At the weekend I finally took the opportunity to explore the area on my bike. Sale Water Park is nearby so I rode up there and did a lap of the lake – it’s a nice area to walk around and the paths are buggy friendly so if you visit us we might take you up there.
Ideally I’d like to explore further West along the Mersey (in picture) but that’ll have to wait until I next find time to get on the bike.
Mersey tributary
After two trips to Ikea (left the legs in the trolley first time) we have a new high chair for Emily. She is now ready to start weaning and try her first ‘solid food’.
Emily impatiently awaits her food
Emily really enjoyed her new food which was quite a contrast to our experience with Samuel 3 years ago. Now if Emily can just master keeping the food in her mouth, meal times will be a lot cleaner.
Yummy
Quicker Mummy - I'm hungry!
A Happy New Year to all our family and friends.
I took a picture of one of the presents that Jessica made for me this Christmas and I wanted to share it with you guys as I thought it was quite good. Jessica made both the Angry Bird (or cross bird if you are Samuel) and the Pig in the photo below.
The Angry Bird ricochets of the Pig's tower
Merry Christmas from everyone at Tea Towers.
There has been very little sleep here at Tea Towers due to the arrival of our daughter Emily. Both Jessica and Emily are doing really well despite the mini-heatwave we find ourselves in at the moment. Jessica and I were very relieved to see that the (scan) prediction was correct and that we had a baby girl. We’re really pleased to have the family we hoped for with one of each.
Emily in hospital
We’ve been trying to adjust to the difficult task of caring for a newborn and, whilst we’re better at it second time around, we have the added complication of keeping our first born happy. Samuel has welcomed baby sister and has given her a cuddly rabbit as a present. However, I have seem him quickly pick up all his cars when I carry Emily into the room so he isn’t in the mood for sharing yet.
Emily napping this afternoon
I hope that we’ll soon be settled enough in our routine to let everyone meet Emily… but in the meantime just spare a thought for us when you’re enjoying a full night of sleep.
Our new sign
We’re now getting fairly well settled in our new home. There’s still plenty to do but we’ve got all the essentials in place so anyone who wants to visit us is more than welcome. Unfortunately, we can’t offer a place to stay unless your comfortable with the concept of a lilo-style airbed.
If you want our new address or land-line number, let us know on e-mail or mobile and we’ll give it to you. The picture on the right is the new name sign that Jessica has made which is hanging in our porch. The area is very nice and pretty quiet but we’re starting to feel like we’re the only family who doesn’t have a car on their drive. I think I’ll eventually have to buy one as it seems to be an essential part of life up here. The Manchester tram system is poor when compared to the Croydon one we used to know, but it’s just about managing to get me to work.
Hope you can visit soon.
Well it was a rainy bank holiday weekend but we had to make at least one trip out each day to avoid Samuel climbing the walls. However, one huge advantage of being back at the family home is that there are plenty of scenic places within walking distance.
Samuel loves the open space
Already popular are the woods at the end of the road and the car-splash (ford), where Sam watches each car go through before demanding “again!” – expecting me to magically produce another vehicle on the road.
On Monday we had a look for somewhere we could get to on the bus which severely limited our choice. In the end we chose Bradford and the National Media Museum where they were having a pirate event in celebration of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film. We got there a bit early and found (unsurprisingly) that there isn’t that much for 2.5 year old to do in the museum… but Sam did have a lot of fun in the video game area due to the huge number of buttons that were waiting to be pressed.
Sam and I try the original Mario Kart
I had a great time when Jessica found that her generously donated 50p bought me a long session on Point Blank 2 (I got on the scoreboard!).
My partner had issues with the colour of the gun
The pirate fun wasn’t quite ready so we made a quick trip up to the more interactive exhibits upstairs and Samuel learnt about refraction pressed lots of buttons. Finally Samuel got to make his pirate hat and flag which he was very pleased with.
Shiver me timbers
That brought us nicely up to lunchtime when we found that Bradford has very little to offer the hungry family… or maybe we were just in the wrong part.
I’ve finally got round to uploading the photos from our final trip to the play cafe. You can find them here but you’ll need to get the password from Me or Jessica if you want to be able to download them. You need to right-click on the link and select “save target as” – you’ll then be able to download the ZIP file that holds all the photos.
This is a photo I took looking out over Huddersfield from a spot near to where we are living at the moment. Samuel has been even more active than usual which I put down to the improved air quality up here 😉
We’ll be restarting our house hunt soon and hopefully moving to the (much flatter) South of Manchester. Jessica will like the lack of hills but the views won’t be as good.
Jessica thinks hills are great
This morning we opened the Tea Towers food shop to get rid of some of the food that we have left over before the move.
Tasty food at tasty prices
We managed to get rid of most of the stock and are now trying to prepare the house for the movers tomorrow. Things are going well but I’m really shocked by how much we’d managed to hide in the loft. Samuel’s room is now full of loftware.
Trading standards disagreed with our Buy One, Get a Toddler Free promotion.