We’re busy cleaning behind all the furniture as the removal guys will be coming on Tuesday to pack up all our stuff. Then we’ll be living with my parents for a few months whilst we find a new house in Manchester.
It’s our intention to publish things on the blog more often so that all our good friends in the South can keep up-to-date with the quest for the next Tea Towers. Once we’re established you’re all welcome to come and visit us 🙂
As most of you know, my job will be moving to Salford this Summer so this week we started the process of finding a new place to live. There are loads of places that we could pick but my desire to have a shortish commute to work and the fact that we don’t have a car (yet) has led us to South Manchester. It looks like we should be able to get a nice 3 bedroom house within our budget so we were happy with what we saw… now we just need to sell the existing Tea Towers.
Samuel has been on fine form all week, feeding of the attention off his grandparents. In the picture below you can see him in his best ‘love me’ pose.
love me
Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Christmas and apologise for the lack of updates here. Samuel has been ill for the best part of a month and we’re now on our second batch of antibiotics which will hopefully give him a Happy New Year.
Love to all family and friends,
Richard and Jessica.
It’s time for the first of our 2010 mince pie reviews… today we’re looking at Waitrose’s shortcrust mince pies.
Jessica says 8 out of 10
The pastry is softer than the usual pie,not as dry. The mince meat has worrying shapes in it, it’s crunchy and has all sorts of chewiness. Very nice.
Richard says 7 out of 10
A well filled pie with soft pastry. Let down a little by its appearance and tastes a bit too buttery.
Finally got the embedded video player working again… now I just have to find all the old broken posts.
We’re going through a hosting transition – everything will be back to normal soon.
Samuel recognises most of the characters “In the Night Garden” and has his own names for the characters which he shouts out when they’re on the screen.But strangely and perhaps worryingly:
Last night I managed to get him to shout Binky Bonk instead but I’m still curious as to why he felt the need to shout insults at a train.
Admittedly it’s not really white, but the wipe-able board in the kitchen attracted a fair bit of attention at our recent BBQ. We generally use the board to record silly quotes and occasionally a reminder but now the board is full and it’s time to wipe it clean. I thought I’d record the current content of the board here:
“Shall I call myself Polly and put on an apron?” – Me (allegedly)
“Let’s make like a raspberry and split” – Me
“I rule with an iron fist and a tickling stick” – Me
“Do they eat ants?” – My question about pigeons
“Probably – they’re like miniature raisins” – Jessica
“Sock rhymes with fox” – Jessica
“I’m a fidagree” – Me (no idea what that was about)
“Eee, they did for me those sausages” – My parents maintain I said this once but I didn’t
“Yoghurt, it’s like oil for your tummy machine” – Me
“You seep what you sow” – Me
“Is that the one where he goes to Mars and takes the lid off?” – Jessica describing “Total Recall”
“His Dad is a bit daft” – Jessica
“Can you put hot beverages in this cup?” – Cara
“Do you remember the time there was a sock on my foot” – Me
“Run, run as fast as you can, I am made of ginger” – Me
“I find cleaning my ears makes me feel like coughing” – Jessica
“It makes me close my eyes” – Cara
“It makes my tongue itchy” – suspected to be Thea
Sam enjoys the toys
Last week we spent a happy week up North at Center Parcs in the Lake District. We travelled up on the Friday and attended my cousins wedding on the Saturday. Samuel was reasonably quiet during the service except for the last bit where he was allowed to roam into a section of the church with toys… members of the congregation with good ears heard a crash, shortly followed by an “Oh oh” from Sam. At the reception Samuel played with the toys that his Great Aunt had bought for him and was fascinated by the disco where he spent a while doing his signature dance.
Sam relaxing in his trailer
On the Monday we made the 2 hour drive to the Whinfell Forest ‘branch’ of Center Parcs. Samuel brought a healthy supply of minions in the form of Cara, Nick and his Grandparents. Our lodge was reasonably close to the village centre so we didn’t have to use our bikes too much. We enjoyed our last Center Parcs trip but this one was even better as Samuel is walking around and could enjoy things like the little trolleys in the park market. Everything was quite busy as it was half-term but we got the chance to play a bit of badminton and discovered that I’m rubbish at table tennis. Whinfell is a red squirrel conservation zone and we had spotted quite a few of them during our five day stay. It’s the first time I’ve seen the (smaller) red squirrel – they seemed much more bouncy than their grey cousins, jumping about all over the place.
Archery pros
We had a lovely time and I think the minions did too. Me and Jessica got to have a bit of free time, trying out some archery and ensuring that Jessica got her standard strawberry and cream frappuccino. Samuel always develops a huge amount when there are so many people around to pay him attention.When we started the holiday he was saying around 5 different words and now he’s approaching 30 words – the days of everything being a car seem to be behind us 🙂
Recently we borrowed a Wheely Bug from the toy library and it was so good that we had to buy one for Samuel. He loves his new toy and I highly recommend it as an indoor toy for young kids. The website is here.