Saturday 4 July 2009

Lucy & Sergei's Wedding

It was a wonderful day yesterday, the sun came out, the clouds disappeared, the reception venue was amazing, and even the smallest of problems were overcome without tears (such as Ben, the Best Man, forgetting to bring the rings to the ceremony...).
Here are an initial 12 photos, chosen by Olga from almost 300 that I took! Over the next few days I'll slim that collection down to 50 or so, I hope, and probably write some more about the day, but for now it's more important that Lucy's mum sees photographs of her daughter's big day!

Thursday 2 July 2009

Sleep through the night and miss the action

The temperature in our bedroom at night has been getting ridiculous. Given that we're in a loft-conversion room, all the heat from the house gathers up there, and last night I checked and it was 30 degrees Celsius at 11pm! The night before I'd had to get up at 3.30 to sleep downstairs, it was just too hot. So I suggested to Olga that we both sleep on the sofa, where we could have the patio door open slightly to let a decent breeze in. Lara woke at 12.3o and 1-something, but then it was peace and quiet until she decided Olga should get up, around 6.30. I went out to walk the dog, and said hello to our neighbour, who asked if we saw the fire engines last night... The short story is that 2 fire engines attended a fire in a house about 40 metres from our front door, 3 houses up across the road! This was from 3.30 onwards, apparently their walkie-talkies weren't working, so they were shouting to each other, loads of other neighbours were up to see what all the fuss was, and we slept through it all! Didn't even see the blue flashing lights through our front blinds, even though we were almost sleeping in the front room!
No-one was hurt, luckily, it seems the basement of this house caught light (I'm sure I'll find out exactly what happened from our neighbour, whose brother's family live next door to the affected house), but one of the family was still awake, and raised the alarm. I had a quick look at lunchtime when walking Mishka, and the smoke damage reaches the second floor windows, so I can imagine it was quite a fire.
Hmm, if we're sleeping that soundly, I must check the batteries on our smoke alarms...

Lara's latest

Lara is over her cold now; it's almost funny to look back now at how concerned we got when she was only a few months old, and her colds would last for weeks.
Her teeth are definitely coming now, although her bottom ones have accelerated their growth, and there are a molar or two coming through properly on one side. They don't seem to cause her too much discomfort, although she will wake once or twice in the night. This seems to be earlier rather than later, always before 2am, and might be to do with the heat, or the fact that the teething gel we administer (if a cup of water doesn't work) kicks in and soothes her. If she wakes again after teething gel, we'll give her a spoonful of Calpol, and so far *touch wood* that's been enough to get her off to sleep through the night.

She had a great time over the weekend, playing on the decking in the nice weather. It's really handy to have the summerhouse up there, to save us transporting boxes of toys up and back from the house. Here are some photos, and videos will follow as soon as I get them uploaded:

The Eve of the Big Day

Tomorrow is Lucy and Sergei's Big Day, they're getting married at 3.30 at Reading Registry Office - a family tradition, seeing as that's where Olga & I were married, and my sister Catherine and her hubby Nick, too. Olga's only tried on two outfits tonight, although there is plenty of time tomorrow morning for more dress rehersals. We're involved tomorrow beyond just being guests - Olga will "give away" Lucy and be a witness, much as Lucy did for our wedding, and I'm the "official" photographer. My concern tonight is charging up camera batteries and cleaning up memory cards, I'll find something to wear tomorrow morning... men, eh!?
Lara will probably have to try on more dresses tomorrow than Olga... Poor Mishka is being packed off to kennels for the night; he's down in the dumps tonight because he seems to have banged his hip on some furniture this afternoon and is limping around feeling sorry for himself, the poor fella.
The evening reception is at the hotel where Lucy & Sergei work, Wokefield Park, south of Reading. We had to giggle last week when Lucy & Sergei dropped off the wine and vodka for the meal at the hotel bar, and the barman commented "I think you've bought too much". Oh dear, he's not been to a Russian wedding then..

Tuesday 30 June 2009

The snot's gone

It's no fun having a cold in summer, so Lara's system has decided to reject her cold, and she's back to normal now.
In order to keep her cool at night, she's down to sleeping in just her nappy and a light sleeping bag, and this week we put a fan in there too. The constant hum of the fan hasn't disturbed her, and might actually be serving to help her sleep, as we suspect she's been stirring when we pack up to go to bed, and the house goes very quiet - it's uncanny how often she wakes for a drink just as we turn out the light to go to sleep!
Here are some photos from our friend, Chris', phone from a visit to the pub after work a couple of weeks ago - Lara loves the pub, and she's such a poseur!