Easter egg hunt
Tag: leicester
Pictures from the hottest weekend yet
We were in Leicester last weekend, when the British summer heatwave came upon us.
We bought a little paddling pool for the beastie, which he quite enjoyed. We found out that he likes being attacked with a hose as well. As he loves fresh garden peas (we stopped counting after he ate a dozen pods). It was really nice in the evenings, because we could sit outside and watch Mel trying to burn down the garden with his chiminea while downing a pitcher of rather boozy Margaritas.
The weekend was actually really nice, until the drive back home when the beastwich had a heat-induced meltdown in the car (we still haven’t been able to make time to get the AC fixed). That put a bit of a downer on the weekend, but otherwise, lovely.
All pictures here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/leicester_jul_2010/
Current Mood:
Calm
I am Beastie, see me walk!
We were in Leicester this weekend, for Mother’s day. The weekend ended up being rather less than stellar, as Katy wasn’t feeling well and the oldies were in fine form. The Beastie, however, was full of beans:
You might need to boos the volume way up high for the videos, btw.
The Beastie is also becoming a fruit monster:
That last one is impressive. He grabbed an apple out of Pam’s fruit bowl and proceeded to eat it. All of it. It was almost as big as he was. And yet it was eaten. With much slobbering. There are lots more pictures here: http://flubu.com/various_pics/ben_early_2010/, including some taken when my mom came to visit in January.
Current Mood:
Depressed
Holiday Redux
A new year has come, and I’m as tired now as I was before the holiday rush.
Plans got muddled because of all the weather and health issues. I caught a cold just before the holidays and the beastie caught it off of me just a week before Christmas. He was snottyliscious up until a day or so before the big day but it cleared up and wasn’t an issue. We were supposed to go to Costco to buy some of the last-minute stuff but with the roads in the state they were in and with the beastie under the weather, we went to Tesco instead. I cooked a ham and a ribeye beef roast. I made a very decadent chocolate cheesecake and a brussel sprout and bacon tart. We decorated the Christmas cake. Katy’s parents and uncle arrived on the 24th and stayed until the 27th.
There was food. Much food. The table was groaning under the weight of all the meat, cheese, condiments, pickles and sweet stuff. The pantry is still full of biscuits, booze and yet more condiments and chutneys. I’d made this crazy plan for the big Christmas meal, and yet dinner was still one hour late. The food went down a treat though. The turkey was lovely and the sausages we bought from the market stall were really, really nice. I’m amazed that 5 people managed to eat 3 kilos of turkey, 1 kilo of beef, 2 kilos of ham, 18 sausages and a pound of bacon in just a few days, not even counting the sausage rolls, scotch eggs and pork pies… Like I said, too much food!
Katy’s Christmas cake, at last reckoning, cost about £50 of raw materials. It is made with about 2 pounds of various dried fruit, half a dozen eggs, a pound of sugar and 3/4 of a bottle of Cointreau. Then you add the royal icing and various decorations and you get a cake that will stun a small moose with the sugar/fat/booze trifecta. Katy already has several orders for such cakes next year. Might be an interesting sideline :) I have to say that I’m rather proud of that cake because, even though Katy supervised and directed, I’m the one that made it because the beastie, generous creature that he is, had incubated and amplified the cold bug into something that really hit Katy hard.
She got this nasty chest cold that turned into a worse ear infection. The chest cold part kept her awake for days on end because she was coughing so much during the night. It was so bad that I ended up sleeping on the couch a couple of nights. I’d been sleeping on the guest bed until her parents came but we found that she was tossing and turning and couching so much that it would have been useless for me to stay in bed if I wanted to get any sort of sleep. She was scheduled to work over the holidays but her employers, charming people that they are, called her unreliable because she called in sick one day and cancelled her overtime. Have I mentioned just how much I like her employers? They’re really nice people. I hope they DIAF, but that’s just wishful thinking. Anyway, the coughing went away, but when blood-tinged stuff started leaking out of her ears, it was time to call the emergency docs on boxing day to get some antibiotics. She’s back at work today but she’s still not fully recovered. Her hearing is still partially gone and her sinuses are still giving her massive headaches :(
Still, the holiday spirit made an appearance. In between bouts of eating and drinking, we opened lots of presents, wore silly hats and played with the beastie. We’d decided to make the holidays a TV-free zone as much as possible so we plugged in the ipod and listened to oldies and carols.
