Weekend update

Well, you couldn't exactly call the weekend just gone *relaxing*, but it was filled with fun, starting with getting up really early on Saturday to look after a little boy who wouldn't stop throwing up - five times in the space of an hour - four times into Flyingpops hair and once all down my front, but luckily I hadn't bothered to get dressed by that stage...we started the day proper with a trip to my folks (who had helped baby-sit on Friday night while Flyingpops was at a "book party" at her sisters house) for a hair cut and then a super-off-road dog walking session through some hugely overgrown paths out the back of Oxted (which the Bugaboo coped with incredibly well), then a quick stroll down the hill for an hour in the swimming pool, this time I went on the 70m water slide *and* had my first ever Sauna - incredibly, the temperature inside was roughly the same that I use to cook my roast chicken on a Sunday (I know because they have a thermostat on the wall), and there are scary signs warning you to remove all jewellery as the metal can get incredibly hot if you stay in too long...but you do actually get used to the heat extremely quickly and it does sort of become rather therapeutic, I swapped myself between there and the steam room (which feels like it's cleaning out your lungs, and probably is) and then (when you absolutely can't take it any more) you dive into the pool (which is 30 degrees, but feels like minus 50)! Thomas enjoyed being in his little inflatable again, especially when the wave machine kicked in (we missed that last week because we were only in the water for about 20 minutes... ;)

Anyway, later on in the day we went out for a lovely meal at the Box Hill Smith and Western, I couldn't make up my mind so I had the combo (where you get steak and chicken and ribs - just to make sure I didn't feel left out if anything tempting looking left the kitchen that I hadn't ordered), then we headed over to Box Hill village hall for Charlie's birthday party (which tried *very* hard to wake Thomas up with extremely loud music, but failed)...

Sunday morning Thomas decided we weren't having a lay-in, so we headed over to Tesco a bit early, discovering happily that they start serving breakfast long before the main store opens (so we totally skipped the normally enormous queue for the cooked breakfast - hehe)...anyway, we got half way round the store picking up our food for the week and then Thomas decided he didn't want to be shopping either, so we cut the visit short and ordered the rest on the Internet, I cooked us up an early roast (lamb) which we ate as we watched the F1 - Well done Jenson! - and then after X-Factor, it was baths and bed...and now I need another weekend (a quiet one this time), and so does Flyingpops (as I think she's coming down with a bug), but we won't get that for another working week...although at least Flyingpops can have a bit of a duvet day - don't think that would go down too well in the office... ;)

Eventful Weekend...

Crikey, where do I start...

One of the things you notice straight away when you leave the house with a tiny (although rapidly expanding) baby in tow is the number of people who sidle up to you (smiling) and ask the usual questions (name, age/sex(usually assuming the wrong one)/location birth weight), make some cooing noises, assume a wistful look and then walk off in a manner that suggests they are now surrounded by an invisible blanket...

On Saturday, when we took Thomas to Oxted leisure pool, we experienced a slightly different phenomenon...after all getting changed into our costumes (Thomas in his little waterproof swimming nappy with a picture of Disney's "Nemo" on the front) in one of the spacious unisex family changing rooms (with nappy facilities), blowing up his little yellow floating chair and parading down towards the water...I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that every single eye in the place was on us as we waded into the warm water, the unspoken group assumption being that as soon as baby met pool there would be a colossal screaming down of the place and we would (red-faced) turn tails, get dry and go home again...in actuality he *loved* it (although we did sort of suspect he'd be okay, as he happily hops in the bath every night with one or other of us - the purpose built baby bath only ever saw water the once)...all in all I suppose we spent about 25 minutes splashing around, Flyingpops even managed to do a couple of lengths in the sensible bit of the pool, while Thomas and I played in the wave area, and he only nearly drowned got ducked the one time, ironically when we were in the shallow end (and he didn't even get upset about that, just blinked his eyes a couple of times and got on with sucking the water off his fingers and staring around at the spectacle)...

Saturday lunchtime we spent at my folks, eating home-made soup and garlic bread, meeting potential new pet, Greek rescue dog "Bobby" (who is so laid back as to be almost horizontal)...then in the evening we went to Vodqueen and Uncle Scammell's house for a last-minute family party (which Thomas managed to pretty much sleep right through)...

