Christmas morning

Happy Christmas everyone! Here's a few photos from our Christmas morning.

Babysitting cousin Henry

On Christmas Eve morning, we babysat for Matt & Erin while they finished their Christmas shopping. Don't think this was any hardship, it meant we got lots of time with cousin Henry, aka Hank. He arriced just before nap time, so we put him down, but he was rather reluctant to sleep. Patrice advised us that M&E normally leave him for ~7 mins to see if he will drop off, and he did. When we went back to check on him though, we found he had sat himself up, then dozed off sitting...
After nap time, it was dinner time. Hank was very keen for the loose cherios he gets as finger-food, but less so for the jar of sweet potato puree. Chrissy found it neccesary to distract him with the lid from his cherios.
Henry pulled some wonderful faces during lunch, especially when David pulled paces back at him.
Ruth wanted to help with feeding.
And so did David. Rather than steer the spoon though, David wanted to pop cherios straight into Henry's mouth!

Shhhhh...... Daddy's sleeping!

I founf this photo on the camera this morning - Chrissy took it last night after I fell asleep on the sofa at about 6 p.m. I vaguely remember David asking if he could give me a hug ("Yes, of course."), but not being used as a sofa....

Godmother Amy Day

Our first full day in the US was Godmother Amy Day for Ruth. We had arrived on the 19th, and Amy and Larry were flying out for Christmas with their relatives late on the 20th. Amy picked Ruth up late morning, and took her out for the day. They got haircuts, and went to their favourite Ice-cream Parlour afterwards. When they got back, Amy brought out some Christmas presents. Ruth opened them right away, with Amy.

Ruth got a book, "Big Words for Small People", and a lovely black and gold dress, very similar to one Amy had given her as a 2-year old.




After that it was time for Amy & Larry to go, with hugs and "Merry Christmas"s all round.

Daddy, what's that car?

In the middle of November we went into Keswick for the market, and to take Chrissy's laptop in for repairs. While browsing the market we noticed a rather unusual car was on display.
David and Ruth were most impressed, especially David, although I'm not sure if they really understood who Batman is...

The (English) Christmas Tree

Since we knew we would be away for Christmas, we only did a little bit of decorating this year - a small tree to help get the Christmas mood started.

We will Fly, we are flying, we have Flu...

It's happened to me often enough that I think Flu should be the official past tense of Fly....
It started Saterday night, left me bed-ridden all Sunday, and is now starting to wear off. I wonder how I would have faired if I hadn't had a flu vaccine back in November.

Chrissy has done a great job of taking care of me the last 30 hours or so. Thankyou love!

Over the Seas and Far Away

Christmas in America this year - We're here in one piece, and the children were great with all the travelling. The travel plan looked something like this:

Friday 19th December
00:00 Get in car for airport
03:00 Arrive at airport carpark & catch bus
03:30 Arrive at airport
04:00 Check in
06:10 Take off for Amsterdam
08:00 Arrive in Amsterdam
12:20 (13:20 Eurotime)Take off for America
21:15 (17:00 US time) Land at Dulles
22:40 (18:40 US time) Meet Peter & Patrice in Arrivals Hall
23:00 (19:00 US time) Leave Airport
24:00 (20:00 US time) Arrive at the house

By this time the kids were so worn out that they didn't even wake up when we got them out of the car, and we were soon all in bed.

Handprints in the Concrete

At the back end of October we had the insurance contractor come out to fix the cracked drain pipes under the house and at the back where they connect to the main sewer in the alley. I was in bed ill most of the time, but after the new concrete had been poured at the back of the house, Chrissytook the kids out and they all made handprints and signed their names.


I was most impressed when I noticed, and a little bit disappointed not to have been able to join them. Fortunatley for me, the concrete was just wet enough....
The thing sticking up is not actually part of the plumbing. This piece of concrete, and the sewer pipe under it, were broken by the council rubbish collection truck drving over it each week when they come to collect the rubbish. When we told the contractors about that, they decided to use a left-over piece of pipe, filled with concrete, as an improvised bollard to prevent a repeat breakage.

[editted for spelling]

All Done (30th October 2008)

Well, as you can see, the house painting is finished. Now we just have to get the insides sorted out

18th October 2008

Ruth was up very early on this particular morning, so we asked her to play quitely in her room or in the hallway until it was a proper time for getting up. Ruth decided that if everyone else was going to stay in bed, she would too, but not in her bedroom....
When I came out, I found that she had built herself a new bed in the hallway, complete with line of soft toys, and a tea set ready for breakfast.

