It's our Wedding Anniversary today, I didn't forget! We had hoped to go to the Bird In Hand this evening, where we had the wedding reception. We would like to eat in the restaurant rather than the bar, to make it more special and rekindle those memories, but it doesn't open until 7pm in the evenings and we don't want to subject Lara to a couple of hours in the car seat on the floor next to the table when she wants to be in bed. So I think we'll go to a restaurant in Marlow or Wycombe after I finish work, then we can go to the Bird for a meal during a weekend.
To mark the special occasion, I'll release some previously unseen photos; unseen because they were taken on my film camera rather than the digital and it took us sometime to get the film developed!
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Monday, 14 July 2008
A Very Happy Birthday
It was my 34th birthday yesterday, and I had a great time. I was allowed a lie-in, and Olga had even arranged a day with very nice weather.
The morning was spent getting the place tidied up before our friends arrived at lunchtime. We'd not seen Rob & Lizz and their daughter, Juliet, since our wedding 2 years ago, so it was lovely to catch up with them, and see how Juliet had grown. We had a barbeque and a couple of drinks, just relaxing on the decking in the sunshine; of course there were a couple of photographs taken:
Rob & Lizz left just after 3, and at 4.30 Chris & Cara popped by on their way back from a camping weekend, returning our tent undamaged (I've not checked, yet, Chris!! :-) ) We just restarted the barbie, and went for a stroll down to the Wendover pub at the bottom of our road to see what it's like now it's been refurbished; it gets the thumbs up!
Lara had been very good all day, almost showing off to visitors how good she can be at eating in her high chair - she's not always so cooperative when it's just Olga & me!
It was still nice and warm outside after Olga got Lara off to sleep, so we relaxed on the decking with the fire burning, and I had a couple of glasses of the Lagavulin Single Malt Olga had bought me.
If I have to get a year older, it was a very nice way to do it!
The morning was spent getting the place tidied up before our friends arrived at lunchtime. We'd not seen Rob & Lizz and their daughter, Juliet, since our wedding 2 years ago, so it was lovely to catch up with them, and see how Juliet had grown. We had a barbeque and a couple of drinks, just relaxing on the decking in the sunshine; of course there were a couple of photographs taken:
Rob & Lizz left just after 3, and at 4.30 Chris & Cara popped by on their way back from a camping weekend, returning our tent undamaged (I've not checked, yet, Chris!! :-) ) We just restarted the barbie, and went for a stroll down to the Wendover pub at the bottom of our road to see what it's like now it's been refurbished; it gets the thumbs up!Lara had been very good all day, almost showing off to visitors how good she can be at eating in her high chair - she's not always so cooperative when it's just Olga & me!
It was still nice and warm outside after Olga got Lara off to sleep, so we relaxed on the decking with the fire burning, and I had a couple of glasses of the Lagavulin Single Malt Olga had bought me.
If I have to get a year older, it was a very nice way to do it!
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Audio Books...
I'm trying out a new way to keep myself entertained when I'm walking Mishka - I've borrowed an audio book from the library, ripped it to my PC and then copied it to my phone, and I listen to it as I would any other music file (of course I'll be deleting the book from my PC and phone once I return the CDs to the library, I wouldn't infringe copyright law!!).
So, this all went swimmingly on Tuesday morning, Robert Hardy (of All Creatures Great and Small fame) was reading Patrick O'Brian's The Far Side of the World. It wasn't till ten minutes and three "tracks" into the book that I had to stop to tidy up after Mishka, and I realised I'd not been paying attention and decided to replay the last track to refresh my memory. It was only then that I looked at my phone and saw I'd been listening to track 9, not track 3... yup, I'd left the "Random" setting active. The more worrying thing was I'd not noticed!
Monday, 7 July 2008
Lara Update
I was just beginning to wade through the Russia photos and found this one, definitely one of my favourites. It was taken during bathtime in the banya at Baba Shura's house.
Olga took Lara to Baby Massage as usual on Friday morning, and there was a set of scales there, so Olga weighed Lara, she was 17lbs exactly. After Baby Massage there was a Baby Singing session. Considering Lara now has a drum and a xylophone at home, perhaps a career in music beckons (as well as professional tennis and Russo-British Mediation and Translation).
Lara's favourite food currently, apart from Mum Juice, is yoghurt. We've found she prefers raspberries to strawberries, and is getting good at drinking water from her beaker.
