BellyWatch: Week 27

This weekend Cheryl officially entered her third trimester. We took some photos. It may look like she's really pushing her stomach out, but that's just how her back is.

So I guess we're officially in count-down mode now.. it's no longer "27 weeks in", now it's "13 weeks left". We've still got a fair bit to do - the most pressing of which is to organise a car seat from the RAA, or we wont be able to take the baby home. But apart from that we have supplies to buy, not to mention furniture.. we've ordered a cot, but we've still got to find a little chest of drawers or bookshelf or something to put a change-table on top of.. and of course the change table itself.

Such fun :) Time for a trip to Ikea methinks.

We did buy a pram on the weekend. A friend was recommending the brand when they found one on eBay that was actually being sold in Adelaide. I sent a message through to the seller saying we'd like to have a look, and she gave me a call - turns out she lives about 5 minutes away from us.

So we headed over there for a bit of a look, had a practice pushing it around, opening and closing it to make sure it was all easy enough, and then bought it from her straight away. It's a nice little pram, a Peg Perego Pliko P3.. they retail for around $600 - $700.. I was a bit taken aback with the cost of prams to be honest... But yeah, second-hand we got a good deal. It obviously sits back for a baby as well as being upright for a toddler, and our friends said theirs has lasted several years.

Cheryl took another video while I was at Iaido on Sunday, this one is even freakier than the last. Check it out at my website

Time 4 me to update!!!!

Hi everyone, well on friday 2 weeks ago i got an email from one the editors from 'The LOOP' which is part of the 'Addy'. She wanted me to write some articals for her, so i did...Yay so now i have a part-time job.
I also have an assignment to do on Lodon so if you have any good spots that you think other people might like let me know.

Delightful deception

As you all know, Dee threw Glenn a surprise 30th birthday party last weekend. I was in on it from the start and Glenn didn't suspect a thing!

I went to London last Thursday - I had my end of year appraisal on Friday, so I checked that I could stay over with G&D. This wasn't unusual, I'd popped down to London for work before and Glenn is used to me staying over. What he didn't know was that I'd requested my appraisal for Friday so that I could be there for the weekend. heheheh...

I'd been in London a few weeks ago to see Toby - an Aussie who was only in the UK for a few days. We'd gone to Camden Market and I'd spied some cool Xmas pressies for you lot. I decided Saturday would be a good day to go get them (since I'm away all of November) and Glenn agreed to come along (as we were hoping). We headed off around lunch time. Dee had gone to "get Glenn's present" - she was really getting things organised for the party.

Once we were out of the way, Dee, Tina, Chris and Colleen got to work making the party-house - helium balloons, nibbles, all the important things. Glenn and I had a fab time wandering around the market, buying presents (I even got Glenn's pressies while we were out), eating tasty curries and looking at lots of interesting things. Eventually, we headed back towards the flat, stopping at St Pancras station for 'high tea'. Yes, we had an English tea (tea and scones) in a French cafe for an Aussie birthday. How multicultural. While we were eating, I got a call from Dee that it was all set to go - Glenn didn't even question why I got the call and not him (we said his phone had no reception - he didn't even check..heheh.. trusting brother).

We made it back and "Surprise"!!

I missed out on the birthday cake cos I had to go and get Bruce from the train station - he had his appraisal on Monday, so he came and stayed at G&D's too. It was a fun night - there are MANY photos here. It seemed like Glenn had a good time, made better by the surprise. Yay us for not letting him know. *grin*

On Sunday, after a pancake breakfast, Bruce and I went to the Science Museum - we like to play with all the hands-on exhibits. I had fun taking photos of the thermal imaging camera. :-) The weekend passed far too quickly and on Monday Bruce headed to work and I caught the train back to Manchester.

This weekend, I'm staying at home - it seems like ages since I've done that for one reason or another. Tomorrow morning I'm catching up with Vicki, Steven, Angelika and James for brunch and Killer Bunnies. Then tomorrow afternoon I head over to Wirral where I'll be working for most of next week. *phew* I'm looking forward to having a holiday!

Happy Brothday Birther

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GLENNK!

Happy Birthday Dad!

HAPPY 60th!!!

Hope you've had a splendid day.
(with lots of unlicensed dancing)

Lots of love and hugz

MST3K and the Sci-Fi London Oktoberfest

This weekend I attended an all-night film festival for the Sci-fi London Oktoberfest -- about 10 hours of icecream, red-bull and the hilarity of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (MST3K). On the programme it's listed as "Seriously funny {stuff}!", and it really was.

I arrived at the Odeon West End (near Picadilly Circus) at about 23:15 ... and then found out I was in the wrong place! Not sure how that happened, but suddenly the benefit of having Google Maps on a phone became very apparent -- even I could find my way, despite both my own lack of a directional sense and London's winding, Celtic roads.