Santa was generous, given the times. I got salt and pepper mills, some Robert Welch signature knives and a knife sharpener, a Le Creuset cast-iron casserole, some chocolate, a new cologne and a book. I also got lots of DVDs, and a shiny-shiny new DVD player that can read divX files off a USB stick :D Katy and I bought ourselves Bud ducks. She got the bestest present ever though. She got a tin!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!!eleventyone! She also got lots of l’Occitane stuff, some chocolate DVDs, more ducks, two terrapin garden statues and a really funky japanese-themed statue. But the tin really was the most commented-on gift :)
Beastie, again, was spoiled with presents though, this year, he actually preferred to play with them than with the box they came in. Most of them make noise, but that’s ok cause it’s not too aggressively cheerful. Mel and Stu actually spent more time playing with some of his toys than Ben did :)
We had a few quiet days between the end of Christmas and going to to Leicester for new years. I had a doctor’s appointment and the beastie had his immunization jabs. We took down the Christmas decorations because, without the mountain of gifts to keep him away from the tree, the beastie discovered that he had direct access to it and was always trying to eat parts of it. The drive up to Leics was uneventful, even though the weather was starting to turn ugly a bit.
Things in Leicester were pretty much of the same. We managed to sneak some adult time and went to see Avatar and Sherlock Holmes. Both were very good and I’m surprised that I enjoyed the Holmes movie. I was expecting to hate it, but surprisingly I didn’t. MORE FOOD! Jeminie and Stu came over for new year’s day. Katy’s uncle Michael and auntie Minal came to pick Jeminie up later in the evening and they said hello to the beastie.
We brought in the new year playing Carcassonne and then went to bed. We watched some of the fireworks from Katy’s bedroom window. The mood turned a bit weird just after new years day. There was a strained vibe in the air and it never really went away. The oldies were alternatively sniping or sulky. I think people were overdone. Katy’s been stressing about her back to work meetings and the beastie has been a handful since we’ve been back. He’s gotten used to constant attention and always being picked up and always having food thrown at him by the oldies to keep him quiet. It’s back to the normal grind now and he’s less than thrilled.
Speaking of the beastie, he now has almost a full set of teeth and is almost at the point of standing up by himself and taking a few steps. He can cruise along furniture and can stand up if he’s holding on to something. He can also climb stairs like nobody’s business and seems to derive much glee from doing so.
All in all, we had a good time. A much better time than I expected to have, and a much better time than we had this time last year. I still remember having a mental breakdown and crying in the front room with Pam asking us when we’d be ready for dinner. So yeah. Less tears, more laughts.
Still too much food. I can say that I am truly processed-pork-product’ed out.
Pictures and videos online: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/xmas_2009/
Current Mood:
Tired
I can has sleep nao pls?
Q: Why am I speaking like a lolcat?
A: Cause I’m tired.
I’ve been sitting in a saunaauditorium for the past two days attending a conference in Leicester. I’m sure the talks are excellent but I’m having the damnedest time concentrating on them because of the heat. The talk I gave this morning seemed well received, so thats good.
BenBen’s sleeping pattern have gone to pot. He’s woken up at 5am for the last two days and he’s not napping all that well. We think it’s the heat. We;re in Leics until Sunday. Hopefully the weather is going to chill out – literally – and he’ll settle down a bit.
Katy and I went to see Transformers 2. I can see why it’s being nominated for worst movie of the decade. Michael Bay managed to create *two* characters even more obnoxious and stereotypically un-PC than Jar Jar Binks. That deserves recognition. And a kick in the face. The movie was so bad it went all the way to almost good. Everything blows up. It’s one giant fight scene, and nobody but the bad guys get hurt. The robots have testicles. They hump your leg. I kid you not. I’ll go see Transformers 3 when it comes out, but I don’t think I’ll buy the dvd…
Current Mood:
Sleepy & Tired
Week in review – things did not go according to plan
It’s been a busy couple of days, it has. We were in Leicester last weekend to meet up with Anna and Rho, who had come from Manchester to catch up with Katy. That was a fun morning – those two are always good for a laugh. Rhona always seems to be complaining about something in a very loud and emphatic sort of way. Always makes me giggle.
