Trying to pose for a photo to give to Great Granny, harder than it looks to get Harry to sit still although this photo is a nice side product.
Sunday, 30 December 2007
Time flies by when you're a ...
Dad sells these overalls for the Festiniog railway staff (of which he is one - a fireman no less), he needed models so naturally Sarah, Alice, Tom and I stepped in. We all felt it was best if Tom was not looking directly at the camera so he was allocated the hi vis vest. You can order you very own set of genuine railway-mans gear by contacting dad - let me know if you want some. Reasonable prices and all gear fully guaranteed.
Stock loads of presents
Owen opening his stocking, he got a couple of toy cars and a ball along with the obligatory chocolate coins. He didn't really get it but seemed quite happy to keep opening presents!
Monday, 24 December 2007
RSS's
I just realised you can RSS feed on these blogs - handy. So to kick matters off I have set up one for Urban Dictionary. Its on the right hand side and will give the top five words. If you havn't been on the site its well worth a browse to kill soe tie at work. Pleasingly I texted Sarah (sister) and ended with "word to your mother" in a hip hop stylee, and she thought that it meant she needed to urgently phone home and speak to mum, she phoned... I laughed.
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
Sports tour scores
As regular readers will know Mark Grew and I are undertaking a life defining series of events - a sports tour of Coventry. So far we have made two, a rugby game and an Ice Hockey game. The good news is that the scores are in:
The scoring categories are as follows:
Refreshments
Transport
Merchandising
Quality of game
Entertaining Extras
Value for money
Springfield Factor
Fellow Spectators
Each category gives a score out of five with 5 being outstanding and 1 rubbish, we then square each score and add the results before rooting the total. The overal score could be anything from 7 ish to 13 ish.
The final scores are:
Rugby 8.774964387
Ice Hockey 10.44030651
So this means that the Rugby scored poorly and the hockey well.
The "British Razzel Dazzel" helped the hockey score highly, as did the bloke who shouted "When you were born the doctor gave your mum a smack" to the sin binned Belfast Giants player. Teh large inflatable men helped the rubgy but this was ofset by the 11 hour bus journey to cover 7 meters to get to the stadium - otherwise known as "park and crawl".
The scoring categories are as follows:
Refreshments
Transport
Merchandising
Quality of game
Entertaining Extras
Value for money
Springfield Factor
Fellow Spectators
Each category gives a score out of five with 5 being outstanding and 1 rubbish, we then square each score and add the results before rooting the total. The overal score could be anything from 7 ish to 13 ish.
The final scores are:
Rugby 8.774964387
Ice Hockey 10.44030651
So this means that the Rugby scored poorly and the hockey well.
The "British Razzel Dazzel" helped the hockey score highly, as did the bloke who shouted "When you were born the doctor gave your mum a smack" to the sin binned Belfast Giants player. Teh large inflatable men helped the rubgy but this was ofset by the 11 hour bus journey to cover 7 meters to get to the stadium - otherwise known as "park and crawl".
Saturday, 15 December 2007
Mince Pies
Here's Owen after baking alot of mince pies today. He was enthusiastic if a little heavy handed at the more delicate phases, the bit he found hardest was Delia's enforced 20 min break half way through whilst waiting for the pastry to 'rest' in the fridge. The finished result tastes great but do have a number of finger sized holes in them due to some 'testing' before they went in the oven. (The holes are Owen sized, not me sized)
Nativity by three year olds
Imagine a nativity performed by three year olds with one year olds doing all the songs - mildly silly but according to Catherine quite entertaining. Owen is the one dressed in white in the back row holding his ear and not singing or doing any actions! PS: If you have to find white trousers as part of a "star" costume for a one year old can I advise going straight to the girls section and buying a pair of sparkly white cords with a silver belt rather than wasting ages in lots of different shops realizing that rather unsurprisingly no one makes white trousers for baby boys.
I'd like to teach the world to read
Not content with educating Coventry 6 year olds at work, Becca willing gives up her time for a little paired reading at weekends. She seems a little frustrated at Owens lack of progress, he just keeps wanting to look at the car page and is a little uncertain about sub clauses.