So I wasn't too late. I met Allen "Conky" there; he gave me my (half-price) ticket and we wandered into the cinema.

Extremely comfy chairs! Free tea, coffee, icecream and red-bull! A couple of guys from EA (the games company) showing off their new XBOX 360 game (and a guy dressed up as the main character, how funny is that?!). I wasn't sure what to expect, but £15 for at least 4 movies I was ready to enjoy myself. So how happy I was when the organisers handed out "showbags" on the way in -- a bunch of DVDs (including a metal-cased special edition Voltron!), some badges, t-shirt transfers, little "build your own X-fighter" toys.

Even better for one attendee -- he got the "lucky" seat and ended up with a brand-new XBOX 360 and a bunch of games (all courtesy of Play.com -- thanks!).

So I was already in a merry mood when the movies started, and they turned out to be really, really funny. Take a bunch of bad, bad movies -- including the Worst Movie of All Time, "Plan 9 from Outer-space" -- and add a commentary by a couple of funny guys (actually one guy and two robots). The hours flew by, and before I knew it it was 9am!

We stumbled out of the cinema into broad daylight, squinting, dazed and confused. Whether it was the all-night laughs or the red-bull cola, I felt fine! A little bit dopey but certainly not tired, so I walked home and woke Dee (heh heh), trying to convince her to come outside and go do something!

About 5 minutes later I was asleep.

However, after 5 or 6 hours sleep I woke again, had a snack and went to see some comedians at The Comedy Pub with some friends and friends of friends (Joyce, Luke, Heather and Wayne). They were so funny too! Hard to remember the jokes; harder still to actually deliver them. After comedy we had a late dinner in China Town (I almost ordered pigeon, but settled on chilli and bean chicken).

Sunday we cleaned up the house, did the paperwork, and had a delicious dinner courtesy of Colleen (our housemate) who was really just cooking for her little brother :-).

Painting and Belly Watching

Hey all,

Just a bit of an update. We've started painting the baby's room.. you now all know the gender, so I don't mind showing you the colours :) We've got a light blue for most of it, and then a feature wall in a nice bright green. You can see photos of the progress here. The plan is to finish it off tomorrow, on our public holiday (huzzah!).. assuming I don't sleep in until 12 like I did this morning ;)



We also took a few photos of Cheryl for the week 24 BellyWatch. You can see them here.

We've been looking around for a cot and all the trimmings for the last couple of weeks.. we thought we had found the perfect one at Toys R Us (on sale no less), but unfortunately they don't deliver as far as Morphett Vale and we had no way of getting it from the city to our place.. and the local Toys R Us doesn't have it. Ah well, back to the drawing board. Assuming we can get the painting finished this weekend all we have planned for next weekend is steam-cleaning the carpet so we should have some time to look.

My general plan is to have the room all completely finished before you guys all visit in December, so we have a bit of time still.

Hap to bizle

Happy Birthday DAMIEN!!!  MOAR EXLCAMATION MARKZ AZ REQWESTUD!!

Ducky?

BellyWatch: Week 22

A little something special for this BellyWatch.. check it out over at my site (you'll need the flash player)

An evening at the theatre

Indulged our thespian hearts with a trip to Shakespeare's New Globe Theatre last night.

First: dinner at Harry's Bar in the city. Named after a famous cocktail (coquetier! eggcup!) bar in Venezia, Italia (Venice, Italy ;-)), Harry's of London shares, well, nothing with it's Italian namesake: it's a wine bar and restaurant, and the wine is Chilean, Australian and French rather than Italian. Nevertheless, the food was good: I had gnocchi (maybe Italiano!) with prawns; Dee tried the risotto (ooh, maybe it's more Italian than I gave it credit for). We ate with a friend of Dee's, her partner and two of her friends, and although we were both tired and didn't really like the idea of meeting new people just then, the night turned out okay.

Apparently Harry's in Venezia is really expensive; in London the bill was cut down to a more manageable size by a mid-week special: half price on the total bill if you have 2 courses. It was cheaper to have a main and dessert than to just have a main! Now that's a savings plan I could get into. Guess there is some good in the credit-crunch -- with all the bankers out of work, swanky places like Harry's has to let rabble like me in!

After dinner we wandered down towards the Thames and across one of the many bridges, the city beginning to sparkle as dusk mellowed to dark. Behind us, Wren's St. Paul's loomed ominously, whilst ahead the whitewashed walls and thatched roof of The Globe warmly invited us; it could've been the late 1600's, with both Globe and the great church rebuilt after the Great Fire of London. Or so I imagined.