Sunday morning we nipped over to Tesco to do the week's shop, Thomas got cooed over at the checkout by a sweet elderly couple, we pack up the car, just pull up at the Hookwood roundabout waiting for a gap in the traffic, Flyingpops commenting on the debris left by an earlier accident and how dangerous it is (despite the new traffic lights) and, as if calling down an accident upon us - **BANG** - Poppy the Beetle is shunted forwards - someone has crashed into the back of us!

I fly out of the passenger seat and wave both Flyingpops and the Fiat that has collided with us to the side of the road, peer through the back windscreen to make sure Thomas is okay (in typical Thomas fashion, he is still fast asleep - completely oblivious) and when the driver of the car behind clambers out (rather red faced) it's only the husband of the elderly couple from the supermarket...the wife is rooted to the passenger seat looking absolutely mortified, covering half her face with her hands...

Anyway, despite the initial shock and violence of the noise of the collision, there isn't actually much damage to see, the boot still opens, the bit of glass that fell out of the light from the number plate slots neatly back into place...leaving just two small scratches on the bumper, but we swap insurance details anyway and go our separate ways (amid many apologies and blushes)...

After dumping the shopping at home (and giving Flyingpops a cuddle) we head to Reigate and take a lovely fresh constitutional around autumnal-themed Priory park, stopping to score some sweet chestnuts to roast later on in the oven and I tell Flyingpops the names we used to call all the different hills (Bluebell, Break-neck etc.) to comments like "You took a sledge down that??", showed her the storm drains we used to play in (to looks of absolute horror) when we were kids and then we stopped for a drink and a shared four cheese pizza in the little cafe (which was a very messy, but satisfying affair)...

Sunday afternoon Thomas would not settle down, so in between putting things into roast or steam Flyingpops and I both spend time walking around jiggling him until he stopped whimpering, then put him down for 2 minutes, then picking him back up when the complaining resumed...but we could hardly moan ourselves as we'd had such an easy ride for all the rest of the weekend...

Super Busy Easter weekend

Just to recap, not quite sure why I haven't got round to speaking about it before, but we have had one hell of a busy bank holiday weekend (and that definitely merits a mention), Friday morning was spent (in the pouring rain), smashing up -

- and skipping the content and structure of two garden sheds at Flyingpops folks' house -

- it took five of us four and a half hours (or 22.5 man-hours) to heave everything out of the garden, force it to fall into small pieces (with extreme prejudice) and then stack it neatly, and if that wasn't quite enough effort to go to for one weekend, we then packed all the baby stuff lurking in Dorking into Poppy the Beetle, that afternoon we returned to our house, moved the old freezer into the living room, moved the washing machine into the cupboard in the hall (where we had new plumbing installed last week to accomodate it), moved the dishwasher into the space left by the washing machine, brought in and installed a new tumble drier (an absolute revelation! No more, heaps of wet clothes all over the upstairs of the house!) on top of the washing machine in the cupboard (venting through a newly drilled hole in the brickwork), and then put our new freezer (front opening, three drawers) where the dishwasher used to be...the last job of the day (and one, that thanks to us being so tired, took about four times longer than it should have done) was re-hanging the door to the cupboard where the washing machine/tumble drier now live, so it opens in such a way that you aren't left trapped by the front door when you do so (why it wasn't like that in the first place I will never know)...and after all that, none of us could be bothered to cook, so we had a Chinese takeaway... ;)

Saturday we went and did the Tesco shopping early in the morning and then I spent the rest of the day moaning about my feet hurting thanks to the wellies I was wearing on Friday being about two sizes too small (got six blisters), Flyingpops and I went through all the kitchen cupboards throwing one in three items out (mostly extremely old soft drinks bought for parties and never disposed of, but also lots of out of date cans, bottles and packets, and the odd bit of ironwork or supurfluous container) then Flyingpops baked 60 fairy cakes and decorated them with icing, chocolate and sprinkles (eating 10% of them in the process)...Easter Sunday we went to my folks for an Easter chick hunt (a play on the theme - my "egg" was a lovely herb garden my Mum had planted up for me - thanks Mum!) lunch of lamb shanks in mint gravy with delicious sweet German beer on the side, and then we lugged all the baby stuff up to my folks' spare room (where we assembled everything, without instructions) to make sure it was okay, and went through bagfulls of clothes sorting out what we wanted/needed and what we didn't), and popped to Dorking Halls that night to watch Slumdog Millionaire (they got the volume wrong at the start and nearly deafened the audience - several groups of people actually walked out)...

