Still snowy in Kingswood
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The last month & Happy New Year
There has been a definite lull in my activity on the blog over the last month so I thought I’d give a quick digest of what I’ve been up to.
Samuel with one of his new toys
First of all there was Christmas… we were lucky enough to have my parents to visit this year so Samuel got to spend Christmas day with Grandad and Grandma. Jessica prepared a lovely Christmas dinner and Samuel had a great time with so many people there to entertain him. I have a mountain of chocolate to get through post Christmas and have so far only dented the surface.
This was before I had a drink
For New Years Eve, Cara and Nick took time out of their busy social calendar to spend the last evening of the decade with me and Jessica. As Samuel slept soundly we made some predictions for 2020 and enjoyed a game of Taboo whilst eating Pizza and a hastily assembled cheese board. We pulled the last of the festive crackers and I invented Elton-vision (above).
He enjoyed himself, honestly
On New Years Day we went to Kelsey park where Sam had a go on the swings and I fed the squirrels. The squirrels in the park are really tame and a lot of people bring nuts along to feed them by hand.
Squillie enjoys a cashew
We’re hoping that 2010 will be a quiet year for our family so we can enjoy all Sam’s milestones and have a bit of a rest after our marriage-house-baby stress marathon. Things at work are all change with a move from Kingswood to W12 and a challenging project taking a lot of my time. I hope that you had a great holiday and are looking forward to an exciting year too.
Happy New Year!
When things are quiet…
When things go quiet in our house you need to start looking to see what Samuel is up to. Whilst Jessica’s back was turned last night Samuel decided to investigate one of the food cupboards and managed to achieve this.
This would make a good advert
HDResearch and Development
I’ve been playing with my new DSLR camera and wanted to try some HDR photography. The image below is produced from three different images which I combined using a piece of software called Qtpfsgui. I was going for a different look but quite by accident generate this painting-like image which shows the BBC’s R&D department (my current place of work).
Looks like it was drawn
Samuel likes chocolate
Samuel wanted more buttons
Well there’s a surprise! Jessica and I made a lovely chocolate cake for Samuel’s birthday but when we offered him some he didn’t seem to like it. We started to wonder… have we got a baby that doesn’t like chocolate?
Yesterday we had round 2, offering Sam some chocolate buttons. The buttons had been in the fridge so when I put the first one in his mouth he let it fall out into my hand. Again wondering if Sam mightn’t become a chocoholic (like his parents) I tried once more. This time the button melted a little and Samuel took some time to consider the new taste sensation – shortly after he decided he did like chocolate after all and was treated to a few more buttons.
Group photo fail
Click for full-size
Last weekend Cara and Nick were kind enough to invite us over for a make-your-own-pizza session at their flat. I made a very nice mushroom, chicken and chorizo pizza and suitably nourished we set off to visit a local farmers market.
The farmers market was to be held in a local park and a large sign outside advertised that it ran from 10am until 8pm. Strangely none of us questioned why a market would run for 10 hours on a Sunday but we soon found that it only ran until 3. Having missed the market thanks to someone’s creative graffiti we looked for something else to do.
Sam had a go in the play-park before draining a bottle of aptamil and going to sleep. The ‘adults’ had an ice cream and went to play on what appeared to be some kind of assault course.
There are quite a few pictures from the day which we’ll get round to putting in the photo library soon. However, I wanted to share this one where we attempted to take a group photo on some parallel bars. The plan was simple – I would set the 10 second timer, run and vault onto the bars – taking my place in the photo. I completely failed, bouncing off the bar and landing on my rear. After this Jessica suggested that she could initiate the photo as she didn’t have to do any gymnastics to get in shot – how sensible 🙂
Bluebell railway
Steam train
Last weekend we decided to take a trip to see the Bluebell railway near East Grinstead. We packed up a picnic lunch and made the slightly awkward (bus-train-bus) trip to Kingscote station where we boarded a steam train to Sheffield Park station. I’ve heard people discussing the railway before but wasn’t prepared for the scale of the project – there are three stations and at least three different trains running. You can see pictures from the visit in our picture gallery.
After arriving at Sheffield park station we found a picnic area where we had sandwiches (Sam had a jar of food) and fended off a bunch of determined ducks before setting off for the nearby National Trust park. I was a bit disappointed with the park as the waterfalls and cascades had all dried up for the summer 🙁 However, there were a lot of interesting trees and Jessica was excited to spot a Tea-van.
Choo chooo!
To 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
After 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
Sam 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.