So here it is merry .... (and so on and so forth)
The season of unbridled joy and shopping is upon us. The video player is getting a good work out at school and the tree has put in an appearance at home. Although, I am going to write a strongly worded letter to Home-base due to the slightly miss shapen appearance of our tree. They appear to have done some liberal trimming of the mid section and made it look at best weird and at worst very weird. Still, on the plus side the lights worked straight out of the box with no replacing of bulbs or excessive untangling of cable.
Monday, 10 December 2007
Straight Blazin'
Mark and I are going to be putting our 'fingers in the air and pushing the button four times' on sunday night as we pay a visit to the Westwood sponsored Coventry Blaze. Its part two of our sports tour of Coventry. Part one was the Wasps Munster game at the Ricoh which scored very highly for quality of game, volume of drunk Irish people and size of inflatable men. We await the results of the Ice Hockey outing with baited breath.
Christmas and winter meetings
Our tree is up. Looks good if a little anorexic, homebase (yes, you read that right - no B & Q trees for us now we live on the right side of the tracks, some people say you pay extra, I just think its nearer) decided to trim it down and it looks oddly tall and thin - very space efficient but not very atheistically pleasing.
In other news, the winter meetings went by without any major Red Sox action, annoying as its now been ages and ages of Snantanna talk - I need to know either way as I am getting board of reading idle speculation. Plus if tehy trade Ellsbury I'll have to resign my fanship...
In other news, the winter meetings went by without any major Red Sox action, annoying as its now been ages and ages of Snantanna talk - I need to know either way as I am getting board of reading idle speculation. Plus if tehy trade Ellsbury I'll have to resign my fanship...
Saturday, 27 October 2007
The world of sport (revisited)
So, a few weeks on and how were my predictions.
1) The rugby team got slapped in the final, silly penalties and no invention meant an easy win for S.Africa. Still, if you'd offered me the final before the tournament I'd have bitten your hand off.
2) They did indeed.
3) Lampard was not picked - excellent. But England still lost. With luck they will fail to qualify and football fans will begin to realise how poor we are.
4) Completely and utterly wrong. Go Sox. Beckett is Mr October and even JD Drew is hitting the little white thing with the long stick with reasonable regularity.
So 1 for 4. I love being English, my natural desire for dissapointment is often fullfilled.
1) The rugby team got slapped in the final, silly penalties and no invention meant an easy win for S.Africa. Still, if you'd offered me the final before the tournament I'd have bitten your hand off.
2) They did indeed.
3) Lampard was not picked - excellent. But England still lost. With luck they will fail to qualify and football fans will begin to realise how poor we are.
4) Completely and utterly wrong. Go Sox. Beckett is Mr October and even JD Drew is hitting the little white thing with the long stick with reasonable regularity.
So 1 for 4. I love being English, my natural desire for dissapointment is often fullfilled.
And they were all yellow...
Look at Sam Jones, see how he shines for you, and all the things you do, his eyes were all yellow.
Disapointingly there was nothing in the coldplay lyrics about having a face full of spaghetti.
Disapointingly there was nothing in the coldplay lyrics about having a face full of spaghetti.
World Cup Fever
Owen gets into the spirit of the Rugby World cup with an England shirt and ball, maybe the England team might have done better if they had remembered their cricket stumps...
Monday, 15 October 2007
The world of sport...
The world of sport (or at least my bit of it) is going rather well at the moment. Obviously the rugby chaps have done well, but the cricketers seem to be finding their feet, footballers are kicking acceptably, and even the Red Sox are scaling the heights. I do however feel a slight unease with how well things seem to be going, and so for the record here are my predictions for the coming weeks.
1) The rugby team lose the final but come home with heads held high because they punched above their weight. I'm a little annoyed as I went to the trouble of getting a projector from school wich essentially meant I could watch England fail bigger and louder than normal.
2) The cricketers forget how to win as quickly as they seemed to remember.
3) McClaren can't resisit picking the arch muppet Lampard again and England lose to Russia and then croatia, they qualify by the skin of their teeth but everyone is left with a nasty "I wish they'd appointed Martin O'Neil" taste in their mouths.