Easter Monday we went to the local plumbers supply store to buy a part to fix a minor leak we had sprung during the move around on Friday (which I fitted when we got home), then popped to the dump to drop off the third of the kitchen we had stacked outside the front door on Saturday afternoon, and then we popped over to the local car boot sale looking for a baby monitor of some description (we failed, but I did score components to try and get my headphones working on my new flat panel TV - I gave up and ordered the bits from Maplin after about 20 minutes scraping wire, testing connections and straining to hear precisely zip coming out of the earbuds)...then we went *back* to Flyingpops folks place, this time for a lunch of roast beef and all the trimmings...

Feel like I need a holiday now! ;)

Weekend update

Well, had a pretty busy weekend (apart from managing to find a few hours on the Xbox 360 - Dark Sector and Bully at the moment, Bully being much the better game but Dark Sector has it's moments)..Saturday morning/lunchtime saw brother and sister in law (plus kids) come over to join in having mass hair cuts (and push cars full of barbies/Action men around)...Sunday morning, after doing the Tesco shopping, was spent nipping into South London (dodging speed cameras) to visit Grandpops and Hazel to fix some problems with their firewall (and install them some novelty Tomtom voices)...

Mustn't forget to mention that we have had a marriage proposal (and acceptance!) in Canada (very many congratulations to Sal and Jas!) which you can read about on their blog here (they are going to be flying back to Blighty soon so I imagine there will be some sort of celebration to be conducted upon their return)...then *this* coming weekend is another long one (for me anyway) as we are going to spend four days down in Cornwall to help Timmy celebrate his stag do, I am being picked up from home at 10am on Friday to begin the process of collecting all the attendees from around the South East (must remember to pack my stuff)! In fact, when Flyingpops was looking at the calendar yesterday morning, she announced that we don't actually have another completely free weekend now until October...!

Busy busy busy!

Canary Wharf Motorexpo 2008

It was a bit of a suprise getting into the office yesterday morning and finding my way from the stairs largely blocked by lots of Aston Martins -

- but peering out the window when I got upstairs to the 20th floor, I discovered this was just the tip of the iceberg -

- "Motorexpo 2008" has come to town, it runs until Sunday (before being shipped off (nut, bolt and flyer) to New York)...it's sort of like a mini-"Motor show", but instead of lurking in the Excel centre, it invades every piece of empty land available around "The Wharf" - people are coming back from lunch with stories of almost getting to the front of the queue to drive a 4x4 before they ran out of time, or asking if they could sit in (insert posh car name here) and being told that there was a reservation system in place and they might just be fitted in for five minutes at half-three on Thursday...desks are groaning under (never in a million years affordable) car brochures (etc. etc.)...so it's pretty lively out there (as I imagine a completely free car show is a bit of a pull to the rest of London (and further afield) also, not just to us who are fortunate enough to work here)...

Oh and combine that with a new Sushi place (Wasabi) opening in Cabot Place (and offering two for the price of one on all their food, this has almost caused more fuss - people have been chatting excitedly about it since a quarter to nine this morning!) and you have the recipe for a rather busy environment...come back half-term, all is forgiven!

Productive Weekend and 4 sleeps to go...

Had haircuts on Saturday morning (by our friendly travelling hairdresser), then played a bit of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on the PC (I'm still amazed that my video card was up to it), which is actually extremely good, plenty to do and see, excellent models and textures, intuitive spell casting system (with mouse gestures off, anyway), I'm just trying to find and assemble all the members of the DA in the Room of Requirement at the moment...Saturday afternoon we stripped Colin the camper van right down to his essentials (ready for Cornwall in a few days time) then that evening watched X-Factor (it being the funny early episode with all the terrible singers) then I tried to find a copy of the movie Apollo 13 somewhere (actually *everywhere*) in my house and failed completely (and made a right mess in the process)...I could only locate the VHS copy and didn't fancy watching it like that (Help! I've become a video format snob, the days of being happy with VCDs are obviously behind me)...

