..... And a Happy New 'Ear

Today's blog title is thanks to Caitlin, taken from her recent rousing renditions of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".

So a happy new 'ear to everyone. We hope 2010 is good to you all.

These occasions give us an excuse to post photos from the "unclassifiable" folder, or in other words, let you see a few of the things we've been up to here and there in Blighty. Hope you enjoy.


First day at school. Caiti looked pretty excited (before leaving home at least).


But she didn't seem so cheerful once we arrived at school itself and took a couple of family shots....


.....if looks could kill - is she trying to tell us something here?


Here we are at Winkworth Arboretum. We've been here before in early spring, but it's also a spectacular place to visit in autumn when the trees turn very colourful.




Lots of reds and yellows.


The vista from the hill.


Ready for trick or treating on Halloween.
In our old street the local urchins used to knock on the door all evening, but we were wondering why we didn't have any visitors at our new place. After we ventured out into the street ourselves, it soon became apparent that you need to have a pumpkin (preferably hollowed out with a candle) on your doorstep if you're offering "sweeties" for trick or treaters. We'll try and remember that for next time.


A spot of baking


Less talking more mixing


Yummo!



Lucy at Tonbridge Castle, in Tonbridge (funnily enough), which is in Kent. A nice town, but a bit of a drive to be honest.


OK, everyone say "cheese"


Tonbridge shops can be very Tudor


Tonbridge Pizza Express - Jo loves Pizza Express. She took the photo.


And here's the gang at Lucy's 7th birthday party. We had an afternoon tea with a few friends.
Note it's dark outside at 4.30pm - you gotta love winter.

Merry Xmas - it won't be white, but it was close!

Merry Christmas everyone. We hope you're all having a happy and festive day - we know we will be. To kick us off for our Christmas edition, we thought we'd share some of the usual antics going on at ours in the lead up to the big day.


Given the girls didn't manage to get out of their 'jamies, this photo was deemed unfit for the yearly family Christmas Card (which we forgot to send again this year). But nevertheless, they did do a good job with their hand-made Christmas Hats.


The tree


For the School Nativity Play this year, Lucy got the role of Camel No. 1 - and yes, it was her usual Oscar winning stuff.


And of course it was Caiti's first Nativity Play, where she was part of the Twinkly Star chorus. From all reports her singing voice is not only superb, but she rules the mic like Shirley Bassey.

Well, it doesn't look like it will be a White Christmas this year in Woodham, although we have had a few nice blankets of snow over the last week or two - but unfortunately it's all melted away over the last couple of days. Not to worry cause we managed to take dozens of photos (as we do) to capture all the excitement.


Snow at school - it doesn't get any better than this!


Actually the only thing better is when school gets cancelled because of the snow - no luck this time.



Yep, it's all smiles for snow at school.



Actually standing around smiling does start to get a bit chilly after a while.


Snow at home - it doesn't get any better than this.


There's only one thing for it: snowball fight.


Don't ever turn your back during a snowball fight.


Keezee has been working in Scotland, and enjoying the snow up there (mainly from the airport window, whilst waiting hours for his flight....) so his snow man building skills could not be utilised on this occasion. Not to worry, the girls had a go all on their own and didn't do a bad job really [cough, cough].


Carrot nose eater: caught in the act (again).

So that's it from us - love to all and we hope you enjoyed the pics and have a wonderful Christmas Day.

We're off to the Polo darling

Here's some pics from Cowdray Park in Midhurst, when we visited with Nanny Dawn to catch a spot of Polo. It was a nice day out - we packed the picnic, paid our £10 then spent half an hour driving through the fields trying to find which one was hosting the next chukka. We eventually made it and settled down on the sideline (if that's what you call it) to enjoy the action. All very la-de-da! Enjoy the pics.


The game was on the No. 1 field which has the nice backdrop of Cowdray Castle behind.


Picnicing... and yes, we are drinking Pimms - the adults at least.


Caitlin shortly before she threw the ball in front of a "pony" warming up on the sidelines. The ball was obviously barred after that little incident.


Some of the action. You wouldn't believe it but our old mate Ruki Baillieu was in the losing team. He scored a nice goal early on, but was a not at his best on the day for mine.

Out and About with a Few Visitors

Before we download all our recent pics from the camera - and there's lots, so here's hoping Keezee gets the motivation to post them all - we have some more from Nana's camera that we hadn't shared yet. So here goes...

By the way, we get asked quite a bit what the weather's like where we are, so we posted a little widget on the right of the page so you can see for yourselves - Woking is just down the road. But please don't brag!



