Fun in the snow

There is even more snow now. The chimnea (pictured before) is now pretty much covered. Our leaking gutters have created beautiful icicles.


They are fun to break off and play with!


Yesterday we took the litte boy sledging on the slope by the city walls. We had no sledge (everywhere is sold out), so first I experimented with a tea tray:


It was pretty good, but not very stable for little boys. Fortunately a family nearby had moved on to snowball fights so we borrowed a sledge. Nathaniel wasn't too impressed with being dragged around on it!


But sledging down the hill was totally different!


You can't really see his smile, mainly becuase most of the time he looked like he does on his other favourite equipment, the zip wire - very concentrated! But when he reached the bottom of the hill he pointed straight back up and demanded more. So we went faster and faster!





Today we went back to a steeper bit of slope with a group of friends and Nathaniel conveniently had a long nap in his buggy so we could play! Its so sad that we didn't have a camera! This bit was much longer and steeper a slope and had a brick wall at the bottom to aim for. Actually there was a gap so that you could escape onto the frozen road - a very safe exit strategy!!

No-one had a sledge so we used the trusty tea tray, a cardboard box once containing a convection heater (with a good shiny surface), a silver sheet thing that you use to protect your car windscreeen from frost, and the piece de resistance (can't find how to do accents) - a body board!

It was brilliant! The body board went the fastest, and by the end Ian was scaring people by whizzing down on his kneeses and carrying on a good 15 metres down the road.

I'll try and get some of the photos that the others took, because this was seriously good fun!

Snow

There is lots of snow. Lots and lots of snow.


Enough snow for someone to build a giant snow bear. Did his head fall off (it was there yesterday), or did someone knock it off (its over 6ft in the air)?


Its all rather pretty

The right way to watch Battlestar Galactica

For this hobby you will need
- one DVD of Battlestar Galactipus
- one laptop
- one giant screen
- one business-grade projector
- one stereo plus speakers
- several bodge-cables and connectors that you never knew existed
- two sofas
- a few bottles of beer
- a bottle of red wine (drink it now, there'll be no time later)
- a box of thornton's chocolates that are a bit too fancy for everyone's taste
- a bowl of rice crackers
- five members of a family that takes it's sci-fi a bit too seriously!



We are kings of all Battlestar Galactipus watching. Look on our wonders and despair!

A new game

This was a really good game!

First you hide Daddy. Then you look for him under the cushions.


Then you pull him out of his hiding place using whatever comes to hand.


Then there is much rejoicing.


Sometimes you have to pull quite hard to get him out!


But there is always much rejoicing!

Xmas 2009

We had a lovely Christmas and took loads and loads of photos. Here are a large selection of things that we did:

We explored new things to play with in other people's houses:










We found new places to explore:






And found new people to play with:


We had fun eating new foods:




We thought the Christmas tree was great fun, especially when it was surrounded by a rather extravagant number of presents!


We enjoyed opening stockings in bed:




And we all enjoyed opening presents!




Nathaniel got the hang of opening presents very quickly. He sometimes got a bit confused between "This is present for you from Grandpa Beard and Granny Janni" and "This is a present for Grandpa Beard and Granny Janni", but he never actually opened someone else's present without first having been invited to help. I think that's resonably impressive for such a small boy!



We had lots of fun playing with our presents:








We visited lots of new parks and did lots of swinging. Nathaniel discovered bowl-shaped roundabouts which have become a firm favourite. Shame there don't seem to be any north of Watford!







And finally, we went for cold walks on beautiful days.





It was a very happy Christmas!