A couple of snaps from Christmas...!

Suffice it to say we had a *very* merry Christmas *and* a happy New Year! ;)

Baby Thomas' first Christmas

What an incredible first Christmas for Thomas, absolutely surrounded by friends and family, showered with lovely presents (especially by his mum), so here are just a very few (of the millions of) pictures we took (to share some of the magic with you) -

Getting some of the presents ready, which involved ceramic paint, Thomas' foot, a lot of very tickly brushes and many, many smudged footprints...

A visit to Christmas Tree Land at Priory Farm in Nutfield, despite the fact that we already had our (still alive) tree from last year (now about twice the size) back in from the garden...(rather a good investment)!


Thomas *loved* the decorations, suddenly the boring old living room was alive with exciting new electrically powered/choking objects to try and hit and place in his mouth...

Being good at Christingle (while watching out for cocktail sticks and accidental headbutts)...

Trying out his Christmas hat... ;)

Wrapped up warm in the car seat...

Stocking full on Christmas morning...



...and gifts under the tree aplenty!

Even more impressive when all the wrapping was off... ;)

Loads more pictures here (including lots of family ones, which some of you have been asking for)... ;)

Happy New Year everyone!

Happy New Year!

Woah...! It's been ages since my last post, but we have millions of pics, vids and stories to come!

Thomas has grown up soooo much, he's got soo many new powers, we've had an amazing Christmas and New Year (thus far), and I promise (if nothing else) to blog much more in the new year!! ;)

We couldn't let the year end pass without just noting a few of the most important events of the year -

January - found out Flyingpops was pregnant - Hello Thomas/MJ! (and she turned 30!)

February - Had our first scan and "saw" MJ on the scanner screen

March - *Finally* able to announce pregnancy to friends and family and celebrated our first wedding anniversary!!

April - Hard work begins on the nursery (and the rest of the house) second scan takes place...

May - Work continues on the nursery and Fink learns how to plaster (hrm), we kiss goodbye to Colin the Camper... :(

June - Holiday in the Witterings, new bathroom installed, Tim & Gayle announce their pregnancy (baby due in Jan 2010, yay!)

July - Lucy and James get married(!!!), shop excitedly for the baby and MJ almost arrives with Net having a short stay in St.Thomas's hospital (phew)...!

August - Thomas arrives...albeit 5 weeks early throwing us into total chaos!

September - Our first family holiday to the Witterings...

October - Poor Thomas has his jabs and sleeps through every party in the period

November - Our second family holiday to the Cotswolds and Thomas starts his swimming lessons! Baby Harry is Born (congratulations!)...

December - Our first family Christmas!

Boscastle at Christmas

So that afternoon (back to Christmas) we decided we would pop over and see what progress has been made in Boscastle after the terrible flood in 2004 that devastated the town a few years ago...

Not a huge amount has changed, it somehow felt like the car park was higher up (although it could have been my imagination), but there was a perfectly tangible new huge chunky wall on the river bank -

- (next to a brand spanking new toilet block) -

- flood defences have been drastically improved before the original bridge -

- (comparison shot from 2006) -

- and the channel past the bridge has been significantly widened and deepened -


- (comparison) -

- there is a brand new visitors centre -


- and a nice new bridge (which is extremely low profile) to help prevent build up, as the old one acted something like a dam when 14 floating cars got caught up under it -

- everything (largely) appears to be back to normality in the village (still one or two buildings under construction, incredibly) -

- and the odd paranoid sandbag lingers (as there was a mini repeat performance in June 2007) -

- but, as I noted before, there is simply no going back to the well matured, charmingly scruffy feel of the Boscastle of yore...a shame, especially as this was very far from the first time such an event has taken place (records date back to 1847)...it almost feels like securing the portal when the quadruped has already scarpered... :(

Widemouth Bay and Bude at Christmas

Back to the break now, we spent ten minutes or so defrosting Poppy the Beetle and letting the engine warm up a little bit and then (extremely cautiously) picked our way along the ice covered roads towards Widemouth bay, which looked astonishing (normally only being privvy to it in clement conditions) with the thick covering of ice -


- nothing was stopping Flyingpops though, so we splashed on down to the sea -

- where I got a nice shot of the beach -

- it was (however) a little on the chilly side, so our stay was reasonably brief...next stop was Bude (just a few minutes drive away), as we left we spotted this guy running along the beach with his dog carrying a skull and crossbones and an anarchists flag -

- (a little odd), he looked like he was going to carry on all the way up the cliffs before we left him in our dust...