We handed over our little cardboard tokens and shuffled up the wooden stairs to the top gallery, whereby we were afforded a near-birds-eye view down upon the stage the the players. We sat upon hard wooden benches, eschewing the hired cushions that those of less-hardy temperament (and posterior fortitude) felt necessary. Shortly the strains of a light tune played on lutes and horns signalled for quiet; a hush fell upon the crowd.

The play's the thing, you see, and the thing in this case was a jolly little tale, "The Merry Wives Of Windsor". A comedy, although I could not say whether t'were the skill of the Bard or that of the players that made it so; t'was a genuine laugh-out-loud, raucous comedy. Ooh, look thee upon these words! T'is like the particular, peculiar method of Shakespeare's own art hath soaked my brain; stewing in olde English forms of yore, it cannot help but express itself as I pen this journal!

So: perched upon hard benches (of birch or cedar) we watched a tale of clever wives, jealous husbands, bellicose doctors and rotund knights and laughed. Sooth: I could not decide whether Shakespeare so influenced English humour, or whether the comedic endeavours of Fawlty Towers and it's ilk were the influence for the players of this tale; in either case, you've not seen impotent fury until you've seen a skinny English gent in a badly-fitted wig first tempting a knight to make advances upon his wife, then cursing that she, in appearances at least, entertains such carnal ideas with said knight.

"CUCKOLD!!"

(Comments in thy best rendition of olde English please.)

Our sunny Saturday

Damien and I decided to make the most of the nice weather on Saturday
and headed to the beach for lunch. We went to a Japanese restaurant where we had yummy food and a nice view. We then went for a little walk on the rocks. Damien went out further than me (I was afraid I'd lose my balance) and he found a seal! We finished our outing with some icecream and a bit of shopping, hehe! It was a really nice day :)



Oh yeah, and here are the ultrasound photos. The first is the baby's skull (spooky! I think it looks a bit like uncle Glenn ;) and in the second the baby is giving us a bit of a wave. The baby is doing well. I feel it moving more often and instead of quick little jabs I can feel it moving around and 'rolling' more. Sometimes it feels like it's doing little somersaults! :) And I have feeling good. I've been enjoying some long sleeps and afternoon naps, and Damien has been looking after me very well. (I have to admit though, my afternoon nap today wasn't because I was particularly tired, there was just nothing good on TV! :)

Excursions

Yesterday and today we had an excursion to the Discovery Centre. Today was an easier group but I'm worn out after trying to keep watch on 25 children. We did have eight adults for each group, but it is still tiring and no coffee! this year we had a sound show (not impressed with the presenter who knew he had kinder children and demonstrated but didn't let them join in) and the Planetarium.
Next week we'll have party and dress up days on Wednesday and Thursday so that will be two more tiring/trying days. Then it's holidays for two weeks. we may go to Coffs but not until the second week as Cheryl and Warwick will be in Brisbane until then their house was almost sold but the deal fell through so we still have a base in Coffs. Cheryl said lows of 12 and highs in the 20's at the moment. Sounds good.
All well here. I'm going to Echuca with Lisa and Carolynn on Saturday for another comp.

BellyWatch: Week 20

I'm a bit behind on the updates but here's the photo from last weekend. We bought a gorillapod tripod, so I was able to wrap it around a post out the back and solved the low-light/shakiness issues of earlier shots.

We also had the ultrasound on Monday. This was a longer one than the last, where they check the baby's organs, skeleton, that kind of thing. They didn't see anything wrong, which is good.

We also found out the baby's gender.

I've told Mum and Dad, Nana and Lisa.. Dayna, Glenn and Dee, we're happy to tell you guys but we don't want to post it here just in case you'd rather not know. You can give us a call if you'd like, or else post here and we'll tell you :)

Apart from that things have been pretty much the same. The baby is kicking with enough force that I can feel it through Cheryl's belly, which is quite exciting.. and it's about time I thought about decorating the baby's room too. I want to paint it.. but first I have to clear it ;)

Father's day

Dad had a most enjoyable day today for Father's Day. I gave him cheese,chips and chocolate so that covered the basic food groups. His health is improving although the indigestion still occurs sometimes. His weight is going down (78kl) so he needs to get smaller size trousers and add another hole in his belt.
Nana, Lisa and the four children all came for lunch. They brought Dad some photo coasters and Lisa had put in the photos of the children. They're great. They also had a navy singlet and some ginger in his parcel. Damien and Cheryl brought muscatels and chocolate ginger when they visited, so I guess the way to Poppy's heart is through his stomach.
Dad had brought some new snooker balls that included directions so Jared, Lisa and Les all had a game or two of that. Daria eventually went to sleep and then so did Trinity so both little girls slept in the back room until five o'clock.(Daria in the cot and Trinity on the couch)
We had a great day.