Memories...

On Christmas Eve we needed Tully to have a nice long sleep, so decided to go for a bit of a tour! Mark had never been to Norfolk so we headed in that general direction. Not far from Kings Lynn, which is just over the border from Lincolnshire, is Sandringham so we decided that was as good a place as any to go to. I'd forgotten how lovely it was there. But it also reminded me of something from my childhood.

As some of you might know, Sandringham is where the Royal family spend their Christmas. On the Sunday they all walk down from the house to the church, and the general public are (were? not sure if this still happens...) allowed to go and join in the service by virtue of it being transmitted outside. Then afterwards the police gather the children and there is opportunity to give flowers / gifts to the family.

One of the last years we did this I had 2 bunches of flowers, and really wanted to give them to Di and Fergie. But how soft am I??? When I got there everyone was giving their gifts the the 2 'young' ones, and the Queen and Queen mum were stood there looking a bit like spare parts so I felt sorry for them and decided to give mine up to them instead! Ho hum...

Night out

Last night Liz and Alison came to look after Tully, so Mark and I decided to go to the cinema for a change. Rather stupidly I'd not thought through the whole mad last minute Christmas shopping thing and had decided that the best venue was the cinema at the Trafford Centre as it had better show times than the cinema we normally go to in Manchester. However because of the traffic jams to get in, and then parking at the far end of the car park about 10m from our front door, we missed the one we wanted anyway and had to go and see a later showing! Ho hum...

Anyway, we went to see Harry Potter, and I have to say I really really enjoyed it. Rather bizarrely I think it's one of the worst books in the series, and yet this film I think was the best so far. I'm sure lots of people have alreayd written reviews so I won't bore you here, but needless to say I really enjoyed myself.

Phew, I've calmed down at last!

APologies in advance, this is going to be a dull dull diddly dull blog entry... But still, here goes!

I had a very grumpy Wednesday and Thursday this week for worky reasons I won't go into here. But on Friday I was back in Birmingham again, and it made me remember why I do actually love my job and made me get over my crossness with the internal politcal bobbins we have to put up these days. As sad as it sounds I love being on site and working with our customers / prospects and showing how I/we can help make their day to day working life so much easier. It was a bug I caught all those yaers back when I first started out in implementation, and still get now I work in technical sales, even though the customer interaction is at a totally different level.

I have to go back on Monday and present to a large audience (~40 which is far more than the average for such a demo) and I'm really looking forward to it! (You watch now - I'll probably end up posting some woeful tale on Monday now about how disaterous it was to serve me right for being so cocky!) My only worry is that the podium stand I'll be presenting from has the most unusable mouse in the world ever. Still, I suppose that'll just make me think of innovative ways to show the software with the fewest possible mouseclicks - something that's meant to be a good thing - or so I learnt in my training last week...

Mad Week!

I have to apologise on both mine and Tully's behalf for lack of blogging this week. It's all been a bit crazy!

Saturday was mad busy what with taking Tully swimming in the morning, then getting stuff ready before going out obscenely early (5:45) for the Christmas party. Sadly Mark had caught Tully's tummy bug from the week before so we ended up cancelling Mum and Dad who were due to baby sit overnight and he stayed in with her.
The party was everything you'd expect it to be, with maybe slightly better food than usual. There were cocktails, wine, gin, some food, some more wine, and dancing! Perfect! I staggered home at a relatively respectable time a bit before midnight - but mostly as I was sharing a taxi home with Jon and Mandy and Jon had got to the stage where he wasn't much use to mankind! :) He has managed to post some very embarrassing photos if you are really that interested!

Sunday was generally spent recovering from the night before, although I was surprisingly well - I really shouldn't have been! We did all manage to go out for a walk to the park though and put Tulster on the swings for a bit.

Then I had to come to work on Monday and Tuesday for a training course - typically as it was run by am american trainer it started at 8:30 in the morning, didn't finish until 5:30 at night as we didn't really have anything that you could call a break in the meantime - working lunches / coffee breaks etc - the only time I left the taining room was for a 'bio-break' as americans seem to say! As you can imagine I was a bit tired after all this to do blogging when I got home. And yesterday I was in a bad mood so went straight to playing some World of Warcraft to cheer myself up! Looking forward to a quiet weekend, and a mostly non-working week next week.

Sorry!

It's been a long time since I posted anything (again)... So, what have I been up to?