4) The Red Sox blow up, Beckett pitches in game 7 and having previously been the October God he gets carted deep for lots and Terry in a moment of madness thinks "Cometh the hour cometh the gagne" - Gange comes, then goes again very rapidly over the centre field wall. JD Drew continues where he left off at the end of September and does nothing for $13millon. Fenway gets hit by a freak New England Hurricane and is utterly destroyed and MLB relocate the team to Wisconsin.
How about that for some good old fasioned Briish negativity. Reaslistically i'd settle for 2 from 2.
1) The rugby team lose the final but come home with heads held high because they punched above their weight. I'm a little annoyed as I went to the trouble of getting a projector from school wich essentially meant I could watch England fail bigger and louder than normal.
2) The cricketers forget how to win as quickly as they seemed to remember.
3) McClaren can't resisit picking the arch muppet Lampard again and England lose to Russia and then croatia, they qualify by the skin of their teeth but everyone is left with a nasty "I wish they'd appointed Martin O'Neil" taste in their mouths.
4) The Red Sox blow up, Beckett pitches in game 7 and having previously been the October God he gets carted deep for lots and Terry in a moment of madness thinks "Cometh the hour cometh the gagne" - Gange comes, then goes again very rapidly over the centre field wall. JD Drew continues where he left off at the end of September and does nothing for $13millon. Fenway gets hit by a freak New England Hurricane and is utterly destroyed and MLB relocate the team to Wisconsin.
How about that for some good old fasioned Briish negativity. Reaslistically i'd settle for 2 from 2.
Monday, 6 August 2007
The Jupps camp it up
Cracking camping holiday on the Gower Pennisular just above three cliffs bay. Nice site (although staffed entirely by liars), and good company (Grews/Jones).
Here's a photo of our tent, its massive an not very hardcore but very parctical!
Here's a nice sunset taken from the camp field followed by Owen on the beach.
Lastly and most importantly here is the massive pool that Mark and I built on Oxwich Bay beach, it took us most of the day and the kids loved playing in it (that was our excuse for building it anyway!)
Here's a photo of our tent, its massive an not very hardcore but very parctical!
Here's a nice sunset taken from the camp field followed by Owen on the beach.
Lastly and most importantly here is the massive pool that Mark and I built on Oxwich Bay beach, it took us most of the day and the kids loved playing in it (that was our excuse for building it anyway!)
Owen kick starts his cricket career
Tiger woods was hitting golf balls before his second birthday, so just for the record here is Owen not hitting a cricket ball but happily carrying around a bat.
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
After the big chop
Much better I think you'll agree, much less like he's been through a treacle hedge backwards. As an added bonus hair washing time in the bath has been halved, as has shampoo usage.
Before the big chop
Catherine said I wasn't allowed to cut Owens hair following a slight slip on my last attempt which left a shorter than average section around his right ear - not my fault obviously - he moved... anyway my argument that I would get better with practice fell on deaf ears and he was duly booked into a proper gorwn up (expensive) haircut.
Sunday, 24 June 2007
The grass is alwasy greener...
... on the neighbours side of the fence, mainly becasue we havn't got any.
The grass is always greener...
Obviously Owen was a great help, here he is tidying up an edge with a turf cutter. By the end of the day e had more grass on him than the lawn did.
The grass is always greener...
In our case it actually is... check it out. Fingers crossed it doesn't die and go a nasty brown colour!
Saturday, 9 June 2007
Wednesday, 16 May 2007
Vincent Van Owen
Lets hope both ears stay intact. He does like to have pleanty of colours to choose from and to look at life in an alternative way so as to allow full creative freedom...
Monday, 7 May 2007
Sunday, 6 May 2007
The role of the Godfather
As a special treat for my godson Isaac (the little fella in the red top in the picture) I aranged a fire engine to come round so he could get in and hold the hose etc. (either that or one turned up and Naomi took him and Sam out to see it).
Here's how I got my fencing tan...
It was quite good fun really - and a "big shout out" to So Solid Grew for giving me a big hand...
A Cure for Seasonal Adjustment Disorder
As discovered by Naomi Grew. With the added bonus of looking pretty darn sweet these babies make every day feel like summer.
(They are actualy Dad's anti glare night driving glasses - I asume he bought them in 1983)
(They are actualy Dad's anti glare night driving glasses - I asume he bought them in 1983)
Sunday, 22 April 2007
New Hat and rugby ball
To cap off an exciting weekend Owen is also the proud owner of a new sunhat and rugbyball - the previous one from Uncle Tom burst due to over use. Here is a photo that covers all three. (For those unsure about perspective - the ball is not that big in real life)
New Shoes!