Sunday I got up early and did some paperwork that I've been meaning to do for a while now, then we went over to Oxted to take a look at the (almost) finished new community hall (where we plan to hold the wedding reception) and it is *awesome* - the perfect size (a little larger than a badminton court), everything brand new (right down to the fold-away stage, tables and chairs), big kitchen with industrial-sized cooker, dishwasher and giant American-style fridge (caterers should be happy with that little lot!), then stopped at my folks for a spot of lunch (crunchy greek salad (with home grown cucumber), hot chorizo and crispy bacon chilli salad and pan fried new potatos with rosemary and garlic, served with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar), then off to do our shopping at Oxted Morrisons (bought *far* too many sweets and crisps for Cornwall), got home mid-afternoon and went up in the loft to get out the surf boards, wet suits and camp kitchen, out into the shed to try and find a ground sheet (found a huge tarpaulin that will do just fine) and then finished off packing the last few bits into the camper. Just need clothes and wash kits now and we are ready to go...anyway, I then cooked us a lovely roast dinner (lamb with all the trimmings), checked out the long term weather forecast on the Met Office website (high pressure all next week over the south and west, good outlook!), and then it was time for baths and bed...

Oh and I also finished the third Harry Potter book, so today it was on to number 4...zero inconsistencies in books 2 and 3 (well, that I spotted anyway)...

Only four more sleeps to go, then it's sun, sea and sand for a few days R&R...thank *GOODNESS*! ;)

Another wonderful day...

...so Flyingpops has terrible tooth-ache *again*, work is stupidly busy *again* and we had a lovely trip planned to go and see "Ready Steady Cook" being filmed on Friday in London which we now have to cancel as we are finalising the re-mortgage of the house and this is the moment the surveyors need to attend, at a stupidly awkward moment, right in the middle of the day so we can arrange everything with the current favourable interest rate...oh and the CAMRA beer festival is going on in London, and, no doubt, I will miss it for the 5th year in a row too...life is just all being wonderful like that right now... :(

Oh, two things went right, my first rental DVD from Amazon arrived today (£3.99 for infinite disks per month (two at a time) with the first 14 days free), and two super cheap (£8) Xbox 360 games turned up...spent most of the evening playing a very calming gardening Sim, then shot about 100 terrorists in the head...

Sorry for not posting...

...very, very busy with work at the moment...normal service will be resumed soon, promise...!

Another manic weekend...

I'll try and flickr some pictures later on, but yet again a super manic weekend working up to, enjoying, and then tidying up from, our engagement party BBQ...last minute shopping on Friday night in Tesco, then up at the crack of dawn on Saturday (getting to the butchers before he had even made a start on putting our order together (24 burgers, 16 prime serloin steaks, 20 jumbo sausages, 40 chicken quarters and 8 racks of baby back ribs)) then got home and made a start on the salads (1 plum tomato, mozerella and onion with balsamic dressing, one garlic, basil and chive pasta salad, one mayo and sweetcorn, one sliced italian tomato, basil and mozerella with cracked black pepper and olive oil, one mixed leaf (mostly romaine and baby spinach) then just sliced mixed peppers, spring onions and cucumber for dipping). Next I made a start on the meat prep, ribs were marinaded in either Wing Yip Hoi Sin, Peri Peri BBQ, San Fran sticky honey BBQ or New Hampshire "Hot Bone Suckin' rib" sauce and cooked very slowly for 1.5 hours, chicken was seasoned and cooked until the juices ran clear, sausages started in the oven (until just starting to go brown), and burgers went straight to the BBQ, where everything else was finished off. Flyingpops mum brought a large number of quiches and helped get all the tables ready while I was cooking (and we watched with dismay as heavy shower after heavy shower doused the garden), then Gayle arrived bearing a *huge* banner she had made (saying "CONGRATULATIONS", which was shortly joined by another banner that had been hand decorated by little Alexander, with help from his mum... ;)
Then *my* mum arrived bringing 5 incredible deserts (pictures of all this later, as I mentioned before)...and the party really started to get going, luckily the weather held off and everyone could spread out around the garden, my Dad and Stuart handled the BBQs while I cooked the steaks to order (as and when people wanted them) on my griddle pan...

A really good do, but it would have been impossible to cater for everyone without all the help, thanks everyone!! :)

Sunday I was up pretty early, and joined in helping Ratty and Jinx do a bit of tidying up while Flyingpops had a lay in, then she awoke and between us we finished off the house, taking a quick break to zoom to Redhill aerodrome for a spot of "full english" action to top up the blood sugar levels, I then collapsed for a little nap on the sofa outside, and in the evening I cooked Moroccan lamb with boiled potatos and corn on the cob for tea while we watched the Grand Prix (Well done again Mr Hamilton!)...

