite quickly too. A happy family all round really. For now that's all we have time for, but will update this soon hopefully!

Here's a couple of photos of our big little Josh.

Baby update

Not much to report - only two more weeks to due date! Baby room is ready and if it came today we probably are?!!? :-) Just thought should add a couple of photos of Beck. The first was at the beginning of February and the second about a month later (12th March). She still looks much the same as the March photo.

Baby according to the midwife is kind of behaving - it's head down and facing sideways; so Beck's trying to get it to turn to the back (for shorter and less painful labour aparrently!?). Also not a big baby - small side of average which Beck is rather pleased about (again shorter and less painful labour aparrently! :-) )

That's all for now.

Our next VW project

Since we have completed the beetle convertible I've been increadibly bored :-) and so mid last year I began on the next project - a VW kombi limo. I've played around with a couple of sketches to mimic what we think it will look like (not sure about colour yet!):

After some thought as to how long we want it we finally decided on two additional 'middle' or sliding door length sections. That would make the van around 7m rather than the standard length of 4.5m. We did quite well in finding the three suitable donor vehicles that each had their own little problems and so it didn't feel quite so bad cutting them up! Chris and Sandy have kindly made some space in their nice big concrete floored shed for me to work in. So over the last few months we've cut up the three vans into the sections that we needed, pulled some usable spare parts off the rest and then took the remainder to the scrap metal guy. We are now at the stage where we have all the sections we need inside the shed and removed all the left-over pieces from around the outside of the shed to tidy Chris and Sandy's place up a bit! I suspect that there won't be much progress for a few months after April and so a decent tidy-up was needed before then obviously. The plan at this stage is to have the parts welded together and on wheels so that it can be towed to the VW nationals in hamilton in Easter 2008. That gives me another year to align, cut, weld together and reinforce it. Below are some pics of progress to date.

The above was donor number one, which will be used for the front section, and so was cut just behind the sliding side door.

Donor number two will give us the rear and as a bonus this camper was a factory sunroof van so we will have a nice large sunroof above the front end of the bed to look at the stars at night!

This last one we got really cheap as it already had sunspension and everything stripped out from it. But as we only wanted the middle third (the sliding door length) that was no problem.

Below are pics of each of the vans cut, and the last photo is what we have in Chris and Sandy's shed now. Note that the last photo shows the middle section from the silver van on its end with the underside visible.

And the remainder went to the scrap metal guy in two loads:

A new arrival on its way

Finally! Have been meaning to update this page since last year, but never got round to it. As most of you should know by now, we are expecting an addition to the ‘family’ in early April. The due date is 3rd April so we’re getting pretty close now to the peace and quiet being shattered at home. Beck is doing really (and has been pretty good throughout) and is starting to get pretty big now - and still has a few weeks to grow! Below are a couple of prints from the scans at 20 weeks just after we got back from our germany trip. We had to laugh as it looks like baby is laughing in the print - in reality we think it was just opening its mouth ready to suck its thumb. Still looks funny though!

The print below is the baby's face which looks rather like that of an alien than a human - but we have been assured that's normal! :-)

We didn't want to find out what the sex of the baby was. We decided that we'd rather get a surprise in April, and besides it makes it more fun for others to buy baby things as they should be fairly nutral. A good way to slow the flood of baby items pouring into baby's room!

Beck had her baby shower a couple of weeks ago and the way she described the aftermath is probably quite appropriate; she said our lounge looks like the baby factory monster threw up in it. So we're pretty sorted for most things now, we have a cot from one of Beck's mum's friends, a pram from Beck's dad and maz, getting a highchair from Beck's mum and rex and my parents are making us a change table. Beck and I have bought new curtains (Winnie the Pooh) and painted some draws for in the baby room and another of Beck's mum's friends said he will supply us with some nappies and baby creams, etc. Bring on 3rd April!

That'll do for now. Will try and get permission to take a pic of Beck on day to post on here too!

