Author Archives: Jessica

BBQing at Tea Towers

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Before the hordes descended

As the grass is starting to turn a fetching shade of brown and all the school children are just about to be released from their classes we decided it was time for our (now annual) summer BBQ. So after giving the house a thorough clean and with some help from one of our lovely neighbours to erect a marquee we were ready to receive all our guests.

We were lucky with the day we picked for the event as the weather couldn’t have been nicer, so sunny with a touch of a breeze to stop you over heating. With the aid of the marque we were able to have a lot of our guests gather outside – fortunate really as there just wouldn’t have been room for everyone in Tea Towers itself.

The hungry hordes descend

Rich manned the BBQ and kept all our hungry guests well supplied with burgers, sausages and some rather tasty teryaki chicken kebabs. While he was out slaving over the burning coals I was rushing about the kitchen trying to make sure all the guests had cold drinks/jacket potatoes/forks and anything else they wanted. (Apologies to any guests I may have snapped at – I sometimes get a little carried away when hostessing!)

Once all the food had been cooked I treated myself to a nice glass of wine and started to relax and enjoy the party properly. Sam spent most of his time running backwards and forwards, usually after one of the other kids that was there and enjoyed himself so much that he barely had time to come past and say hi to his mum. The guests all seemed to have a lovely time too, there was plenty of chatter and laughter around the house and apart from having to occasionally kick helpful guests out of my kitchen I think they all went home happy.

Thank you all so much for coming and making our party a success – we loved having you all and will now have fun trying to drink through all the alcohol you left behind…

Samuel has an enquiring mind

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Samuel learning about water dynamics

Last week Sam and I made a visit to the Science museum as we had heard very good things about an area that they have in the basement called “The Garden“. The area is really aimed at 3 year olds+ but a lot of the interactive displays seemed to appeal to Sam anyway. He especially loved the water course that they had where you could block off the flow of water through a number of different runs and see how it effected the flow of water… however I think the main appeal for Sam was playing with the boats and splashing.

There is a great section with large soft lego pieces and a winch for getting beanbags to the top of a flume before sending them plummeting back down. They’ve also got some musical bits – in fact Sam enjoyed playing with a set of buttons that played different notes so much that I had to practically drag him away so that we didn’t miss the bubble show.

One of Sam’s newest words is ‘bubble’ and he really loves watching them and chasing them… however I was worried at the start of the show that we would get kicked out as the children were asked not to stand up or pop any bubbles… oh ooooh. However Sam seemed to be mesmirised by the show and all the other children sitting so well that he wasn’t a problem. We both enjoyed wafting bubbles to keep them in the air and the finale of the huge bubble that were made encasing a couple of children was also very impressive.

We both had a great day out and hopefully will return some time soon bring daddy with us 🙂

Vrooom!

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Every day Sam seems to be picking up something new and in the last week we seem to be starting to get more attempts at talking. Sam can currently say Dadda, no, vroom and most recently – car. No mamma yet – not unless he is complaining when I get a ma ma ma ma type annoyed noise, but hopefully some day.

Sam loves cars. He loves the little cars that are part of his garage, he pushes these along surfaces and says vroom quietly to himself. He really loves the big Early Learning Centre cars that are at a number of the play groups that we go to, he can’t drive them forwards yet but he enjoys beeping the horn and walking it backwards through anything that is foolish enough to be behind him. So we really shouldn’t have been too surprised when he happily repeated ‘car’ to us the other day, and now it seems to be his favourite word.

Samuel also seems to be quite happy to watch the Grand Prix with his daddy which should be handy as we are going to be having it on a lot now that the season has started again and won’t be finishing until November. Maybe having Sam listening to the Grand Prix while he was still in my tummy started all this interest in cars for Sam – I just hope he doesn’t grow up wanting to drive formula 1 cars…

Blogging break

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Yikes – it’s been simply ages since I last posted! I’m very sorry loyal readers for not keeping you more up to date with the day to day happenings here at Tea Towers, I must try to do better. With all the changes that Rich has been working on to improve the look of the blog I thought it was high time that I did a new post before you all forgot about me.

Looking back at the blog it seems that my last post was back in August last year about our trip out to the Bluebell railway and since then Rich has been keeping you informed. In those 7 months much has happened and much has stayed the same. We’ve had Sam’s first Birthday, a trip out to Center Parcs, Christmas (and all the associated Christmas panic), Rich’s 30th as well as tons of Sam events like his first steps, first pair of shoes, first hair cut and lot’s of other new events that seem to happen almost daily.

Sam and I are still keeping ourselves mostly out of mischief and spend a lot of time visiting the nearby baby groups as well as socialising with other mums when we can. Today, for instance we went into town to get lunch out with a group of mums at Pizza Express. Sam enjoyed being in his high chair for the first hour, after which he just wanted to wander around the restaurant and see who he could get smiles from. He is as gorgeous as ever and still seems to charm everyone he meets.

Choo chooo!