Busy Weekend

So, super busy weekend (which was extremely hot, and just to compound matters I had a stinking cold)...Saturday we got up reasonably early (and in roughly this chronological order) visited the butchers to pre-order all the meat for the BBQ next weekend (hopefully we will have enough), went and bought serving platters and disposable plates, drove to Homebase and bought an *enormous* Gazebo (which was on a really good offer price), went to Morrisons to buy a few more cases of beer (again, a really good offer) and do about half of the weeks food shopping (not on purpose, we just didn't pick up enough), after loading the car I walked down half a row to the nearest trolley bay (we had to park right at the back of the car park) and find, to my extreme annoyance that it has none of those chains to recover your quid, and so have to walk all the way around into the next row of cars (cursing under my breath)), come home and put the Gazebo up in the garden (securing it as best we can to fences and trees but not being *entirely* satisfied we went back out to the car and zoomed into Redhill on a quest for those large metal pins (the ones used used to secure the orange netting stuff that workmen put around roadworks) - we visited the huge hardware store at the top of the hill (Mortons), who in a state of bafflement took us all the way through the shop and pointed hopefully at those metal things you can use to reinforce fence posts (nope), then down to a builders merchant, who clued me in on the proper name "Oh, 4ft Road Pins you mean" but was "Sorry, all out mate...", then on to the only other remaining place, a trade hire shop opposite, who *also* didn't have any, but did helpfully suggest we try the place we had just come out of...Oh well...So then back home and moved the PC out the way of the patio doors and then dragged all the chairs and the sofa into the garden (under the new Gazebo, just in case it rained). We started up Colin the Camper (who seemed to be behaving himself) went and put some petrol in him, and then drove all the way over to Dorking to pick up our new sofa and chairs (even one that reclines!) which took two trips (so took, in all about two and a half hours), during which Colin was starting to cough and splutter, borrowed 3 road pins from Flyingpops' folks, and then had the journey home from hell with Colin cutting out, backfiring and stalling at every single set of traffic lights (wonderful)...finally limped him home and resisted the urge to kick his tyres and put his leasure battery on charge instead, then hoisted everything over the fence or through the front door and assembled our new living room (which looks very nice)...Changed into new clothes (as soaked with sweat) then went out and banged in the road pins (on the three gazebo legs where this was possible and used cable ties to secure it all together) tidied up the garden as best we could ready for Sunday. Sat down then and watched most of the GP qualifying, but went out before the light faded to tie a tarpaulin around the furniture outside, then collapsed in front of Saturday night TV (which was largely crap except that new Simon Cowell/Ant and Dec talent show which was genuinely amusing, and Dr Who (which was probably the best episode I have *ever* seen), during the crap TV I finally got round to reading through the procedures for flashing the new firmware onto the PSP (and, satisfied I wasn't going to brick it, downloaded the files and sucessfully flashed it, been meaning to do that for about 3 months). Hopped into the bath (and then went to bed) absolutely shattered...