The end of the road - Wolfsburg and Berlin

The last part to the Germany holiday. We spent a few days in Berlin where we caught up with Andrew and Grace (our friends from NZ that are living in the UK at the moment). The main reason why we ended up going to Berlin was to catch up with Sascha (my best friend from school in Germany) who was in Berlin for a few months. Sascha kindly put us up at his flat which saved us a bit of money. Given that it was now Nevember too, we bought Gluehwein (Spiced red wine that you heat up) and lots of 'christmasy' food to get us in the christmas mood. Had lots of fun and managed to teach Andrew and Grace a bit of German and taught Sascha how to play phase 10. And just like his father he ended up being the 'champion'! :-) Anyway; the weather turned out to be not that good (one of very few days that were wet!) for one day but that didn't stop us from seeing a few things anyway. It was good having a 'local' to show us around and as Andrew and Grace had been in Berlin for a day on their big Europe trip they knew a few spots that were really cool too - neither Sascha or myself knew how big a piece of the wall is still left standing! Below are some of the many photos we took (tourists!) of the Reichstag (the beehive), the holocaust memorial which was quite impressive with all the concrete blocks, the new 5 storey central train station that was more like an airport and the Berlin wall.



After our days in Berlin Beck and I then got on a train to Wolfsburg for a day trip to the VW factory. It's about 200km from Berling (an hour on the train) and so of course we had to go there! Unfortunately Andrew and Grace couldn't get a cheap train ticket and the standard fare was far too expensive for a day trip, and Sascha had to be at work (it was monday). It was really impressive and a lot better than I imagined it. There is so much to see and do in Autostadt - which is the exhibition part with individual buildings where each VW owned brand has their own 'experience'. As well as that there are a 'Time House' which has all sorts of old cars (not just VW) to take you through the history of the car, a general VW experience world where you can play around with designing cars, driving simulators and learn about all sorts of things and of course the VW customer services centre where buyers can pick up their new cars that are waiting in one of two towers. Everything is lit up at night which is quite a sight! We also did a small tour of a tiny section of the factory where you get a snippet of how cars are made. They manufacturing site is massive and some of the statistics are almost unbelievable. We were both really glad that we had done the little side trip and spent a day there.

In the photo below you can see the two towers that are full of cars waiting for their new owners and the customer services centre (blue/green light to the right) and one of the pavillions to the left.
Below are some massive car seats that were part of the Skoda pavillion. Just an example of some of the 'experiences' that each pavillion offered. And of course each had a different theme.
This is the 'time house' at night from the outside all lit up. Following are all photos from inside the time house - inlcuding Beck and her dream car. All the cars you could walk right up to and have a good look at!

The photo above is the millionth beetle that rolled of the line, which has all parts that are ordinarliy chrome covered in little polished glass pearls and was painted metallic gold to make it unique! Below is an old BMW roadster.

The beetle cut in half in the photo below was quite funny as the caption said that this was done to highlight the technological advances of the beetle! Technology in a beetle!?

After our trip to Wolfsburg we caught an overnight train back to Munich where we spent another couple of days before we headed back to NZ. And so five weeks had flown by but we had seen lots and caught up with most of the family and friends we had planned to. Hopefully it won't be too long before we'll manage to go back maybe during summer to see a little more of Europe too. For now we've got a few exciting months or years ahead of us with beck rapidly growing now - still a few months till April though!

Neuschwanstein, Hirzing and birthday - Germany part 3

Following our sightseeing in Munich we headed towards the Alps with Caro, Christian and Franziska to the Edwin's place in Kempten for the weekend. They had sent us a booklet as a wedding gift they made with three sightseeing choices, one of which we could do when we would come to germany. So of course we used this voucher and chose a trip to Neuschwanstein - a famous castle that king Ludwig built. Unfortunately the sunday was one of two days where the weather wasn't that good (the second day was when we were in Berlin later on) and so we spent the day inside playing cards and chatting. Still a really nice day and actually quite nice to relax rather than be out and about all the time.



Following the week in Kempten with the Auer's we then spent another few days in Hirzing with mum's parents. One of those days we spent walking through a wildlife park. A lot of the enclosures you could walk right through. The wolves and brown bear enclosures you weren't allowed to walk through though! And only two of the animals were hiding from us but we saw lots and it took almost 4 hours to walk through it! The possum like creature is a Mader which is a pest in germany as they chew through radiator hoses in winter - probably Beck's favourite animal in the park.




We had a nice breakfast (not that we didn't have nice breakfasts anyway every morning! - but) as it was my birthday at Hirzing and then drove to Munich. Had a little bit of snow in hirzing on my birthday and then again the next morning in Munich (photo is of wad-wad oma and opa's garden in munich). Once hirzing oma and opa dropped us off in Munich we went to the 'human and nature' museum in munich with my aunty and uncle and kids before all of dad's family went out for a birthday as well as early leaving dinner that night.