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Sam and RichTo help us celebrate the long awaited bank holiday weekend we decided that a trip out on a steam train would be just the thing so this morning we set off to find one.

Luckily there was just the thing running – the wonderful Bluebell Railway which uses a piece of track from East Grinstead through to Sheffield park. On this bit of track they run a number of steam engines which have a range of different carriages and services. We got a day pass ticket and went off on the line to Sheffield park and after a quick stop for lunch headed off to find the nearby Sheffield park garden.

The gardens are very lovely and impressively were the work of the famous landscaper ‘Capability’ Brown. We admired a number of views across a large waterlily covered lake to the beautiful (but unfortunately private) manor house which looked like it was straight from a film version of one of Jane Austen’s books. While wandering round the many paths we also happened upon a fantastic little tea van that was thoughtfully provided to keep the park visitors refreshed. Rich climbed one of the largest trees that I’ve possibly ever seen and also did a very good duck impression that I make me smile for some time to come.

After such excitements it was time to head back to catch the last train from Sheffield park to East Grinstead. More photos were taken of the trains and we also managed to secure a private booth to ourselves. Be sure to check out the lovely photos in the new and improved photo gallery.

Visiting Katie and Aedan

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Aedan and Sam looking cuteAfter hearing about how my friend Katie has really gotten into baking recently Sam and I decided it was high time we paid her and her gorgeous son Aedan a visit. Now that Sam and I seem to have longer journeys with the pushchair down to a fine art we will hopefully be making more effort to go visiting friends during the week.

Little Aedan is toddling around like a pro now and with his cute smile and pretty eyes is very good at getting into mischief and then charming his way out of it. Sam seemed to enjoy watching his antics and was happy to play with whatever toys Aedan found for him.

Sam also enjoyed the attention he received from Katie’s friendly dog Jupiter who did a good job of keeping us all well licked which Sam found good fun (me not so much…). We went out for a good walk with Jupiter plus another dog during which we managed to get the boys to sleep so when we got back we sat down to a nice cup of tea. Katie brought out some very tasty cakes that she had made just the other day and the pretty flowers on the top were almost too nice to bite into.

Thanks so much for having us Katie, we are sure to be back soon, especially if there is more baking going on 🙂

Sam’s weigh in

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Sam with CookieSam is delighted to announce that his current weight now is 9.20 kg (20 lb 4 oz).

His growth on the chart seems to now be completely ignoring any of the curves it should be following and is just steadily going up in more of a diagonal direction. However, as the health centre people seem happy with this then we are also pleased. I’m thinking that once Sam decides to perhaps try crawling somewhere for a change or failing that have a go at walking then his weight gain will slow down again.

More fun at Kelsey park

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Why hello Thea!

Why hello Thea!

Ah Kelsey park – how I do enjoy popping in to see you 🙂

Yup, yet again today I found myself visiting Kelsey park again, this time with my sister Thea, little Katie and Cara. The park was as lovely as ever and the weather was also pretty perfect for sitting out with a picnic. We treated ourselves to some food from M&S and had a good lunch before needing to visit the play park.

Katie had a good time meeting some of the other children (at one point climbing over another little girl in her attempt to scale the helter skelter without using the stairs) while Sam spent some time having a good swing. After Katie’s exertions in the park she needed a bit of a rest and it seemed that only Cara would do.

Thanks for spending the day with us Thea, Katie and Cara, Sam and I had a great time 🙂

Farm fun

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Thankfully the Children’s centre that Sam and I go to have started back again and today we joined two of the staff members as well as some other mums with little ones for a visit to a fantastic city farm. Sadly I forgot to bring along the camera so I have no photos of Sam with some of the animals we meet there. We saw some cute baby turkeys (or poults as they are called), hens, ducks, horses, loads of different chaffinchs, rabbits, pigs, goats and sheep. There were horse rides for some of the older children as well as feeding time and a time slot for petting some of the rabbits and other smaller animals.

Unfortunately we had to cut our trip short as I had been a bit daft and forgot to bring Sam’s beaker along. However we will definitely come back to this park as Sam gets bigger and spend much more time saying hello to all the animals.

If you went down to Nonsuch park today…

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Park fun… you were bound to get a surprise.

For every one who once worked with me,

and now has their own baby to bring,

came to Cheam park to all join in a big picnic.

(it kinda follows the tune for teddy bears picnic if you really try)

What started out as being a small outing to meet up with Joh, Eleanor and Clare turned out being a lovely gathering that also included two other work colleagues. Chris was there with her son William and stepson Ewan and it was great to see how much bigger the two boys are now since the last time I saw them. Mike also came along with baby Ivy who is pretty close in age to Sam. Mike is taking a break from work to have a go at looking after Ivy full time so we were all pretty impressed with how he was doing.

We all had some tasty picnic food and then headed off to the play park so that the older two boys could have a good run round while us adults and babies could chatter away. I really enjoyed the chance to catch up with so many friends so many thanks to Clare and Joh who organised it.