The cot bed we wanted was finally back in stock at Ikea so Mel and Stu did a run up to Nottingham on Friday to avoid the madness that is Ikea on a sunny Saturday. We might have made a convert of Stu, who seems to have seen a table he likes in there. Yay, Ikea :)
This means that we now have all the big furniture pieces that we wanted for the nursery and we now simply need to build stuff and put everything in its final place.
We had a lazy Sunday morning. Katy had a lay-in and then proceeded to get pissy with the impossible puzzle we’d gotten for Mel’s last-last birthday. He’s been working at it for over a year (and has just informed us that he’s wimped out, admitted defeat and broken it down). I was, to be honest, bored senseless for most of the day.
While the world was shitting its collective pair of pants on Meltdown Monday, I was experiencing Migraine Monday, so I didn’t go into work and spent the morning in bed. I was feeling better by the afternoon so I started building furniture. I must admit that Mothercare flat-pack furniture is not up to Ikea standards. There is one bolt that doesn’t want to screw in and it’s pissing me off. It is offensive in my sight because the whole crib seems rickety because of it. I’m going to go to B&Q to get another bolt and see if that helps. If not, I’ll just use nice, large wood screws. Esthetics be damned, I want the thing secure :)
Katy had an appointment at the antenatal diabetic clinic on Tuesday. Her blood tests the previous weeks had indicated that she had gestational diabetes. Given that she’s a big girl, is Asian and has a family history of diabetes, this wasn’t unexpected. The good news is that the dietician said that our diet was already very much on the good track (complex carbs, lean proteins, lots of fruit & veg). The bad news is that she has now cut Katy off from any processed or refined sugar until Ben is born. This is, for those who know Katy, very bad news indeed. At least it’s only for a few months, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition though, and Katy’s blood pressure really threw a spanner in the works. It’s been borderline for weeks now and never seemed to make up its mind if it was high or normal. The doctors finally decided that enough was enough and told Katy that she was going to be admitted for observation and possibly put on medication. The timing of this was, in our opinion, possibly the worst time possible. We hadn’t planned for this, so Katy only had the clothes on her back and nothing else. I also had to get the car out of the Park & Ride parking and back home to avoid from getting it clamped – an interesting feat given that I can’t drive. In the end, I called some lads from work, who picked the car and myself up from the Park & Ride and drove us both home. Michael, the pinch-driver, had a bit of fun getting used to a right-hand drive car, but got us home safely. It’s interesting to note that we might be seeing him on Thursday when his partner is being admitted to the same ward as Katy to get her twins induced.
I had time to pack an overnight bag for Katy while I waited for Tesco to deliver our groceries. I managed to get a lift back to the hospital in the evening and spent time with my very bored wife and her new friend, Felix the serial blood pressure machine. She named it because she figured that shed probably get to be really well acquainted with it.
I stopped by the office to talk with the powers that be and, in the process, pick up the two parcels that my mom had shipped to us from Canada. It seems that everybody had been commenting about the 62$ worth of stamps affixed on the parcels :) I need to bring them back into work for somebody’s collection next week.
The plan now is to take regular blood pressure readings to establish a baseline and see if the meds they’ve prescribed lower it enough to get to a stable level they’re happy with, but not too low. I’ve loaded her up with grapes and strawberries, oat biscuits she’s allowed to eat and enough trashy magazines to rot her brain multiple times over. My boss has given me carte blanche to spend time with her at the hospital so I won’t be getting much work done this week. Having said that, if I were at the office, I doubt I’d be getting anything done, really.
Most of today was spent trying to find ways to kill time. I went out and got myself fish & chips for dinner – something that I’m still regretting hours later because it’s sitting like a lead balloon in my gut and giving me all sorts of unholy gas.