Sunday, up early(ish) again, bagged up and loaded up the car with *loads* of garden rubbish (left over from the garden makeover) plus all the old stuff from the kitchen cupboards and zoomed off to the dump (which was already heaving with people), sorted everything into it's recycling bins and then drove into Redhill (stopping to fill up the car with petrol) to get the rest of the weeks food shop (at Sainsburys this time), Flyingpops tried to pop into Choices (but we were too early and couldn't wait because we had frozen food (ice creams ;)), next it was off to the Reigate and Redhill gardeners association HQ opposite Earlswood Lakes to buy them out of the lovely rose coloured stones we had put on three quarters of the front garden last week (and some pepper dust to discourage the cats, some copper strips to discourage snails and slugs, and some slug pellets to finish them off if they manage to get past it) and then drove back home. Put the frozen stuff in the freezer, then finished off the remainder of the front garden (noting with some dismay that moving our rose last week seems to have killed it), I hoovered all the ants and spiders out of the back of the car and then we started on the washing (did about 4 loads in all) inbetween which I failed to put up the roller blind in the kitchen (Flyingpops dad is going to come and help with that) and we zoomed over to Merstham to pick up the gas BBQ from Flyingpops brother for next week (getting oil and rust flakes all over the lovely freshly hoovered car boot in the process), manhandled that into the garden (gas bottle weighs about 100 kilos) and covered it with my US Army poncho to keep it safe. Moved the whole back garden around into a slightly better layout, and then Flyingpops cleaned all the garden furniture with a bucket of soapy water while I sorted out a pile of about 500 odd socks. I then made lunch, emptied the bin and put all the recycling out. Spent about an hour tidying up my PC (both drives nearly full), which involved a lot of burning DVDs and labelling and then tidied up the tall kitchen cabinets (including all the junk on top of them). Flyingpops fell asleep on the sofa during the Eastenders re-run, so I made a start on Sunday dinner, then munched it excitedly watching the Grand Prix (awesome race, well done Mr Hamilton, winning despite 4 safety cars!), as light began to fade I ran out and grabbed a couple of snaps of the wild flowers around the pond out back, topped up the water garden, and applied pepper dust and slug pellets to the entire garden, I then sat and stuck the copper strip onto the strawberry trough, using a knife to score it (which you need to do for some reason to discourage snails too)...really don't think we could have squeezed anything else into that amount of time if we had tried...zzz...

Update - this morning, the alarm goes off (and I wake, vainly wishing for another weekend now to just spend enjoying the sunshine and recovering, but it is not to be), we almost miss the train by getting caught at the lights by the Causway, and there are no parking spaces, but luckily it's delayed, this means we get to London Bridge a few minutes late only to find that all the buses are in total gridlock and this part of London is at a standstill, I wait in the enormous queue for the 17 bus for as long as I can stand (watching the lights at the end of the road flick uslessly from red to amber to green, having no impact on the traffic at all), then Flyingpops rings to say she looked down the road and nothing is moving as far as the eye can see. I give up and run down into the tube but the Northern line barriers are shut (I was actually quite pleased as I hate the Northen Line) leaving me no choice but to either walk the whole way or clamber up to platform six and wait for the next Thameslink. Thameslink then, still manage to get in on time, somehow(??)...boot up my laptop to find 216 emails awaiting my attention, and my entire working week stretching out (into infinity) ahead of me...

It's official, I need a vacation...

Weekend update - Busy. busy, busy!

(Haven't had to do one of those in a while!)
Anyway, as of yesterday I am now officially off on vacation until after Easter, managed to do a bit of work on Colin the Camper hopefully with a view to getting down to the New Forest for a couple of days (but more on that later)...

First off, announcement time, Tommo has agreed to be my best man for the wedding (hurrah!), went to see him on Saturday, ate beers, played curry and drank in plenty of gaming (or something like that, my memory is a bit cloudy ;), this time I took my 360 over and plugged it into his HDTV...and WOW! Totally different experience...going to have to seriously think about getting hold of one...more money I don't have...bah... :(

Sunday saw us jumping into Colin (after meeting up with Flyingpops in Dorking) and nipping over to pick up a new wardrobe and chest of drawers (which are jolly nice and already manoeuvred into position in the bedroom)...I spent the rest of the day feeling a bit hung over, and was in bed by eleven...

Monday was a busy day, nipped into Redhill to pay in some cheques (after playing around with some big expensive cameras in Jessops, and some cheap pay as you go contracts in the Orange store to perhaps finance the never-never on the aforementioned devices), then had a wander around the Belfry -

- (interesting new vending machine appeared on the upper floor since my last visit) -

- then to the bathroom centre to look at new bathroom suites, this one being our favourite (so far) and also being just about in budget, nice deep bath too -

- we popped to homebase, picked up some bits and bobs for the work on Colin (including two huge bits of hardboard which forced me to put my seat right forward and sit all cramped up), and then stopped for lunch at the Skimmington Castle just outside Reigate (on the heath) -

- I had Welsh Rarebit (which came with a slice of bacon on the top, lucky Flyingpops didn't order it!) which was pretty good, menu was a bit on the expensive side for my taste though, then we dropped all the stuff from homebase off at home and went and did the Tesco shopping, where we spotted the Garden Marquee just opening for the first time this year -

- then back home, I did a bit of work on Colin then I cooked dinner, watched a few of the new episodes of South Park and sleep...

Serious painting/decorating...

...over the break, sorry for no proper posts...pics later... ;)