There's a hole in my... ...floor!

29/10/2008 Thursday

Another building job started today - the insurance contractors arrived to start fixing the broken drains. There are two breaks to fix. One is in the flat sewer, and the break is actually under the house, while the other is at the back corner of the house, near where the house sewer joins the main sewer under the back alley. The outside breakage, we know the cause - every week the rubbish truck goes down the back alley to collect the rubbish, and most weeks, the drive over the little concrete paving strip that runs around the house to protect the drain. Over time, the weight of the truck has broken the concrete, and then the pipe below. The inside break we are not sure about - we'll need to see what it looks like when they get down there. It will probably take them a while, as it's under a concrete floor.

Almost done...

These pics are about 2 weeks old, and show you how close the painting is to done. All we need now is one more dry day to finish the job.
(The blue self-propelled advert is what the insurance gave us while our car was in the shop)

Thinking Politics

Well, since I've been too short of breath to move much, I've been doing a bit more websurfing than usual, and I ran into a fascinating little essay on politics I'd like to share. You can find it here.

*cough cough wheeeeeeeze....*

Well, it's now officially winter here. My first cold of the season arrived on friday, but decongestants and paracetalmol seemed to be keeping it at bay, then on Saterday it struck back. Three boxes of kleenex, loaded to the eyeballs with meds, and no energy. Then on Sunday night it got serious, and dragged my asthma into play. End result, I was up all night wheezing, and haven't been in to work yet this week.

I spent all of Monday sitting still as possible. Hitting the inhaler every 5-10 mins while waiting to go to the doctor. The doc told me that the cold was well on the way to going, and no signs of chest or sinus infection, just my asthma was now in overdrive. I was to keep on the ventolin (symptom relief) as much as I needed, and up my steroid dose from 2x2 to 3x3 or more.

Now, on Wednesday night, after 2.5 days living on the inhalers, I'm feeling somewhat better. I can walk between rooms without getting out of breathe, and even feel able to sleep tonight. So, all being well, back to work tomorrow, but keep the steroid dose high for the week.

The Car is back

Well, we got the car back yesterday, and you'd never know it was damaged in the first place. When I lifted the bonnet (hood, for ms US readers) to have a look at what they'd done, I was a bit confused at first, as I couldn't find the front cross-member, which had been dented. On closer inspection, I found that instead of running straight across the front as I had thought, it was curved outwards and ran inside the front bumper. Which means that the damage was worse than I had thought - instead of putting a small buckle into a straight member, Chrissy had actually managed to bend the entire member back against it's original curvature and displace it 6 to 8"

Ah well. Nobody was hurt and we have the car back now. Here's to a long time before the next repair.

Car update

OK, the garage has sent the repair estimate (~£2100+) to the insurance, and we are waiting for the insurance to give the go-ahead. For those who want details, this is the damage as I know it:

Front bumper - hole punched through it
Front cross-member - dented & buckled
Radiator - bent & punctured
A/C radiator - bent, maybe punctured
Assorted supporting brackets etc damaged

Mmmmm.......Tasty.......

Chrissy and Bowch made some gorgeous flapjack yesterday. They used treacle instead of golden syrup, which is a nice change.

I think I'll go and have a piece for breakfast.....

More building work

Now that everything has dried out, the insurance has sent round a builder to get the kitchen wall sorted out. The old plaster is now off, the kitchen is full of dust, and he's due back today to make a start on putting the new plaster up.

More painting.

Well. the paint shop got their mixing machine fixed, so yesterday Chrissy went up there and picked up the rest of the paint we need to get the outside house finished. If the weather holds, it should eb done in the nest few days.

Another hole....

But this time it's in the car.....

Chrissy had a "fender-bender" yesterday. She and the kids are fine, as it was a low speed bump. They were heading out to Graeme's on the back road. It's an unclassified road that's very narrow in places, and today there was a lot of muck on the road that had fallen off a tractor. A car coming the other way came over the hill in the middle of the road, and the car in front of Chrissy braked sharply. When Chrissy braked, she slid on the muck and went into the back of the car in front.

Nobody was hurt, but their tow-hitch punched a hole in our bumper and damaged the radiator, so our car is now off to the garage for a few days.

There's a(nother) hole in my roof!

(two weeks ago)

Well, the roofers have now started on the kitchen roof as well. The old roof was as bad as we had feared, but we'll do the details another time. For now, heres a pic of the roofers putting the new roof on,


and here's a pic of what happened when the roofers found out the hardway how weak the old roof was.....