The good news is that the meds seem to be wanting to work in the right direction. The bad news is that they need to tweak the dosage and/or timing of the doses – which means that Katy will probably need to spend another day in observation. This does not make her happy. She’s getting to the point where she just wants to come home and relax in familiar surroundings, with the cats (who are being right little attention whores at the moment – Reenie is sleeping on the couch with her head on my foot as i type this).
We both know that this is the right thing to do and the right time for it. Spending a few uncomfortable days now could potentially save lots of hassle later on if we did nothing and things went pear-shaped and required more aggressive treatment in the future. It still doesn’t change the fact that it’s a pain in the ass and it would have been even better to have been able to avoid the issue altogether.
Like the song says thouggh, you can’t always get what you want.
Current Mood: Tired & 
Worried
Do you think we have enough stuff?
This past weekend was a busy one for Katy and I.
I’d taken Friday off so that we could be in Leicester early in the morning. Mel had rented a van so that we could go to Ikea and buy some nursery-related stuff and a new bed to keep in Leicester. The futon we were using in Leics is now too low to the ground and Katy can’t get in and out of it easily these days, so we decided to get a proper bed. The plan was to go to do a Leics – Ikea run to get the stuff, dump the bed out in Leicester, load the futon and some other things that needed selling, bring them down to Cambridge to dump them at our house, then drive back to Leicester and go build the bed. It was a looooooooong day :) I’d already sold the futon and Katy’s old television to people at work, so that’ll help cover some of the costs. We also got an insurance refund for the vet fees from last month, which will also help.
It’ll still be an expensive month though, cause we spent £400 at Ikea, and another £450 at Mothercare. This past weekend was when we really kitted out the nursery. We bought the crib that we’ll be using for the first few months in the bedroom, as well as a mattress, some sheets and two sleeping bags. We also bought a bottle kit with sterilizer, bottles, brushes, teats and a bottle warmer. That’s going to live in the kitchen. We bought some bath and bathroom stuff and some towels. We got a travel cot for when we come to see Katy’s folks. The only thing that we wanted to get but didn’t was the car seat. We’d originally wanted to get one that would be big enough to last for the first 4 years and, though the website said that it should have fit in the Corolla, it didn’t. The seatbelts were just a bit too short to secure it properly. This is a known thing with the car model because there are so many variants of it and they’re all just slightly different from one another. Blergh. We ended up just buying a 0-9month car seat that will double as a carrier. We can get the bigger one later. It should fit correctly when it’s forward-facing.
All in all though, I’m happy with our purchases. We’ve made judicious use of our coupons and we’re actually under budget for what we wanted to get. It really hits home though that we have absolutely no idea what we’re doing. We spent about 30 minutes in the bedding section looking things over and wondering what we should get, and how much of it. How many blankets does a baby need? I don’t know!!!!! (5 exclamation marks, a sure sign of a sick mind!)
Seriously, it’s starting to get a bit overwhelming. Katy stops work in just over 6 weeks and the Peanut is due in less than 3 months and we are so, so clueless as to what will happen and how we’ll do it. We keep saying to ourselves that as long as we’re together, everything is going to be ok. Usually, when one starts to freak out, the other steps in with the mantra. Hopefully, we never need to find out what happens when/if we both freak out together :)
I’m rather annoyed with Katy’s parents at the minute. It would seem that they think our house is a tip at the moment. Katy’s dad said that to her mom after dropping the stuff off on Friday. I resent him saying that. We aren’t in the position they are. He’s retired and spends an inordinate amount of time and energy keeping the house to a stupidly high level of cleanliness that I not only wouldn’t want to maintain but actually find oppressing at times. These are people who rinse out every pot, pan, plate and cutlery item before it goes in the dishwasher. We’ve actually seen them wipe down the inside of the dishwasher – BEFORE they put it on. So yes. I’ll grant that our house is cluttered, it needs a good vacuuming to get rid of the cat hair on the carpets and there are dishes in the sink. So what? There’s nothing suspicious growing in dark corners slowly evolving towards sentience. There’s dust, but there’s no dinge or dirt. It’s nothing that a good day’s cleaning won’t sort out. But you know what? Between the pregnancy and all the associated stress, all the stuff we need to do and our desire to spend time together, keeping house is relegated to the bottom of the todo list and I don’t want people nagging us and passing judgement about it.
