Friday 28 March 2008

Bureaucracy - what a joy!

I went to see a Notary Public this morning, with Lara's and my passports, to get them notarised. 25 minutes and £70 later I've got two posh-looking letters with wax seals - nice work if you can get it, I'm sure!
We're off to London on Monday morning, first to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to apostilles for these certificates and one of Lara's birth certificates (only £27 + VAT each) and then we have to get to the Russian Embassy by noon to submit the application forms for Lara's Russian citizenship (£105) and and her passport (a mere £50).
Lara has already started planning where she'd like to go when she's got all her documents!:



My ship has come in

The inflatable is here! 24.5kg of it, which is pretty heavy. It has come in its own bag, the size of a medium suitcase, so it *should* go back in there once after I use it. I need to register it now so I can use it on the Thames. Roll on the nice weather!!

Tuesday 25 March 2008

Half of the goodies have arrived

The tent & Lara's sleeping bag arrived today - like any kid getting a new toy I want to go out and put the tent up straight away, but I'm not going to put it up on our back garden, it would be easier to put it up on the North Face of the Eiger. I'll wait until we go up to Mum & Dad's in mid-April on the way to the Lakes. I want to practise putting it up and taking it down in some privacy before trying it in front of other campers!
I couldn't resist having a look at the sleeping bag, which meant taking it out of it's stuff sack (easy) and then putting it back in again (funny to watch).
I've had confirmation of receipt of payment for the boat, so that should be here towards the end of the week... again, not a toy I'm going to take out of it's bag. OK, maybe I'll take it out, but I'm not going to blow it up... FLW ;-)

You Tube video - see below

While trying out some of the wireless geeky stuff I have at home last week, I played a little bit of the home video from our USA tour in 2005 to Olga, it is one of our favourite bits, from when we were in Las Vegas, outside the Bellagio. We watched the dancing fountains, made famous by the end of the film Ocean's Eleven, which were sync'd to Andrea Bocelli & Sarah Brightman's Time to Say Goodbye. I challenge you to watch it and not admire it!
If I ever get round to editing the full 6 hours of footage we have from that holiday, I'll publish another bit from later that day where we go back to the fountains at night, although there is a much bigger crowd in the way at that time. Our top tip for people visiting Vegas is to go to the Bellagio around 2pm, when the fountains start, and there are almost no spectators, as you can see.

The video is below the posts towards the bottom of the page..

Lara's first taste of something other than Mum's milk

We noticed on Monday morning that Lara seems to have her second cold now, she woke up with a bunged up nose and grumpy.
She was fine throughout the day, and even coped with us leaving her in the summerhouse while we worked on the veg patch yesterday afternoon, but in the evening she woke up after Olga had put her to bed and had a good old cry. We checked her temperature, which was a perfect 36.6, so we weren't too worried, but it was clear she wasn't going to go to sleep any time soon. We had used some drips of Olbas Oil on a tissue under a sheet close to her head in the morning to help clear her nose and help her sleep in the morning, but even this wasn't calming her down in the evening, although it did clear her nose again. So we decided to try the Calpol that we bought a month or so ago, and she had her first taste of something other than milk. It smelt very nice and strawberryish, but Lara didn't take to it to well, and indeed spluttered some of it back out, but enough of it must have got into her system, as after a quick feed from mum to wash it down, she did go to sleep in our bed around midnight, and slept through the whole night, to the point where we had to wake her for a feed soon after 7am.

Olga's taken her clothes shopping to Eden this morning, so if anything will make a girl feel better, it's that.

Oh, and while I remember, she was weighed last Thursday (20th) and she's smashed the 6kg barrier now, she was 6.04kg or 13 lbs 4.5 oz.

Easter without a sniff of chocolate

We managed to get through the Easter weekend without any Easter Eggs, in fact the only chocolate in the house that was eaten was a whole pack of choccy digestives.
Saturday was a bit of a lazy day, the poor weather meant we didn't want to do much outside, so I spent some time looking after Lara in the afternoon while Olga and Lucy did girly things. Looking after Lara meant letting her watch me play on my ancient Nintendo 64 games console in our bedroom, and listening to the football scores on the radio before we both had a mid-afternoon nap.
In the evening we watch The Fully Monty on video, as neither Olga nor Lucy had seen it, and they'll never listen to Donna Summer's Hot Stuff again without thinking of the men dancing in the dole queue.
On Sunday I decided that no matter what the weather was like, I had to get some work done in the garden, so I got up at 7.15, and walked Mishka in the snow. It snowed quite hard during the morning, but didn't stick for long, which was a shame, and by lunchtime it was all gone, but I had been able to move some things up from the garage and the bottom of the garden to the decking area, where it was supposed to be. I started work on Olga's vegetable patch, and she tidied up the summerhouse. We tried having Lara out with us but after a few minutes she decided that she preferred being inside, so we left Lucy to look after her while we slaved outside.
Lara's clearly growing up now, she didn't sleep the whole time when we went to the pub in Marlow in the evening for a drink with Chris & Cara - that was a first.
On Monday I cracked on with digging up the veg patch, it's 4m x 2.4m just in front of the decking, but the fact it slopes diagonally from back left to front right is making it an interesting carpentry project for me, and taking up the turf that covered just half of that area took a few hours and some heavy lifting. More work is required next weekend to finish the box I'm building to contain the soil; trying to make a level area on a sloping surface is, shall we say, a challenge.
We did put some reed screening up against the front of the decking though, so you don't see the ugly area under the decking anymore when you look up the garden from the house, which is a big improvement.