Mim & Ed's Wedding
We had a lovely time on Saturday at Mim & Ed's wedding in Hampshire. Just the name of the village gives you an idea of the kind of place it was: Martry Worthy. It really was the kind of place you see on Midsomer Murders, which was slightly ironic given the identity of one of the guests - a certain Hercule Poirot, no less.
Anton, Becca and Eve were there too, and both girls were very well behaved during the church ceremony, even if Eve did let out a squeak at the "does any know of any reason why..." bit. After the ceremony the guests moved to Ed's parent's house, a quarter of a mile away. It really was something - I've been to other wedding receptions in country houses that have been smaller than this! The weather was doing it's best to help the afternoon along, and the clouds only closed in just as people were moving in to the marquee for the speeches anyway. The speeches were before the meal for a change, I discussed this with Hercule while we were in the queue for the gents, and we agreed it was to keep the drunken heckling down to a minimum. We then briefly discussed toilet plumbing when he vacated the lavatory. I think I made quite an impression on him.
The meal was lovely, and the wine was flowing; Lara was very well behaved, Olga was doing a stirling job, as usual, of feeding her at just the right times, and after a bit of a swing in the car seat, she dozed on and off for the rest of the evening, and was passed around a bit between some of the cluckier guests from time to time when she was awake.
Becca came to our rescue when it came time to head back to the hotel, I'd put us in a premier inn at the services on the M3, in the hope that you could get from the minor road that runs alongside the services into the services themselves, but rather annoyingly there was a big fence in the way (I'd spotted it when we arrived at lunchtime). This meant we'd be faced with an expensive taxi journey up the M3, past the services, and back down the southbound carriageway to get to the hotel, but Becca was driving and gave us a lift. The cars were parked a hundred yards or so from the house in a paddock, but those 100 yards weren't lit, and it was a spooky walk by Olga & Becca's accounts.
It was raining heavily on Sunday morning (it struck us Mim & Ed were lucky with the weather on Saturday and we were really pleased for them on that front) which poo-pooed my idea of climbing the perimter fence and walking down the minor road to Martry Worthy to get the car, so we caved in and got a taxi. We were home by 1.15, and with the weather they way it was, I couldn't mow the lawns as I'd intended (awwww, shame) so it was a nice lazy afternoon of TV and dozing for me & Lara. Olga seemed to miss out on the dozing part, for some reason.
The photos from Saturday are up there on the left of the blog.
Anton, Becca and Eve were there too, and both girls were very well behaved during the church ceremony, even if Eve did let out a squeak at the "does any know of any reason why..." bit. After the ceremony the guests moved to Ed's parent's house, a quarter of a mile away. It really was something - I've been to other wedding receptions in country houses that have been smaller than this! The weather was doing it's best to help the afternoon along, and the clouds only closed in just as people were moving in to the marquee for the speeches anyway. The speeches were before the meal for a change, I discussed this with Hercule while we were in the queue for the gents, and we agreed it was to keep the drunken heckling down to a minimum. We then briefly discussed toilet plumbing when he vacated the lavatory. I think I made quite an impression on him.
The meal was lovely, and the wine was flowing; Lara was very well behaved, Olga was doing a stirling job, as usual, of feeding her at just the right times, and after a bit of a swing in the car seat, she dozed on and off for the rest of the evening, and was passed around a bit between some of the cluckier guests from time to time when she was awake.
Becca came to our rescue when it came time to head back to the hotel, I'd put us in a premier inn at the services on the M3, in the hope that you could get from the minor road that runs alongside the services into the services themselves, but rather annoyingly there was a big fence in the way (I'd spotted it when we arrived at lunchtime). This meant we'd be faced with an expensive taxi journey up the M3, past the services, and back down the southbound carriageway to get to the hotel, but Becca was driving and gave us a lift. The cars were parked a hundred yards or so from the house in a paddock, but those 100 yards weren't lit, and it was a spooky walk by Olga & Becca's accounts.
It was raining heavily on Sunday morning (it struck us Mim & Ed were lucky with the weather on Saturday and we were really pleased for them on that front) which poo-pooed my idea of climbing the perimter fence and walking down the minor road to Martry Worthy to get the car, so we caved in and got a taxi. We were home by 1.15, and with the weather they way it was, I couldn't mow the lawns as I'd intended (awwww, shame) so it was a nice lazy afternoon of TV and dozing for me & Lara. Olga seemed to miss out on the dozing part, for some reason.
The photos from Saturday are up there on the left of the blog.
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