Back to school - at last

Well, we had an early start today as it was the first day of a new year at school, unfortunately I felt a bit shabby as we had friends round for dinner last night and I think I may have drank too much red wine. Actually, I don't feel that bad, just very tired, I woke at 3am and didnt get back to sleep - guess I was excited about school.
Anyway I got Tom & Lily safely off to school on time and then drove to work only to find I wasnt able to do anything as Tim had a meeting and needed the computer, oh well, its a nice drive and I saw a turtle out for a stroll.
Came home and tidied up last nights dishes and made the beds then sat down to write this with a cup of coffee and some hot buttered toast, yum yum.

We went to the cinema yesterday as a last day of hols treat and saw 'Space Chimps'. It was quite funny, if you go to see it Kilowatt was my favourite character.
Today school finishes at 11am so we are going to Burger King for lunch and a play with friends. Then a quiet afternoon watching 'Meet the Robinsons' on dvd (which I love) and homework if they have any.

I got a home baked cake!!!

The ever lovely Kate baked me a cake, well she baked one for me and Dorothy who celebrated her birthday on the 5th August. Wasn't that nice of her - it tasted delicious and we got some to bring home too. Yum yum.

Everyone sang Happy Birthday - it was brill. We had some champagne and some bangers and burgers. A great end to a good day.

Happy Birthday To Me

We went to Destin for the weekend and buried Tom in the sand. Spent all morning on the beach
sand castling, burying Tom, boogie boarding and relaxing. We also spent an annoying 10 mins or so swatting flies until it got too hot for them and they buggered off. Also Tom lost one of his beach shoes, it floated off into the ocean never to be seen again, we saved one but what use it that?!
Later on we met up with Kate & Ray, Jem & Barb for dinner at Dewey Destin Seafood Restaurant which was fab, as usual. Afterwards we went for an ice cream and then some crazy golf. A lovely day.
And now I'm going to get ready to go round to Kate & Anthonys for some birthday booze and a barbie (Q not doll).

My Little Ballerina

Well, what can I say, just watch it and let me know what you think. Sorry it's so dark.

August, school hols nearly over

Tom, Lily and I went to the zoo on Friday with friends. It was so hot... ...even the rhinos couldnt be bothered to do anything.
Saturday night saw some fun in the pool, the only place to keep cool, you know its August, its so dam hot all the time. I know I shouldn't complain, especially since most people reading this are back in Britain where the weather is usually fairly crappy. Sorry about that, but come out and visit and you will understand why I complain.

More Holiday Photos

This is Shamu from Sea World, I can't recommend this day highly enough, it was brilliant. Photos are slightly out of sequence as below is the Grand Canyon looking grand....

Above is Tom while watching the dolphin show at Sea World - you can see how wet we got!
Lily earning her drivers licence at Legoland - she seriously thinks she can drive now and has offered to drive for me once or twice, what a crazy girl.
Tom standing at Pier 33 before our trip to Alcatraz.

Its great to have the camera back and see all the photos from the missing part of our holiday, it seems like a long time ago now. We haven't been up to too much since getting back, Nick is busy preparing to be a teacher at Maxwell and the children have been busy getting on my nerves. Not really, but it is a very long summer holiday, they still have over 2 weeks left before they go back to school. We are off to Ray & Kate's this afternoon for a BBQ and splash about in the pool so there may be a beachball challenge to enter!

Home, at last.

We started our holiday with a visit to Yosemite which, as you can see below, was 'awesome'. It really was very beautiful. Lily nearly got washed away by some white water rapids as we tried to cross the river to get to some toilets on the other side. We crossed at some stepping stones, I was holding Lily (luckily) but she slipped and then I slipped, we all got soaked (and the water was freezing) but luckily not only did I save Lily I managed to save the brand new super duper camera from getting wet too - what a hero(ine).
After Yosemite we visited the Sequioas National Park and saw some very large trees, although we were all a little disappointed with'General Sherman'. Next stop was Death Valley and then onto Las Vegas were we stayed with Amanda (thank you very much once again for the use of your laundry and the delicious meal you cooked us). After Vegas it was a brief stop at Hoover Dam (where strangely enough we bumped into Ray & Katie - how weird was that?) then onto Grand Canyon for 2 nights.
You may note a lack of photos here - thats because we didnt take the battery charger for the big camera (oops) and the little one broke and we cant get the photos at the moment. Luckily we were never actually without a camera as the little one didnt break until we were in San Francisco so we were able to buy a new battery for the big camera. Did you follow all that?
Anyway, after Grand Canyon it was onto San Diego and Sea World. This was my favourite day of the whole trip, it was brilliant, we got totally soaked at the dolphin show and all the other shows were just great, I would recommend it to you all.
Whilst in San Diego, we met up with friends of my parents (from way back in the late 1960's). So we kindly got fed lunch by Kasey and dinner by Bob & Donna (many thanks). It was so kind of them as I had never met any of them and just phoned up 'hallo, you don't know me but you used to know my parents' . Kind of weird but I'm glad I called and now they are all back in contact with each other - the magic of email...
Santa Barbara and 4 days at the beach followed and then finally we ended up in San Francisco.

This is us standing at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge and below is Tom on board a ship - as you can see he wasn't really enjoying himself!
Home last night, after many delays due to bad weather only to find our pool had flooded and it has trashed the lining (big oops). We are waiting on the 'pool guy' to come round and have a look at it. The most annoying thing about it is that if we had been home Wed night instead of Thursday night we could probably have saved it from getting trashed as we would have been able to pump the rain water out before it got too high. Hmm, never mind -s**t happens and I guess it could have been worse.