One of the roofers put his foot on the wrong bit, and fell most of the way through, catching himself by his elbows! He wasn't hurt, just surprised and embarrassed! This photo was taken after the new roof and insulation had been put on, but shows what happened to the inside of the roof.

Feeding the ducks

Las weekend we went to Keswick for the day with Kay. We had a picnic by the lake and a walk in the woods, as well as a bit of shopping and getting Chrissy's laptop back from being repaired.
Here's a quick pick of the children feeding the ducks with the last of their sandwiches.

A new coat of paint

Good Morning everyone. It's been a while since I got around to putting anything up here, but it's not as bad as the old website was yet, I hope.

We have been very busy with the house renovations recently. Most of the major work is done, and we are now getting the outside of the house painted. Here's a few pics of how it's been coming along over the last week.



An this (below) is how it looks this morning. We've stalled a bit, as we have run out of green paint and the paint-mixer at the place we got it from is broken. We hope to get more paint this week coming at some point, so the painter can finish it off.

New Windows

Well, the newwindows went in today, about two weeks later than we were expecting. Here's a picture of the one in David's room.

We're back

Well, we're home, and mostly over the jet lag.
More to come soon, with photos.

Passport day

Well, for my first day in America, we had an early start, and ruched off down to DC to get Ruth a new passport. If you haven't already heard, when Chrissy got to the airport on the outbound flight, she found that Ruth's passport had expired. We'd simply forgotten than children only get 5-year passports. Chrissy managed to get Ruth onto the flight to America anyway, propably helped by the fact that Ruth was travelling on an American passport, but Ruth would not be able to leave America until she had a valid passport.

I had arranged for the documents needed to be couriered out to Chrissy, so that she could make the appointment with the State Department. It turned out that the best appointment available was the day after I arrived, so off we went.

Peter volunteered to drive us down to DC, and Patrice watched David for us. We were a bit late setting off, as we had to get new photos for Ruth, but we had all the forms filled in the night before, with a pre-paid mailer to get the passport sent back to us. Peter got us there well in time by taking a local road rather than following the Interstate all the way. We found a parking garage right next to the Passport Office, so Peter dropped us off at the door then went to park.

Once through security (show photo-ID, x-ray bags, metal detector arch, etc) we were in and out so quick that we were ready to leave by the time Peter got back from parking the car, about 15 mins at the most.

After that, we went down to the Mall to see the Lincoln Memorial, and had a walk by the refelcting pool, before heading home.

We stopped for lunch at Fuddruckers, the fancy end of burger bars, then drove home. By this point, every one was so tired that I drove the last 20 miles, and everyone else was asleep.

We will get Ruth's new passport delivered on Monday.

America....

13th August 2008

Well, I got here OK. My flight out of Glasfow left about an hour and a half late after a minor mechanical problem on the plane, but I still had just enough time to make my connection in Philadelphia. The flight was OK, but the airlines are still cutting costs - food portions were smaller, no complimentary alcohol, headphones were $5 a pair, etc

Drip.....Drip......Drip.....

Well, the plumbers arrived this morning to put the new bolier in, and joined me in cursing who ever installed the old heating system. They've been here about an hour now, and are still trying to work out what all the pipes do, and why there are two more than there should be.

There's a hole in my roof!

(but it's ok really - the roofers are taking the old slates off)

That's right, work on the new roof started today. I nipped home at lunch to collect a couple of things I had forgotten, to find that the entire back of the roof was stripped, and the roofers were just getting the last nails out before putting the felt on.

I'll put some photos up later if I can find the charger for the old camera.

4th August 2008

Home again

I drove up from Reading today, and stopped at Birmingham to see Aunty Pat & Uncle Ron. I hadn't warned them I was coming, so it was a big surprise for both of them. We had a nice chat and a cup of tea, then it was time to get back on the road.
I had a nice quiet run home. A good finish to a fun weekend.

Caldicot Castle Rock Festival

2nd August 2008

Caldicot Castle Rock Festival

I had an early start today as I needed to get some shopping done on the market, and was due at Caldicot, in south Wales by 5pm for the Rock festival. I got out of town about an hour later than I had hoped, but had a very fast run down. Some minor delays on the M6, but the M5 was clear all the way to Bristol, and I got my first experience of crossing the Severn on the big suspension bridge. I didn't measure it exactly, but it felt to be a bit over three miles long, and unlike many big bridges, you could see through the safety barriers and get a bit of the view. In the end, I got to Caldicot just after three, so I got some lunch and took a short tour of the castle before heading off to the concert field to make sure I would be at the front of the queue and get a good place once in.
The weather was hot & muggy, but there was an ice-cream van there to help out.

