Nowt taken out

A new bread maker! £50 of eBay, and below a shot of the first loaf. Costed out at 85p - not bad considering the soaring costs of food send a crappy Tesco loaf "baked in store" to £1.09. The pictures are not to scale by the way, clearly the loaf is not actually bigger than the bread maker that made it...

A new dressing gown.

They don't come along very often, so when they do you have to take full advantage. Here's Owen taking advantage of his.

Fresh stuff...

...is great. Here's what we ate tonight, all picked from our garden. Potatoes, Carrotts, Corgette, and a rouge apple.

The vegetables of our labour

On returning from holiday we found nine courgettes. We picked them, and Owen played a nice game of biggest/smallest.

£250

I've sent it off to Harry Hill, slightly optimistic but some of the stuff they show is far worse so worth a shot... thought you'd like a preview.

Holiday Random

Here's the best of the rest...

PS: Caernarvon Castle (the second one for those unsure of what a castle looks like) is amazing. Its where Prince Charles got incumbinated (or a similar real word), and is full of passages and tunnels and turrets that Owen loved exploring - well worth a fiver if you are in that neck of the Welsh woods.

Holiday Beaches

In the second month of this blog over two years ago I wrote about Criccieth when Catherine, Owen and I went there for a week in 2007. We returned there again last week. Regular readers will recognise the castle in the background as the same one from "Catherine and the Castle" posted in feb 2007. Here's a bunch of shots of us on the beach, the last one being my proudest moment as a human being (possibly) - Tom, Owen and Harry standing in a pool of our own making... I say pool, but really it made the three gorges dam look small. Tom took a proper garden shovel down and we made full use along with directing some other children to help out.

Essentially it peed it down all week, but we did get some weather windows which we took full advantage of.

Holiday Trains

North Wales for a week brings multiple possibilities for looking at steam trains and we took full advantage much to Owens pleasure. The Ffestiniogg (including a shot of the new tramway through Porthmadog to link to the Welsh Highland station on the other side of town - for all you train geeks out there), and lastly a Garratt 1909 taking on water on the Welsh Highland Railway in Caernarvon. One of the engines Dad fires on his regular trips.

Who knew?

Turns out that Thistles are frigging massive... Shame about the rather camp shot of me pointing at it but we needed something for scale. This was taken at a farm thingy in Havent (of Havent and Waterlooville FC fame) near Southampton. Obviously i've seen thistles before but never one this big.

Tiger Jupp

Following Padrig Harrington's back to back major wins Owen felt inspired to join the battle to oust Tiger from the number one spot. By the looks of his swing - complete with posy finnish - he may just have a shot...

Random update

A few random shots from the last few weeks.

Keeping up with the Tom-es

When your older cousin is playing on the big slide and you want to join in you have to find a method of getting down that doesn't scare the pants off you... so Owen settled on the tummy down feet first method and the race began. So popular was the game that other kids wanted a piece of the action - note the little fella at the front desperately trying to take part.

NHS surgeons and body marking

It turns out that marking a patient for surgery does not have to be just lines and arrows, Owen's surgeon used smiley faces... nice. Owen liked the smiley faces so much that every time a doctor or nurse came to look at him he insisted on showing them both (one on his wrist and one on his knee). Even a slightly confused anesthetist who had come in just to get Catherine and I to sign a consent form was forced to look at them. The picture is his knee just after the steroid injections. They seem to be working so far, fingers crossed for the long term. A massive thanks to all those who have been praying hard.

Random holiday stuff

You can tell I'm off work... too much time on my hands for blogging. Here's a shot of Owen holding a rather disgruntled Aidan. The other is Owen on a train ride thingy at the Donkey Darby last weekend.

The best gag on the internet...

The creator/writer of Lab Rats was on the culture show last week. He said that all comedy at the moment is "wry and clever" and that sometimes he likes to just be silly. I agree with him. (Although I can't condone his writing of a very poor sitcom, that ironically is worryingly similar to the show within the show in 'Extras') However, I do agree with the sentiment. With that in mind I present to you the best gag on the internet, its silly, but great. It is something for which I can claim no credit, it belongs to Dave Gorman. Go to http://www.davegorman.com/ then click on "webcam" on the top nav bar... enjoy.

Jumping pillows

I'd never heard of these until a recent trip to Ash End Farm resulted in a happy half hour with Owen. Here's a picture of one (not the one at Ash End but similar as I didn't take a picture) ...



Essentially a large bouncy castle type material thingy that you can jump on with surprising results. Not being a trampolinist of any caliber, imagine my shock when I successfully completed a seat drop. I'd highly recommend popping along and giving it a go.