Bank Holiday fun at Wallmead

Helen, Emma and I drove down to Tisbury on Sunday and stayed until Monday evening and had a wonderful time. We arrived to be treated to a Wallmead Roast.

Helen opened some lovely presents from Mum and Dad, including this necklace, a stretchy scarf and some of her favourite drinking chocolate.

Then we took a walk around Win Green, the highest point in Wiltshire
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Ria was staying with her Granny and Grandad - my parents, whilst her mum and dad (my sister Lin and her hubby Mike) were off to stay in Palma to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. They all really enjoyed their time - Lin and Mike had 5 star luxury and Ria was really happy playing with us lot in Tisbury. On our walk we searching for crocodiles, elephants and Eeyore's house in the wood. Ria walked for lots of the way and Emma was crying in the papoose, so took over Ria's buggy. She was awake and looking around for most of the walk.




Emma had a bath in the sink.

That evening Helen, Dad, Pete and I went to the pub in Swallowcliffe hoping to sample some local ale.
Mum looked after Emma who slept throughout!

We woke Emma for a feed at 11pm and she fed whilst barely awake. After that she slept through until nearly 8am. We were very pleased.

In the afternoon, Mum had invited everyone for a family barbeque, cooked by John and Mike. The sausages, burgers and bacon were excellent.


I played Warhammer Fantasy Battle with Tim, Billy and some of Billy's friends, Robbie and Edward who brought some soldiers along. After an epic struggle, it looked like Tim's human Empire army was about to be crushed by our Dwarf - Elf alliance, but then it was time to pack up. It was Billy's first game and his Dryads and Elven archers did very well indeed, routing a number of Empire archer units.

Helen's Cake!

Emma was exactly 12 weeks old on Helen's birthday yesterday. To celebrate, we got in some nachos and chicken fajitas and Rob, Leila, Rob and Becky came to party too. Becky cooked a birthday cake for Helen. All decorated up it looked amazing.

When the decorations came off, it looked even more so with purple icing and pink sponge! The sponge was fluffy and light and tasted lovely.

We toasted Helen with some champagne Robin had brought along. When that was finished, we all tried some of my Wallmead Parsnip wine. The champers must have addled our senses because there were some sounds of enjoyment!

The evening didn't go on too late because Rob, Becky and Rob had to get up early. Rob Armstrong is doing a 104 mile bike ride from Bristol to London today for charity. To sponsor him, visit this site : http://www.action.org.uk/giving/sponsorship/account_details.php?user=attica

Helen was very pleased with her presents, especially a popup book from Becky from her childhood called "Haunted House" She also received lots of Beauty Salon vouchers which she is looking forward to using.

We took some photos of Emma too which came out nicely. Helen thought in this one that Emma looked like her when she was little:
Here are some more of Emma looking sweet:
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Emma increasingly has a hand in her mouth at the moment and has been a little more irritable and harder to get to sleep in the last few days. Occasionally too she is dribbly. We are wondering whether she may be cutting her first tooth. Watch this space!

Our Third Wedding Anniversary

Today is Helen's birthday, but aside from making her breakfast and watching her open cards, I don't have much to report yet - there'll be more later.

Here are some pictures of Emma taken whilst I was at work when Helen was playing with her on her Barnacle Boat play mat. She loves the dangling mobiles and can spend longer and longer enjoying it before getting bored.












Tuesday was our third wedding anniversary and I booked us a hotel on the Gower peninsular called The Oxwich Bay Hotel, so called because it is a hotel on Oxwich Bay. The hotel is right on a beautiful beach and we enjoyed a walk across the bay after breakfast on Wednesday. Pushing the pram across the sands was a good work out, fortunately the sands were wet as the tide had been in overnight.

We arrived just after 9pm and climbed the stairs to a well sized room with a good sea view. We went down for dinner, but found that they'd stopped serving at 9pm. We were both hungry so we set off in the car feeling the romantic anniversary mood ebbing slightly. We found a few pubs that also finished serving at 9pm. Our humour had nearly run out when we arrived in Killay, fully 10 miles from the hotel and found there was a chinese takeaway open. We took the food back to the hotel, and they provided cutlery and plates and we were able to order champagne. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a takeaway as much! Emma was good as gold throughout, sleeping contentedly and waking up occasionally to have a look around.

After our walk along the beach and a quick visit to Oxwich castle, we set off for Caerphilly Castle on the way home. We bought a disposable camera at the castle shop as we'd left the digital one at home. Emma was wide awake while we ate our picnic and she enchanted some passing Welsh people wih smiles! The leaning tower in the photograph is caused by subsidence apparently, but it looks like it's been smashed apart by a cannon! The following pictures depict a drama that unfolded before our excited eyes. One of the castle cats had got stuck in what was described as a store room, but was now a very effective cat trap! One of the castle groundsmen climbed down to rescue Mr Cat who rather ungratefully scarpered everytime he bent down to pick him up. Eventually Mr Cat was captured and released, having hopefully learnt his lesson.






