Merry Christmas everyone. We hope you get the presents you wanted and the New Year starts well.
Sam untangles the lights
Merry Christmas 2013
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Author Archives: Richard
Daddy’s little helpers
We finally admitted defeat and decided we had too many books to go on our single bookshelf… so we bought another Billy bookcase. I tried to build the case whilst Emily was sleeping but she woke up in the latter stages and insisted on giving me a hand.
Emily was delighted with the hammer.
Sam helped too.
Emily’s nap
Recently I purchased the camera add-on for the Raspberry Pi and eager to find an initial project, I took inspiration from a time-lapse video that I saw on-line. Once I’d tested it out I decided to place it Emily’s room to find out what happens in the time that she is supposed to be napping.
The video below shows exactly what happens… the camera took a shot every 10 seconds and the video plays at 12 frames per second i.e. every second of video corresponds to two minutes of real time.
Emily was ‘napping’ for 90 minutes but as you can see, the first 30 minutes was spent reading and generally messing around. During this ‘nap’ Jessica didn’t hear a peep from Emily so assumed she was asleep throughout.
Center Parcs
Having missed out on holidays due to moving and the birth of Emily… we’ve promised ourselves at least two weeks of holiday this year. Last week we spent 5 days at the Sherwood Forest Center Parcs. We booked a 6-person villa which easily accommodated the family and my Mum and Dad. Through some fluke of the booking process I managed to get a villa very close to the centre so the bikes that we’d hired felt a bit redundant.
We took Sam’s bike along as he is getting pretty good on it. He still has a bit of trouble stopping but he can now ride pretty well without me supporting him.
Sam riding at Center Parcs
It was great to see all the animals at Center Parcs. There were plenty of rabbits, ducks, geese, bats and squirrels that could be seen from the villa’s ‘lounge’. Samuel quickly learnt what a Moorhen looks like and was keen to point out any that he saw.
Coot and young
As always, there are loads of activities and Samuel had his first go at 10-pin bowling and crazy golf. Emily joined in with the bowling and had her first proper taste of swimming which she eventually learned to like. And with all these activities on offer… what was the highlight for Samuel?
Breakfast time
The holiday cereal of course! We always buy a variety pack on holiday and this is often the only thing that Sam remembers.
Yorkshire Puds
Today I thought I’d have my first go at making Yorkshire Puddings. As I was born in Yorkshire I felt a lot of pressure to produce some reasonable puddings so was a little nervous about trying. As you can see from the pictures… they turned out OK and I think I could make them even better next time.
Well risen
I used a recipe from Sainsburys with a batter of 75g plain flour, 2 eggs and 100ml semi-skimmed milk. I cooked them in a muffin tray but had to devote a whole oven to them as they need 220 degrees. Everyone seemed to enjoy them and I think they will be a permanent part of future roasts should you be able to share one with us soon.
On the plate with the rest of the roast
Balance
Both Samuel and Emily have needed to practice their balancing this weekend. After a long wait, Emily has started walking as can be seen in the video below.
As you can see, she is still having difficulty with her feet but she is getting better at it each day. On average she doesn’t fall over half as often as she did in the video. Now she is getting finally getting the hang of it she is wants to walk all the time and I’m sure it won’t be long before she starts to run.
Meanwhile, Samuel has got his first bike and is busy trying to acquire the valuable skill of being able to ride. We’ve decided to try without stabilisers to begin so Samuel can learn to balance the bicycle. After two days of trying things are going O.K. but I keep having to remind Samuel to look where he is going and not at the pedals.
In the end we got the bike from eBay for the princely sum of £18. It needs a bit of TLC (new brake levers and a new freewheel) but I think it’ll be just fine. If you’re after a cheap bike for the kids then I recommend trying Long Lane Garden Centre.
Sam and his new bike
On the move
Biking in the snow
During the weekend before Easter I went up to Scotland to try out one of the trail centres up there. The trip had been arranged for some time as me and Dan wanted to make sure we got the nicer weather of spring. Obviously we didn’t get the weather we wanted… but we gave it a go anyway.
The trail centre is in Glentress Forest and promises some of the best mountain biking in the UK. We arrived to find a relatively clear car park but the snow on the trails was already 15cm deep and only got deeper as we climbed higher.
Dan climbs through the forest
The going was OK if you stuck to the foot wide channel that some other riders had carved into the snow. Deviating from the track meant a battle with the handlebar and pedals to get out of the deeper snow (before you had to plunge your foot into a drift). Once we reached the height of the Buzzards car park it was difficult to get much higher. We had a quick go on “Berm baby berm” but most of the berms were un-rideable and had to be waded round.
Wrapped up warm
At least the run down from Buzzard’s to the car was good – so good that we repeated the climb so that we could do it again. I had a good time but I look forward to returning to the trails in better weather one day.
Makes a good bike stand though
Samuel’s jokes
Samuel has been telling quite a few jokes lately. They seem to revolve around the theme of “Why did the <thing> walk?” and the answer is often related to whatever he is looking at or has just happened.
Sam jokes from the past include:
What happens if you have doughnuts with chocolate on top? You’ll get poorly.
Why does a cow walk through water? To get to his hay.
What do you call a firework that laughs? A bachooaa.
And all these were told just now (as I was writing this post):
Why did the sky walk? To get down from the Sun and the clouds to find a picture of the baby.
Why did the Sun walk? To fix the wires.
Why did the computer walk? To put on the computer.
Why did the salt walk? To move the mouse on the computer.
The blog now lives at Tea Towers
You may not have noticed but the site looks a little bit different to how it did a month ago. I’ve been making some changes to the way the website is hosted. Until recently the files that make up this website were stored on a server in America… but now they’re on a tiny computer under the TV in our lounge. Yep, the whole site is now hosted on a Raspberry Pi.
I’ve included a picture of it below. You shouldn’t notice any real difference but I enjoyed making the changes – it was an interesting project.
Christmas time
We decided that we’d start Christmas today at Tea Towers. The Christmas tree is up and decorated and we’re hoping that our ingenious move of putting the tree on a table will prevent little hands from interfering.
Jessica is going to redistribute the decorations this evening as Samuel favoured the approach of putting all his decorations on one branch. It’s not immediately evident in the picture but Sam decorated the lower right.
