We wanna be… Smiiiiiiths Crisps!

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Remember that?

Anyway, in a departure from the usual blog stuff I have some snack news. I finally managed to track down all the new Walkers flavours and me and Jessica have tried four of them so far.

  • Builder’s breakfast – do not try these unless the concept of egg crisps sounds good to you.
  • Chilli and chocolate – I managed to eat a few of these but the cocoa flavour doesn’t fit with crisps.
  • Cajun Squirrel – nice but nothing brilliant… like a mild Worcestershire sauce.
  • Crispy duck and hoi sin – the best yet… pretty much captures the taste.

Visitors from down the road

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Sam, Karen and MaiaOur very good friends Karen, Sean and Maia have finally managed to make it all the way down the road from northeast Scotland to visit us. They stopped off in a nearby hotel and spent Sunday and this morning with us before continuing their journey down to Kent.

Maia has really gotten big since we saw her last and she is much chattier with you now, which is great apart from sometimes it is a bit hard to work out what she is trying to say as she has a slight northern/southern accent which can be a little confusing. That didn’t stop her from having a good time though and she really enjoyed playing with Rich who always seems to hit it off with the girls ;-p.

We all got a chance to catch up and apart from forgetting to buy any food for Maia’s dinner everyone else ate well (Maia did get some yummy toast though – we must try to do better next time!) as Rich made his celebrated Chicken Jambalaya which went down a treat. Karen got plenty of chances to huggle Sam which she seemed to enjoy quite a bit (who can blame her?) though she managed to resist the temptation to take Sam away with her so I guess having a two year old really is more than enough to be getting on with!

Karen and co. also popped round this morning to say hi quickly before they all trouped off down to Dover – it was really great to see them all again and hopefully it won’t be as long between the next visit to meet up with them.

Playground fun

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Thea, Katie & MarcusIt seems like it has been quite a while since we caught up with Thea, Marcus and little Katie so today they came round to Tea Towers to partake of a delicious roast dinner followed by a whole lot of tearing around the local playground.

The food was pretty darn good – and there was plenty of it which is always important with a roast. We also had some very nice chocolate torte for dessert which Katie enjoyed so much she went round all of us trying to get a bit of ours too! Once we had started to feel a little less stuffed we thought it a good idea to wander over to a very exciting playground that Rich and I discovered in our travels recently. Katie loved it and spent most of the time there rushing from one exciting climbing/swinging thing to another with us older kids trailing after her.

Hopefully we’ll get the rest of the photos up in the photo gallery soon as there are some really fun photos of us all reverting to acting like children.

James meets Sam

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James with SamSam was very happy to have yet another visitor this evening – our good friend James made his way over here just to meet our little Sam. It looks like James is another lovely guy who knows what to do with a tiny person – just look how comfortable and casual Sam looks with him. I’m sure it has nothing whatsoever to do with Sam receiving a new teddy bear from James…

We all enjoyed a tasty ‘Spicy chicken and peanut’ stir fry made by my own fair hand followed by a good bowl full of ice cream – yum! I think I’m getting a bit of a taste for this entertaining lark – any excuse for a good tasty meal I say! After dinner Sam was good enough to sit and bounce in his chair while the big kids talked about what mischief they got up to as young’uns. It turns out that James was very much an engineer from a very young age and I even discovered some extra geekery about Rich’s childhood. I wonder if Sam will end up the same way, playing with computer programming or taking apart old telephones? I must say I did feel a little out of my league in the conversation – it would seem that Librarians as kids are pretty normal and don’t feel the desire to know how everything around them works.

I’ll keep a close eye on Sam for you all just in case any early engineer tendencies start to manifest themselves.

A room with a view

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Mirror, mirrorYesterday Rich and I came to agree that Sam really is looking a little bit too big for his moses basket and that we really should start putting him down in the big cot bed. We’ve been trying to get the basket to last as long as possible as we can’t fit the cot bed in our room, and we’ve done quite well really as Sam is almost 5 months old now and most babies grow out of their baskets at 3 months.

