Family Portrait

It's not often that we get dressed up, and it's equally not often we think get a picture of us together, but we remembered to ask someone to take a photo of us on Saturday so here it is! I think we scrub up quite well as a family!

Vics and Fraser's Wedding

We left Brighton this morning and drove to the hotel where the wedding was being held - the Newick Park Hotel.

Wow - I always knew Vics would ensure her wedding day was spectacular but it was absolutely amazing. Newick Park Hotel is a small country house hotel and they'd hired the entire place for the day. The back drop was stunning, and it was all helped by having clear blue skies!


Vics (when she finally arrived!) looked beautiful - apparently there were hair traumas which meant she was almost 30 minutes late...


Other than that the day passed without a hitch, although I felt a little bad for them when they sent for a rather long trek to take photographs by the lake! In fact they seemed to have a lot of photos taken of them full stop poor things. Luckily Tully and I managed to catch Vic on one of her very short breaks!


They had arranged for childminders for the evening as the dinig room was quite small so the few children that had the honour of being invited, Tully included, went off to their own party as we went through for dinner. I was a little worried about how she'd feel but we'd talked about it several times in advance and she was so brave! In fact she had a whale of a time: we couldn't get her to leave later and whenever we popped in to check on her she shooed us away as she was having too much fun...

Vics had given me the honour of speaking on her behalf 'best woman' style, and luckily they had the speeches before dinner which meant I was over my nerves and could properly enjoy the food which was delicious.


All in all I had a fabulous weekend!

Off to Vics Wedding

Finally the big weekend has arrived - it's Vics wedding and I have to say I'm very excited. We drove to Brighton today and stayed at the Metropole on the front, which meant we got to go on the beach, as well as have a little wander around Brighton.

I fell in love with the place when I came here (a lot!) whilst working with Southern Water, and I still think it's one of my favourite places in the UK now so it was lovely to wander past some of the places I used to go and have a reminisce!

House Stuff

After initially struggling to come to terms with not being at work I have decided it's actually quite good being a lady of leisure - if only because it means I can arrange to get all the little jobs that have needed doing around the house for the last 4 years done as I have enough time to organise!

I've only been off for 2 weeks so far, but in that time I have:

had quite a major de-clutter

had the landing floorboards replaced

had the weird coving style skirting boards upstairs replaced

had a new tv aerial fitted

had the leaky toilet fixed

had Cloudy fixed (twice!)

and made arrangements for:

new internal doors to be fitted

new landing and stairs carpet to be fitted

new flooring in the bathroom and toilet to be fitted

the side of the bath to be fixed

the steamed up double glazing panes to be replaced

someone from one of the charity shops to come around to collect a load of stuff

someone to paint the toilet and bathroom (how lazy is that!?)

I'm about halfway through my list of house stuff - any chance I'll get it complete before himself decides it's time to say hello to the world?

Pixels is here!

We went to collect our new car today which has been named Pixels.

It's a Nissan Qashqai 2.0 Tekna 2WD, the choosing of which has taken us a very long time (on and off over a series of about 18 months!). We were finally forced into making a decision as my maternity leave approached as it was far too much like hard work managing with just 1 car when I was on maternity leave with Tully.

Choosing the Qashqai ended up being quite an easy decision, choosing the spec was fairly straightforward, but choosing which engine took slightly longer partly because we really struggled to find a 2l petrol version to test drive. After much hunting the dealer in Boston came up trumps during our trip to Mum and Dads a few weeks ago. It was immediately obvious that this was the one for us and as the salesman did us a very good deal we went ahead. Buying in Boston has the added bonus of providing an excuse to have another weekend with my parents which means we get a lovely long lie in!

The naming is a bit of a long story. I wanted to call it Moo (as most people seem to pronounce it Cashcow) but Tully said that was a stupid name and that it should be called Pixels (although I have no idea where she got that from). Tully also has a name for the baby that neither Mark or I are keen on so we did a deal: she names the car and we name the baby. So Pixels it is!

I'm really (really) pleased with it but Tully isn't - apparently it's too red...

Early Maternity Leave

In theory I should be working for another 2 1/2 weeks but my SPD has been getting harder to handle at work and after another visit to the doctor I've been signed off until the end. That was on Monday but I ended up working one of my busiest days in a while yesterday whilst I handed everything I've been working on over to the various people that will be covering my job whilst I'm away.

Today was therefore my first day at home and it's very odd. I'm feeling a bit lost if I'm honest, I suppose because I'm not mentally prepared for finishing so early. And to make things worse I'm just sat here not able to do very much and spotting lots of 'jobs' that need doing around the house and getting increasingly frustrated that I can't do any of them.

I was trying to work out if I took things slowly if I'd be capable of painting the bathroom and toilet earlier. You'll be pleased to know even I decided the task was beyond me but it's all sooo annoying! Poor Mark - I think he may get somewhat nagged over the next few weeks!

Big Bruise

On wednesday morning I slipped getting into the bath and banged my leg on the side of it. I am quite proud of the bruise!

Nesting?

This evening I decided it was absolutely imperative that I completely rearrange the contents of the kitchen. I hadn't realised when I started just how much I'd move otherwise it probably would have warranted a before and after picture! Mark had popped out when I decided to start and I'll not tell you what he said when he got back and saw my efforts given I was meant to be relaxing...

Holiday!

Hooray - I've booked a holiday! Now I know it may be a bit premature but I figured I needed something to look forward to whilst I'm stuck at home with a baby for the next few months!!!!

So next spring we are going back to Northumberland, staying at Village Farm Cottages in Coquet Lodge. As an added bonus we've persuaded Mum and Dad to book Kielder Chalet for the same week so we have some assistance with childcare! How sneaky was that!?