We got in just after five, and I ended up front-row-center, right where I'd hoped to be.
There were four bands on. Magnum, the headliners, are one of my all-time favourite bands, and the reason I'd come this far. They were supported by Get vegas, Rattlesnake Remedy and Bad Company 2008. I didn't know much about any of the support bands, other than that Bad Company 2008 will be playing Whitehaven while I'm in America.

Get Vegas were first up. They played a good set of mellow blues-rock. I was a little surprised, expecting something faster from a group who are still in their teens. It was good music, but I really wanted something livelier after so many hours in the car. I'll look out for them again though.

Rattlesnake Remedy livened things up nicely. They stormed onto the stage with a blistering heavy rocker to open with, and the pace never eased up. The singer had an interesting voice that reminded me somewhat of Alice Cooper; there was a similarly dirty, dangerous and seductive tone there.
The lead guitarist was one of the tallest people I've seen, and played with his Les Paul slung ridiculously low, and the whole band seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely, especially when they saw a young lad playing with a beachball, and got him to throw it up onto the stage to that thay could have a kickaround, first between themselves, then back and forward with the audience. I can't remember any of the songs clearly, but I very much enjoyed the show, and would definatley see them again.

Bad Company 2008 appears to be a partial reincarnation of 70's band Band Company. I'm not sure how much of the original lineup was present. Overall, I found them the worst band of the evening - they just felt like they didn't really want to be there. The musically they were OK, but even when they brought out a couple of the old hits, it didn't quite work, and the audience were very subdued.

Finally, at half-past nine, Magnum came on, and cliched though it may be, the crowd (me included) went wild. They opened with a brilliant rendition of Back To Earth, then ran through a good mix of concert staples and a number of rarer tracks before closing with their first hit, Kingdom of Madness.

The setlist, best I can remember, was as follows:
Back To Earth (not an album track)
When We Were Younger (Princess Alice & the Broken Arrow)
We All Need To Be Loved (Rock Art)
You'll Never Sleep (Princess Alice & the Broken Arrow)
Midnight (Vigilante)
The Spirit (Chase The Dragon) - a combined acoustic and electric version
Days Of No Trust (Wings of Heaven)
Wild Swan (Wings of Heaven)
Start Talking Love (Wings of Heaven)
Must Have Been Love (Wings of Heaven)
All England's Eyes (On A Storyteller's Night)
Vigilante (Vigilante)
Don't Wake The Lion (Wings of Heaven)
Kingdom of Madness (Kingdom of Madness)

Time for lots of updates.....

{placeholder for 28th July post coming soon}

Editted out....

Bank Holdiay Monday

We took the children down to Muncaster Castle for the day today. The weather was lovely, and we were almost organised, so we got out of the house just before noon. Once we got there, Chrissy checked out an electric buggy to save her legs, and we started off with a picnic lunch on the lawns, then decided that we would head up to the bluebell woods, come back via the wildflower meadow then finish with the owl center.
The bluebell woods were gorgeous - if there was another plant there other than the bluebells and the trees it was completely hidden. I always thought it was a cliche, but the wood was genuinly carpetted with bluebells. The children liked it too, and Chrissy got a bonus adventure out of driving the electric buggy back along a path that was definately not disabled-accessible!


After that, we did the Meadowvole Maze, then headed back for the owls. By this time, I was pretty exhausted, so we stopped at the stableyard for a short break. Chrissy and the children went round the shops while I had a rest (and a slice of cake) to restore my flagging energy.


After that, I took the children around the owls while Chrissy took a look at the garden center, a division of labour that made everyone happy. David was very enthusiastic - "look Daddy, another owl!" especially after we ran into one of the staff who was going round with a bucket of mice and a bucket of chicks, loading up the feeding areas in each cage. After I had told David what was going at each cage for a while ("The man is putting food in the aviaries for the owls."), David went up to him at the next cage and said "Man, what are you doing?"
For the most part, the owls don't feed immediatly, prefering to wait until they are unobserved, but in the hawk owl aviary, the two adults have just raised six chicks and none of them were willing to wait, so the children got a wonderful view of the two adults divvying up the chicks, and in one case, dismembering it and feeding it to one of the fledgling.

All in all, it was a great family day out.