On a brighter note, I got my picture taken for my new passport on Saturday and I’m happy to report that I actually look good on it! For once, if all goes well, I will have a photo ID where I don’t look like I’m a serial killer recently escaped from a mental institute!
Weekend in review
Katy was signed off all of last week for doctor recommended R&R. I took the end of the week off – it was my birthday after all – so we made the most of it. We went to see The Dark Knight on Thursday and I can’t be help repeating all that’s been said about the Joker’s performance. It’s a master-class calibre performance and he’s sure to get the Oscar, albeit posthumously. Katy baked two cakes for my birthday. One was a backup in case something went wrong with the main one. Hold on to your seats folks, she baked me a train cake!
I mean, how cool is that? She made 3 chocolate carriages, 3 lemon one and the rest are plain vanilla sponge. Have I mentioned that Katy rocks recently? Cause she does. Now the picture above isn’t of the actual cake itself – that’s just a promo picture from the tin. The actual cake is currently frozen because, since Pam had baked me a cake as well, we decided to freeze those we’d made to avoid cake overload!
We went to Leicester on Friday. I did a bit of shopping and ran some errands on Friday afternoon while Katy had her haircut. Rita was supposed to come by Katy’s house on Saturday to pick up her birthday present and be social, but that crashed and burned in a rather spectacular fashion. I’m of mixed feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, I’m happy that it happened because it will now mean that Katy won’t be stressing out every time we go to Leicester to try and accommodate Rita. On the other, I’m angry about some of the things she said. The girl is clearly living in her own private reality at times. I’m not the only one who thinks this and Katy’s parents are firmly behind me on this one. But still, it bothered Katy and I don’t like that. Blergh. We saw Stu for the first time in a while and he seems in good spirits and was happy to see us, so that made up for a bit of the emo-ness of the weekend.
Sunday saw us in a church, of all places. Pam, Katy’s friend, had invited us to the christening of her son, Ethan. It was my first Anglican service and I can say that it’s pretty much like a catholic one, except with more singing and a lot more infrastructure. It amused me that I could translate large chunks of the service in my head. It’s amazing how much church stuff I remember from when my mom dragged us to Sunday services when I was younger.
We had a good weekend in Leics. We ate too much true british food: fish & chips on Friday, curry on Saturday and a lunch roast on Sunday :) Having said that though, we were glad to be back home, sleeping in our own bed. The futon in Katy’s room in Leics is very low and she’s starting to be at the point where she can’t easily get in or out of it :)
The cats seemed happy to see us whe we got in. I was a bit worried about leaving them alone for the weekend – especially since Reenie was just getting over a bit of trouble as we were leaving – but Lennart stopped by the house a few times over the weekend and they were acting very catlike in their disdain of his presence :) Tolstoy seemed to be working on a hairball the night we came back but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him this morning.
Weekend pictures
More here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/leics25032006/
We survived the weekend, hoorah hooray. My back is killing me from sleeping in Katy's old bed in Leicester. It was mother's day here in the UK this weekend (though it's in May across the ocean) so we drove down on friday after work and spent the weekend there. Saturday was a busy day with going to Ikea to get the last of the stuff we wanted and then into town to pick up a few sundry items. We went to put flowers on Katy's gran's grave on Sunday prior to stuffing our faces full of Sunday lunch. Katy's mom was feeling under the weather because of a cold so the usual military precision of serving dinner was off and we had to play musical dinner plates a few times to ensure that everybody got the right plate. It all got sorted out in the end, after some comedy value :)
This week should be fairly sedate and hopefully we can get most of the touch-ups done to the house decor this weekend.
Pictures from the last week
I've been wanting to post these for a while, but I never got around to it. These are pics that were pictured while my mom was in town.