Bude was much the same as last time I was here (for Tim's Stag do) -

- we checked out the shops (Flyingpops buying a very posh new knitted hat for a couple of quid) and found a gift shop we had been told about which had everything (except the fudge) discounted by 75%, so Flyingpops went a bit mad buying model Campers and Beetles, Cream Tea themed mugs and other touristy bits that had obviously not been selling too well over the summer...and laden down with carrier bags we popped into a little pasty shop -

- for a spot of lunch -

- before heading back to the site to show off our pirate booty and get ready for our trip out in the afternoon... ;)

Static 19 at Hedley Wood

So after our very pleasant stop in Okehampton (I think we'll be going back in the summer time to explore the touristy things properly) we headed off for Hedley Wood, only about an hour away...

...where we took posession of our new home for the next (almost a) week, the rather frosty static number 19 -

- immediately closing all the doors and windows (goodness only knows why they were wide open!) and lighting both the gas fire and the oven (which we left both open and on until the whole place was warm enough to allow us to stop seeing our breath and remove our coats)...I did a quick ninja mission to swap the TV in our static over with the (unoccupied) one next door, as the one we had was missing a SCART slot (and I had all these new games burning a hole in my Xbox), then we settled in (dumped most of our stuff in the second bedroom, filled up the fridge) and then nipped down to the clubhouse for some supper (deep fried scampi and chips) -

- which was looking every bit as festive as ever, quite the most wonderfully garish display! That night we shunned the bedroom (as the heater in there was woefully inadequate at combating the distinct lack of heat outside in the darkness) instead snuggling up with a sleeping bag, hot water bottle and 4 blankets on the sofa-bed in front of the gas fire in the living room...(Flyingpops even kept her wooly hat on)... ;)

The next morning we discovered that the hot water didn't work (never got above tepid), so abandoned any thought of showers (and put in an emergency call with the owners via Flyingpops' dad), boiled the kettle made hot tea and coffee and contemplated how we were going to spend the day...it was so icy outside that it actually looked like it had snowed, so we decided to make a start with the most logical place to go in such circumstances...yes - the beach -(obviously)! :)

Okehampton at Christmas

We set off quite early in the morning, diving around the M25 and then shooting down the A303 (mostly)...I actually slept for quite a bit of the journey down with my head resting on a pillow against the window, until the rising sun forced me to a wakeful state...

...(that's actually a picture of the sunset but you get the idea) we stopped off to buy some water (and ready-mixed Ribena drink for Flyingpops) at a service station about half way down and then woke up a very sleepy Dawn (who had been working at the nightclub in town until the early hours) at about 9am by calling her mobile just as we were pulling into town...I'd never been to Oakhampton before and was quite keen to look around the place, so we dragged our luggage up to her flat which is located in this charming shopping arcade, dragged Dawn out of bed, quickly exchanged Christmas gifts -

- and then headed straight out for breakfast -

- not opting for the amusing credit crunch breakfast we passed on the way, but to a favourite little cafe of Dawn's down a little alleyway filled with shops (this town was actually *full* of little independent places, the only chains that seemed to be in evidence were the supermarkets) which made a refreshing change -

- the food was very reasonable (£6 for a full English), and actually extremely tasty, even the sausage (which can be a bit of a minefield in the breakfast stakes) -

- funnily enough, it turns out that it had recently been visited (well, the upstairs Bistro part, anyway) by Gordon Ramsay for an upcoming episode of Kitchen Nightmares (which was quite exciting), so we were quite confident the fridges and storage areas were sparklingly clean (if nothing else)...can't wait to watch the show (just hope it wasn't too nasty beforehand)! ;) Anyway, when we had finished that somehow Flyingpops still had room left for a pasty, so we stopped at a small bakery (and she bought what was called a "cocktail" pasty, which turned out to be just an extra small example -

- I was absolutely stuffed so I contented myself with sniffing in the apetising aroma...the rest of the day saw us explore more of the town (although all the interesting stuff (museum/castle/Dartmoor steam railway) was closed thanks to the time of year) so we contented ourselves with a lunchtime pint in the local pub (which had some very interesting windows) -

- a spot of shopping in the supermarkets, and then I cooked us all up a tasty roast dinner, filling the evening with some quality Wii and Xbox 360 time in Dawns front room...a very pleasant stay...