So last night Sam spent his first night in his own bedroom and after setting up the baby monitor and saying good night Rich and I returned to our own room where we lay awake wondering if Sam was okay. After about 20 minutes of not being able to get to sleep we tiptoed over to Sam’s doorway and peeped in to see Sam fast asleep – phew! Sam slept until 4.30pm when he woke up and wanted his dummy and after providing him with this he kindly let me get back to sleep until his morning feed.

Hopefully Sam continues to be okay in his new room – if not then I’ll just have to cut holes in the bottom of his basket so that he can stretch his legs 🙂

Samuel’s room

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Last night me and Jessica took the big step of letting Samuel sleep in his own room. He’s threatening to burst out of his Moses basket and so it’s time to promote him to his cot bed. There is no way his cot will fit in our room so we had to put him in his own room. We’ve done our best to make it interesting… transferring his trusty mobile onto the new cot and creating a constellation of glow-in-the-dark sheep on the wall and ceiling.

I was surprised at how nervous me and Jessica were last night. Lay in bed with Samuel in the room next door, straining our ears to hear anything from the baby monitor. It’s hard to describe and you can probably only empaphise if you’re a parent too. If Samuel is sleeping then all is well but that doesn’t provide much in the way of evidence via the baby monitor. In the end I went to check he was OK and found him happily sleeping in his basket in his cot. The next step will be to remove the basket from the equation….

Sam gets visitors

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Kathy, Alex & SamKing Sam is shown in this photo with his loyal subjects the Lady Kathy and Sir Alex. He summoned them to visit him in his royal dwelling at lunch time where they were required to entertain him for an afternoon.

Sadly Sir Alex had to fight his way through some terrible traffic on his noble stead and in the process both he and the fair lady Kathy got very numb derrieres. Once they arrived Sam’s other minions (the wench Mum and the rascal Dad) provided the tired travellers with beverages and victuals to refresh them.

Much was discussed during the visit and Lady Kathy even got presented with a small token of appreciation in acknowledgment of her recent anniversary of birth.

Hopefully King Sam will summon the good Lady Kathy and kindly Sir Alex again some time soon – either that or he will probably get his minions to take him out in his carriage for a royal visit instead.

Sam makes himself heard…

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Reading SamAfter a quick dash round to baby group in the morning Sam and I went off to visit the folks at work and say farewell to my old manager who was retiring. Sam was much admired by all the engineers and happily smiled at everyone who said hi to him until the big boss at work stood up to make a speech…

It was at that point that Sam decided that he had a few things of his own to say and tried to join in a few times but thankfully everyone seemed quite amused. Sam then got a few hugs by some of the ladies present and after he had thrown up a bit of milk over one of them I felt that enough damage had been done so we headed off back home.

Sam’s weigh in

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Baby blueSam excited to be able to tell you that he now weighs a substantial 5.79kg (12lb 12 oz).

Sam is shown on the left modelling his new baby hat that was very kindly made for him by one of Rich’s mum’s friends. I’ll try and get a better shot of him in it soon for you as he looks so cute in it (but for some reason also reminds me slightly of ‘Ming the merciless’…)

Hooray for pancakes!

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Proud RichAh – pancake day – you’ve been well missed!

To help me develop a decent appetite for the long awaited pancakes I dashed off to my yoga class this evening and was made to hold all kinds of new and unusual positions (most of which made me feel as though some part of me was about to snap). I’m not sure if the benefit of doing a yoga class then gets outweighed by eating pancakes – but it had to be done.

Rich and I took turns to make our own pancakes, however Rich did not do his the proper way and flipped his with the help of a spatular. Consequently all of his pancakes turned out perfectly and in one piece, while mine were equally tasty but not at all photogenic. Just look at Rich here gazing in admiration at one of his pancakes – huh! I think I had more fun making mine even though I’m now going to have to go and clean the hob…

Happy pancake day everyone – may all your pancakes be fluffy and light!