Here's Chriso and Alainya making their first blog appearance on Guildford High Street with Nana & co.


Lucy and Nana went to see The Lion King while Nana was visiting. This was their second visit to the West End - you may remember The Sound of Music. The other Keezee's haven't been to a proper London show yet (school nativities, aside) and are starting to get a bit jealous!


Before the show. If Caiti was jealous, she didn't show it.


Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth..... Caiti posing outside everyone's favourite pub, The Anchor


Keezee, & Nana, enjoying the nice late summer weather (and a drink), outside The Anchor


Atmosphere shot


Atmosphere shot, in the other direction. All of those long boats were full of punters visiting the pub.


The obligatory family shot, but worth posting to show you how happy the staff were that day - what's going on there?


Caiti getting ready for her modest (but surprisingly noisy) birthday celebrations, back in August.


The girls on their slip n slide in the garden. This is a nice photo to look at, if only because there's snow settled on the lawn as I look out the window today - oh how the seasons change so quickly!

Ely Cathedral

Here's a few shots from our drive-by visit to Ely Cathedral. We first saw this place on the BBC documentary called "How We Built Britain" which aired a couple of years back, and thought - that'd be worth a look.

How We Built Britain was an enormously cool show, and David Dimbleby is a pretty cool presenter,travelling about the country from building to building in his bomby old Land Rover. It's worth a look if you manage to catch it. The Cathedral was also enormously cool - as was the weather that day, for which we were enormously unprepared - we still had our beach gear on as we made our way back from Norfolk.


The Cathedral. Construction of the "modern" building began sometime around 1080 we understand. Big, isn't it?



Lucy and Nana out the back.


This looks like a shot from an album cover - not sure if the band's any good though!


The obligatory shot from inside the Cathedral. We're still not sure if this is bad form or not.



And here's a quick vid of the girls catching ladybirds outside the Cathedral - there was a plague of ladybirds last summer, so they were literally everywhere, but do you think this stopped our two from being fascinated every time they saw one??? Of course not!




And if you're interested, here's the opening titles to the show, as found on YouTube.
And here's a clip from the show.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8yf31AAjv8

Norfolk Beaches

Right then where were we.... here's some pics from our summer holiday a couple of months back when we went to Norfolk with Nanna Julie. We stayed at The Cromer Country Club in Cromer, which is a classic Victorian seaside town (Victorian as in developed during the late 19th century during the reign of Queen Victoria; not as in the state where Jo grew up - that wouldn't make sense).

Cromer's got the mandatory stone church, fish and chip shops, ice cream shops, bucket and spade shops and amusement parlours which all English seaside towns seem to have, but its also got a pier, which is only reserved for the "classic" towns it seems. What's more it's the home of the Cromer crab, the local delicacy that you can actually catch from straight off the pier.... there were tons of them. We ate a few (tasted like crab funnily enough) but didn't catch any ourselves.


The Cromer Country Club is up on the cliffs above the town, and it's a nice walk down to the main beach, including lots of crab-themed Christmas lights, which must look nice at Christmas.


Just to add to the vibe.... here we checking out the cliff walk in the late afternoon.





Caiti really loves the pebbly beaches here in the UK. They are a great opportunity for her to work on her throwing technique. There's a few rocks on the beach at Cromer, but it's actually nice and sandy once the tide goes out a little.


Lucy likes the beach as well, but prefers the sandy stretches for castle building.



Here's us on the pier after the beach.


And here's all the girls enjoying what was quite good weather.


There's lots of fish and chips shops everywhere, but this shellfish van was a new experience. Crab, cockles and leekies were popular.


So we set ourselves up in front of the pub on the promenade to try it all out. The crab was sensational and the cockles were OK, but we won't be ordering the leekies again.


We mentioned the weather was good, and it was most days, but when it wasn't we headed out to check out the Norfolk coast a little more. The beach at Sea Palling is nice and sandy because they've created artificial reefs a few hundred yards out to see. They were put there to stop the low-lying town from flooding during tidal surges, but now there's no more pebbles on the beach either.


Here's Nanna enjoying the sights of nearby Sheringham, another nice Victorian seaside town, but pierless, alas.


And this is the beach at Sheringham.



It's a bit pebbly, but quite pleasant on a sunny day.


The telescope is 20p, but there's not a real lot to see to be honest.


We liked this fishing-themed relief.


And here's Lucy at the Sheringham lifeboat club.


And finally, a bit of fun at the beach for your enjoyment.