As we drove back over the Severn Bridge, Helen attempted an arty shot of the Suspension Bridge supports to finish the film.


We stopped off at Waitrose on the way back to do a mini shop and to get some nice food for entertaining on Thursday. Helen had invited her friend Kirsty around for dinner. She worked alongside Kirsty at the Gwent hospital in Newport at around the time we got married. Kirsty is a Physiotherapist who lives in Bristol. We enjoyed tuna steak with vegetables - surprisingly enjoyed by Helen despite her normal fish aversion.










After such a busy schedule, I wasn't able to leave the sofa on Friday night and Helen prepared a delicious jacket potato with onions and bacon and a salad.
Whilst I was at work, she'd been introducing Emma to the notion of swimming trunks and a ring to sit in albeit in the bath rather than the swimming pool. It was a great success and from 4 until 5 they were splashing around happily in the bath. Suddenly, it was as if a switch had been turned and Emma had had enough. She screamed fit to burst until removed from costume and dried, then fell asleep. Tiredness was diagnosed! I got home after 6 to find her fast asleep. She did wake later in the evening for a cry in my arms then brightened. She slept very well last night, from 8pm until our bedtime at 11pm when she had a feed, then slept again until 7am.

Here are some pictures of a visit this morning by Connie. Helen is now at Cadbury garden centre having lunch with Leila.

Weekend of Luxury

Helen had a lovely evening meet with Bryony and Kath on Friday evening. They met at The Cellar and had a wine and lots of baby adoration happened. I enjoyed a cheap but delicious heat it yourself Indian meal from Morrisons. I've been enjoying my curries all the more for how infrequent they've become with Helen avoiding them through breast feeding. When Helen got home we watched Pete winning Big Brother 7. It was the last episode so we can have our evenings back now.


On Saturday I worked in the morning, then we headed off to Woking to help Richard & Emma house sit. We got there at 4.30pm and were greeted by Mike, Claire and her daughter, Bethany who is 5 years old. John and Rowan were there with a sleeping Madeleine. We also saw Fiona and Jim with their son Daniel. Fiona is a friend from Nottingham but we hadn't met little Daniel before. Emma, Madeleine and Daniel were all born within a week of each other! It was fun comparing babies and stories. Fiona and Jim had to go fairly soon after we arrived.

Emma enjoyed being cuddled by the other parents. She gave some smiles and has started now to copy facial expressions of other people.

We played some chasing games in the large garden. Later in the evening we ordered some pizzas and watched The Simpsons on the massive plasma television. We had lots of enjoyment from the kittens that lived in the house. They'd only been there a month and were still not allowed outside. That didn't stop them trying to escape. They had the biggest scratching post I'd ever seen!

We went in the hot tub that evening and turned on the bubbles and jet streams. There was even a fridge beside it with cold beer and chocolate inside! We stayed in there until wrinkly, then I jumped into the swimming pool which felt really cold in comparison. I felt quite Scandinavian!

When we'd all had enough of the hot tub, we played Battlefield 2 on four computers that had a LAN (Local Area Network) so we could play in the same game. We were the Americans trying to capture islands in the Second World War.

We called in a night fairly soon after midnight. During the night we had a feline visitor, a senior cat whose bed we were sleeping in. She was very understanding about the mix up and settled for sleeping in between Helen's legs. Emma slept in her travel cot that Helen had bought at a large discount on Friday. It's a Mama and Papas one and it's very quick to assemble and put away.

In the morning, Richard, Mike and I had a game of Lord of the Ring; Battle for Middle Earth on the computers. Richard fairly soon got the upper hand, so I was quite pleased to be called away to help with looking after Emma while Mike took over and got beaten comprehensively.

For lunch we went to a nearby pub that is in the Vintage Inns chain, like one of our favourites in Portbury called The Priory. The service was equally quick and efficient and the food excellent. Richard and I went off to check the pressure in the Astra's tyres while the food was ordered and found the passenger side front tyre quite flat. Emma had noticed it looked a a bit flat. Richard reinflated it but when we got home it had already dropped from 33 to 30.

Bryony and Andrew dropped in as they were visiting Clevedon. Emma gave Andrew some lovely smiles.

Helen gave Emma a bath in the Tummy Tub to calm her down today and she was sitting up in it more than ever. She's been quite burbly, almost chatty when she gets excited.