We are currently snowed in so Jean didn't get to go to Pre-School today. Instead we have been building a snowman - his name is Sammy. Here are the pictures of Barbara and Jean - I'm not sure who was having the most fun!
We then all went inside for hot chocolate with special chocolate cream on top! Barbara brought the sledge round but Jean said she didn't want to go on it so they are currently off building Barbaras fire etc...
Here are some other picks of the water fall - from these you can see that down in our valley here in Gloucestershire we haven't actually thawed out for weeks now!
I'm loving my new camera - though at the mo I only have its memory which is about 10 pictures which is frustrating as is the need to use the Kodak software when uploading the photos onto the laptop :/
Today we went to my brother David and his girlfriend Michelles house for a post christmas/new year lunch. There was lots of chopped peppers which Jean woofed down, homous and pizza!!! We were in hevean.
Then there were gifts, we handed over Jeans tea towel with her drawing on plus some bits I'd made. They did something similar and we got an old copy of one of their films as it was in a box set one of them had got for Christmas - this seems a sensible way of doing things to me. They've been having a few issues due to the credit crunch in that David lost his nice manager job just after they had sighned on the morgage. He is now temping at just about anything.
We had a lovely time, mum and dad had got them stuff for the new house which included a gravey boat - most of the pictures I took seem to contain it or David playing with it :/ Oh and yay!!!! I have a camera again!!!! Mum and Dad bought it as a joint birthday and christmas presant and it is twice the resolution of the old one though I am currently running on its internal memory which is a whole 10 pictures :/
But yay!!!! and here are the picks including lots of cute Jean ones and yes she's in her chinese outfit again. Unfortunatly last night we watched KungFu Panda so she now keeps hitting people 🙁
I had to take arty shots I just couldn't resist - sorry!
For this New Year we headed down to my cousins house for a party, as always we got lost on the very last bit of the journey and Ivan had to come out and find us - I was navigating but the map didn't go down to a fine enough detial ok!
There was lots of food and lots of kids! Jean had a great time as there was basically a room full of children throwing balls and things at each other and there was a mirade of pepper pig videos and the like. Ivan and Sam also have a fish tank 🙂 Jean loves fish we take to the garden centres locally just to look at 'Nemo's' (Becca and Olly have a lot to answer for!).
At mid night there was the the popping of party poppers and as always I ended up with a wig of the paper strings - this time Jean put it on my head 🙂 We all had an attempt at Auld Langs ey and by the end Jean was the only on of the 'babies' still running about full of energy but then she had had a nice long sleep all the way from Gloucestershire to Essex!
Jean was shy at first but cheered up when we changed her into her satin pink party dress - all the other kiddies were dressed up and she felt abit out of place I think - she had her sparkly silver shoes and all would have been well if she hadn't tried to walk away from me whilst I was trying to tie the bow around the waste - I stepped after her and trod on the belt and she kept going and there was an ominous ripping noise and so she ended up with her belt ribbon tied as a braclet around her wrist instead.
'Mummy you broke my dress!'
'Yes well if you won't keep still when I say things like that will happen.'
It was a good party and we even got warm mugs of tea as we stayed to help tidy up - they offered for us to stay the night but Al wanted to get back to Highgate.
(hopefully at some point I'll get the photos on here:/)
This year sees lots of exciting things - its the International Year of Astronomy and so I have set up a specific Astronomy blog - the spellings all need sorting and alot of the stuff on there is from things I've written up on here.
I know its another blog but other wise I have too much to go on here and its nice to have a specific theme and things. Plus I now have a specific career goal which is to be a popular science writer - I want to bring science to the front, so kids find it interesting, explain it to the lay person etc...
I want to rekindle the flame that the victorians lit - a flame that is in the danger of blowing out leaving our culture with just recipies for current technology but no inovation or advancement.
I wanted to do alot of Astronomy stuff last year but with everything that happened it just got swept aside 🙁
Other goals for this year are to carry on with the Prince's Trust and MRes both of which are giving me valuable skills. Get Web-Empire fully up and running but more on that later 🙂 Enter the Young Science Writer of the Year compatition and just generally get our lives back on track.
Jeany will also be starting school in September! She'll be the youngest in her year - I feel this will be a good thing.
I hope you all have good New Years and lets hope this one will be better than the last!
Ok so after a weekend of server nightmare I spent today in a meeting with my Prince's Trust business mentor hashing through some of my ideas - mainly as due to being in London yesturday I had not finished the work he should have been going through.
Still he seemed impressed when I told him of the graphics packages and things I'd been learning to use and hunting out suitable name for my business.
I was going to spend today building my website and ordering my business cards and stickers but lo! I had no logo yet and without that there apparently isn't alot of point in moving ahead with the other two. And so I thought I would draw my own and so that is what I have spent the whole afternoon doing and it is still not finished and I am having a nightmare trying to work out the finer points of adobe illistrator which I need to know for a college project :/
Still I think today probably has been productive even if it was just becuase of the structure now imposed on my business idea after the meeting.
I'm hoping to use the christmas holiday to build up my web stuff and begin advertising my business properlly. I am also exploring other options other than having to buy new servers and stuff. At the moment I am still being crippled by the lack of capital to move forward and the credit crunch is making things a little bit sticky for me as is colleges insistance that I need to pay a top up fee for going back :(.
And so I suppose I need to get back to that logo :/
Mon 5th Jan 2009 2:18 pm | 
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