Owens first shoes, from John Lewis. Outragously priced at £18 - think I could make a pair for less. Pretty cool though, they look like mini Deisels!
Monday, 16 April 2007
Cananda here we come
The two week RV based road trip around Cananda has been green lighted by the budget holders of both the Jupp and Grew families and is pencilled in for summer 2008. This has led to immediate an overexcited reaction from me and Mark with rough plans for travel, accomodation and transport worked out within hours of the go ahead, and the finer details under discussion - a radio code book in case we get CBs on the RV's for example - best to be well planned. The general consensus seems to be that all number used in the code should end in "er" - "Breaker, breaker thats a four niner" - and lots of meaningless words before and after any key information, and overall try to sound like a cross between a slightly disgruntled long distance lorry driver and the FBI. I'm considering commandeering the code name "Blue Squirell"...
Oops
Shouldn't have taught Owen to say "Doh" and put his hand on his head just before he ate some sloopy mince and gravey... still he seemed to find it pretty funny.
Man on the spoon
Owens first efforts at using a spoon, he'd obviously been watching me in the garden as he went for a definate shovel action. Still, as usual volume and food were not mutualy exclusive and pleanty went down the pie hole along with a fair bit into the recycling trough (or bib).
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
Blowing out the candle
Can be a challenge when you are only one year old. If you think there'd be no one to help you'd be wrong. Sam Jones, never one to shy away from a challenge, steps up to the plate and blows the candle out like he's been doing all his life (well five years anyway)
If the world runs out of horses...
... Owen will be fine as he's learnt to ride a lion. Always best not to waste time on "wussy" things like horses anyway - real men ride lions.
A birthday present from the good folks at Chez Bainbridge (Rob, laura and Thomas), good work.
A birthday present from the good folks at Chez Bainbridge (Rob, laura and Thomas), good work.
Monday, 26 March 2007
Pig Roast
Sarah and Toms 30th party at UCS Old Boys Rugby Club. Pig Roast loked grim but tasted amazing. Beer was cheap and good. A good time was had by all (except my mum and dad who had two screaming babies to contend with)
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
Catherine and the castle
Just to make it look like an actual holiday, here's a shot of Catherine on te beach with scenic castle behind her. We were going to visit but £3 each seemed steep for a ruin that was near a perfectly good free beach.
The entertainer
Owen was constantly amused by Tom, so much so that al he had to do was sit with shades on and he had Owens full attention. If only parenting was that easy...
Take a Geography teacher on holiday...
... and you get some seriously dull photos. Here's a good example of me on some Rock Armor on Criccieth beach. If you're having trouble sleeping and want to see the rest of the set let me know, highlights include; A groyn, a sea wall, some cliffs and a headland - nice!
Friday, 9 February 2007
Owen meets Harry again
The half term expedition to Wales begins. Tom and Chris keen to get there before 1:15 so as not to miss the rugby will mean an early start on saturday, so with this in mind Team Brandt arive at chez Jupp on friday. Owen takes the oportunity to introduce Harry to his coloured balls.
Thursday, 8 February 2007
(Catherine helped as well)
She was reluctant but after some dragging she came out to play and was very pleased with the results as this shot documents
During nap time
In order to make the most of my afternoon off school I decided that the adults should go out to play and build the biggest snowman in the street. Nice. (Always best not to grow up I find) We only had a limited time window due to the boy only napping for 30mins so not a bad effort all in all
The Snowboy
Not really close to being big enough to be called a snowman, but Owen seemed to like it. Catherine was not so keen on being pelted with snow so shamelesly used the boy as a human shield - shocking.
Sunday, 28 January 2007
Just the three of us...
Here's a photo of the three of us at Owen's baptism, its so out of date we don't even own the tree in the background anymore (or even the house it came with)
Another day, another blog...
... or it would be if we had one before. This is our first one, and to be total honest there's not a fat lot to put on here yet. I'm sure we'll think of something deeply gripping, but in the mean time here's a photo of a laptop case I just ordered
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