Merry Christmas everyone. We hope you get the presents you wanted and the New Year starts well.
Sam untangles the lights
Merry Christmas 2013
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Daddy’s little helpers
We finally admitted defeat and decided we had too many books to go on our single bookshelf… so we bought another Billy bookcase. I tried to build the case whilst Emily was sleeping but she woke up in the latter stages and insisted on giving me a hand.
Emily was delighted with the hammer.
Sam helped too.
Birthday BBQ
We had a really lovely day for our Tea Towers summer BBQ – can’t quite believe just how sunny it has been here over the last week.
The gazebo (once we managed to get it up) did a great job of keeping the sun off those enjoying the garden. We also had the paddling pool out which was very, very popular with all the kids who spend hours splashing and jumping in and out of it. Rich did a great job with cooking up burgers, sausages and tasty kebabs on the BBQ while various friends helped out with the washing up in the kitchen.
Thanks to all the friend who came and made the day so much fun.
Number of candles does not equal age.
We’ve got some lovely photos of the kids all jumping about in the pool – so if you want to have copies of any photos we have of your little ones just let me know and I’ll email them out to you.
Emily’s nap
Recently I purchased the camera add-on for the Raspberry Pi and eager to find an initial project, I took inspiration from a time-lapse video that I saw on-line. Once I’d tested it out I decided to place it Emily’s room to find out what happens in the time that she is supposed to be napping.
The video below shows exactly what happens… the camera took a shot every 10 seconds and the video plays at 12 frames per second i.e. every second of video corresponds to two minutes of real time.
Emily was ‘napping’ for 90 minutes but as you can see, the first 30 minutes was spent reading and generally messing around. During this ‘nap’ Jessica didn’t hear a peep from Emily so assumed she was asleep throughout.
Vegetable Garden
Yummy veg
We’ve got a lot of lovely veg growing in our new raised beds now so I thought I would show it all off to you…
The green goodness you can see in the photo is the sugar snap peas, cauliflower, lettuce & tomatoes. Planted in a few other places round the garden we also have rosemary, thyme, coriander, basil, spring onions and pak choi – all so yummy I can’t wait 🙂
Center Parcs
Having missed out on holidays due to moving and the birth of Emily… we’ve promised ourselves at least two weeks of holiday this year. Last week we spent 5 days at the Sherwood Forest Center Parcs. We booked a 6-person villa which easily accommodated the family and my Mum and Dad. Through some fluke of the booking process I managed to get a villa very close to the centre so the bikes that we’d hired felt a bit redundant.
We took Sam’s bike along as he is getting pretty good on it. He still has a bit of trouble stopping but he can now ride pretty well without me supporting him.
Sam riding at Center Parcs
It was great to see all the animals at Center Parcs. There were plenty of rabbits, ducks, geese, bats  and squirrels that could be seen from the villa’s ‘lounge’. Samuel quickly learnt what a Moorhen looks like and was keen to point out any that he saw.
Coot and young
As always, there are loads of activities and Samuel had his first go at 10-pin bowling and crazy golf. Emily joined in with the bowling and had her first proper taste of swimming which she eventually learned to like. And with all these activities on offer… what was the highlight for Samuel?
Breakfast time
The holiday cereal of course! We always buy a variety pack on holiday and this is often the only thing that Sam remembers.
Yorkshire Puds
Today I thought I’d have my first go at making Yorkshire Puddings. As I was born in Yorkshire I felt a lot of pressure to produce some reasonable puddings so was a little nervous about trying. As you can see from the pictures… they turned out OK and I think I could make them even better next time.
Well risen
I used a recipe from Sainsburys with a batter of 75g plain flour, 2 eggs and 100ml semi-skimmed milk. I cooked them in a muffin tray but had to devote a whole oven to them as they need 220 degrees. Everyone seemed to enjoy them and I think they will be a permanent part of future roasts should you be able to share one with us soon.
On the plate with the rest of the roast
Balance
Both Samuel and Emily have needed to practice their balancing this weekend. After a long wait, Emily has started walking as can be seen in the video below.
As you can see, she is still having difficulty with her feet but she is getting better at it each day. On average she doesn’t fall over half as often as she did in the video. Now she is getting finally getting the hang of it she is wants to walk all the time and I’m sure it won’t be long before she starts to run.
Meanwhile, Samuel has got his first bike and is busy trying to acquire the valuable skill of being able to ride. We’ve decided to try without stabilisers to begin so Samuel can learn to balance the bicycle. After two days of trying things are going O.K. but I keep having to remind Samuel to look where he is going and not at the pedals.
In the end we got the bike from eBay for the princely sum of £18. It needs a bit of TLC (new brake levers and a new freewheel) but I think it’ll be just fine. If you’re after a cheap bike for the kids then I recommend trying Long Lane Garden Centre.
Sam and his new bike
On the move
Emily update
Just a very quick update on Emily’s progress…
Emily is starting to say a few more words, as well as her much used ‘daddy’ we also have no, bye, quack and bis-cuit.
Though Emily isn’t walking properly yet we do have plenty of different variations of crawling & walking about on her knees. She can also climb pretty well – the minute you’ve forgotten to close the stair gate she is halfway up before you can blink, she can also use stools and boxes to climb up onto the coffee table.
Summary – we have one cute and very mischievous 1.5 year old 🙂
Gardening at Tea Towers
Rich strikes mud
Spring finally seems to have sprung here in sunny Manchester – and crazed with all the excitement about finally seeing the sun we decided to have a go at growing some of our own vegetables.
The first step towards accomplishing this aim was to mark out where we wanted to put in our exciting new ‘raised beds’ and then dig up the turf in those spots.
While we had been busy doing this Sam had been occupied with watering the flowers so hadn’t really been paying attention to what was going on. When he saw that his daddy had dug a big hole out of the grass he dropped his watering can in shock.
whacketty whack whack
After much digging and turf removing both Rich and myself were worn out. Time to call in the professionals we thought.
Very kindly Eric had already put together some simple frames for our raised bed and brought them round to hopefully fit our recently dug holes.
Phase II involves us visiting a gardening centre and doing a bit of shopping for hardy vegetables so hopefully we’ll have some exciting ‘veg growing’ photos to show you all soon…