Hi.

Ubh

Happy Thursday

Hello Lauren,

What are you doing today? I should have asked if you and Mummy wanted
to come in and have lunch with me today! I have a banana.

I love you,

Daddy
xxx

My great painting!

Here's a picture I painted with the Gunu iPhone app.

Sent from my iPod

Sent from my iPod

Happy Snow Day!

Snow, snow, plenty of snow! This has been the heaviest snowfall we have experienced ... snow all day today (Monday) and it is forecast to continue overnight. For some reason in London, everyone is a lot nicer when it snows.

The Museum of Childhood

Kevin, Lauren and I visited the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green today (http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/) - always a fantastic and relaxed day out. Be wary of the gift shop on the way out though, it will magically remove all of the money from your wallet and leave you with a bag of small novelty toys :)

David

Christmas - Only Once A Year?

2 months in planning and now it is all over. Wrapping paper crammed into garbage bags, instructions missing, parts chewed by small dogs , too much food (but leftovers - yum!).

Happy New Year, start as you intend to go on ...!

Which came first, the egg or the spoon?

Ahh, school sports days. The memories. The thrills. The excitement. Well, maybe not so much now that they have replaced good old fashioned smashy cracking eggs with plastic "meggs" (mock eggs).

Snappy Updates!

Not much too report, but as it is both Sara and Lauren's birthday this month we've been quite busy. Lauren has had a few photos taken - you can see them here. We've also had a new addition to the family - and you can see him here!

Singapore - Rasa Sentosa Resort

We arrived in Singapore yesterday for a 4 day stopover on our way to
Australia for Christmas. This is the view from our floor over the resort
and sheltered lagoon. The weather is "balmy"! It's comforting to be back
in a climate where air-conditioning is such a big feature of human
habitats.

Mouses, Fairies and Gardens

The year is just flying by, less than 50 days until our holiday to Australia. Lauren has kept busy with school - there was even a dress up day last week where Lauren went as a fairy. We spent last Sunday at Gran and Gramps, running around the garden and feeding apples to the horses.

Schooliform!

Quick snap of Lauren all ready for her first day at school.

Birthdays and School

It's been a very busy month. Sara turned *cough* 23 and Lauren turned 5! Then, Lauren started Year 1 at Daubeney Primary School.

Festivals and Superheroes

We went along to the Lovebox Weekender in Victoria Park last weekend. We only stayed for a few hours but it was great fun. We had intended to see the B-52's but they weren't on until 6.45pm which was a bit late in the day for us with Lauren. Earlier in the day Lauren had dressed up as a superhero!

Snip snip snip!

A new haircut for Lauren yesterday - everyone was traumatised by the time it was over, but the result was worth it.
Double jeopardy though today as I had to get her outfit organised, get her dressed and do her hair. I'm sorry Lauren ...

It's Alive!

A very productive Saturday.


Here are a few photo's of the finished result. There are still some cables to be tidied up but the build went very smoothly. She (Epoch) even started up correctly on first boot!


Thermaltake Armor Jr. case
Sapphire Radeon HD 2900XT
MSI K9A Platinum Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
4GB Memory
2 x Samsung 500GB disks
700w Seasonic Power Supply


Our Shuttle (Nibbler) has now become Lauren's personal computer and she spent some time yesterday creating havoc on the Cbeebies website.

It makes a huge difference having the larger case - sometime later this week I'll put the 2 machines next to each other and take a picture :) I think the Shuttle would probably fit inside the tower case ...










I've also just replaced the standard red SATA cables with lovely, sparkly RA SATA cables so they don't press up against the window ... /geek

Dough Delivery

Lauren asked me to take some photo's of her making various things out of playdough. She transports the playdough in the back of her trike and then tortures in into all kinds of everyday objects and foodstuffs. The playdough starts out in all manner of vibrant colours and ends up as a greyish-green blob.

Mmm, biscuits, pillows and a chicken!

Savlon Cream

Skipping home from school today, Lauren took a bit of a tumble and ended up with a grazed knee! Badge of childhood ... tears, blood, Savlon cream, glass of wine (for mother).

Star of Stage and Screen

After many false starts, Lauren had her first school concert performance today.  There was some clapping and waving and maybe a little bit of singing but mostly there was “surveying of the room looking for an escape route”.  Sara grabbed some clips with her mobile phone and sent them through to me at work – brightened up my afternoon!

 

Relaxing in the Pool, Part 2

We were trawling through some old photos and happened upon this almost identical picture from 2004.
Room for more toys back then!