Well, last Saturday I went skiing at Xscape in Leeds again. I was meant to be meeting Stu and Amy there, but Stu had dropped a radiator on his foot in the morning and was in no fit state to be on the slope. Since I'd got there I thought I might as well ski on my own though. I had quite a lot of fun, but it's surprising how many runs you get in when you don't wait at all for your mate to get on / off the lift! One thing that did keep me entertained was watching the people tobogganing! It looked like loads of fun and kids and grown ups alike were screaming and chortling in equal measure as they went down! Definitely something to do with Tully as soon as she is old enough!

On a duller note I've been spending more time in Birmingham with work than strictly ideal. We are putting a pilot trial system in at a lab at one of the hospitals there, so I've been down for the odd day over the last couple of weeks helping to get the system configured, and then spent 3 days there this week running 'drop in' sessions, which basically involved people from around the lab coming to see what we'd done. Harder work than it sounds (honest)!

I've also been using up some of my holidays. Not done a great deal really - spent some quiet time at home, caught up on the housework a bit (although that was a couple of weeks ago and you'd not know I'd done anything at all again now :( ), went in Manchester and started the Christmas shopping etc.

And that's it! Not very exciting I'm afraid to say. Still, it's our work Christmas party tomorrow night so maybe there'll be some debauched stories to tell soon! :)

No sleep in the Evans House

Oh dear. For some reason the last few nights Tully has gone to sleep absolutely fine when we've put her to bed, but she's then woken up and is wide awake at about 3-4 in the morning and nothing we do seems to make her sleepy again for a couple of hours. Mark and I are both absolutely knackered! I think her gums are hurting her, as she's generally more restless too the rest of the night. Any advice gratefully received - we're both getting rather broken. She's gone off the Dentinox stuff I've been using - she used to love it but now it seems to make her cry more. Last night we resorted to Infant Nurofen, but not sure that's good for a longer term solution :(

Visit to London

Last weekend we went to London to see Vics and Ben. You can read more about it on Tully's blog here and here. Anyway, there wasn't a good photo of them together there so thought I'd put this one on my blog. Oh, and in case anyone is feel adventurous and wants to go on an activity holiday Ben has started up his own travel company so I'm sure he'd be pleased to hear from you!

X Factor

I'm mildly embarrassed to admit that I've got really hooked to the X factor this year. I didn't really see it last time, but I'm loving it this year. I'm outraged that Maria got kicked off on Saturday too! She's loads better than the Conway Sisters! Grrrr....

it's been a while...

Ooops, just realised I've not posted anything for a couple of weeks. So, what's been happening? Well, last week I headed back to mum and dad's for a few days - I'm owed so much holiday from work and I'm trying to use them up before Christmas... I took Tully to see my grandparents whilst I was there as I'd not gone the last couple of times. It was really good to see them, and I think they enjoyed seeing their first great grandchild.
I didn't do much else when i was there, just chilled out really. But I ended up staying one night longer than expected. I got everything ready to come home on Thursday, but for some reason Tully just screamed when we were in the car so I headed back to try and settle her before I got too far away and was stuck miles from wither house with a screaming baby. I planned to set off again, but in the end decided to stay as it was getting really late, and I didn't fancy being in a lay-by on the Woodhead pass on my own if she woke up and got stressed out again. Poor mum - she just thought she'd got her house back to it's normal quiet self too :)

Busy Weekend

This weekend has been quite hectic. Firstly we had a night out on friday, which I talked about in my last post.

Then, on Saturday, I went to see the group of people that had been thrown together when we went skiing for the 2004 New Year in La Plagne. We all got on really well and have net up since, and lots of them got a chalet together last New Year too, which sadly we had to miss as I was too pregnant to be able to go :( This time John was hosting the reunion in Hyde, which is just a few minutes round the motorway from us.
I forgot to take my camera, but here's a couple of snaps that we took during the ski holiday to show who everyone is. This first one was taken in the chalet and shows (from left to right) Amy & Stuart, Mark & Caroline, Becky the chalet maid in front, Sally & Scott, John, me and finally Mark. The onyl people missing this weekend was Becky (poor girl, tried really hard while we were there but was a little scatty. Not 'bad' as such, but certainly one of the least organised chalet hosts we've stayed with), and Mark, who had stayed at home to look after Tully. In addition this weekend was Alex, Mark and Caroline's 6 week old son...

This next one shows a subset of us out on the 'piste'! (Me, Mark, mark, Sally, John and Scott) I know it doesn't add much to this post, but I just saw it and it made me have really itchy feet to go skiing again so thought I'd put it up. Spot Scott though as the odd one out for being a boarder, although apparently John got converted to the dark side of snow sports last year...


Finally, today we all went over to Yeadon to see Chris and Chrissy. It was really really good to see them - we should definitely make an effort to see them more often! Tulster was on fine form too - sometimes I'm just so amazed that I'm mum to such a fab little girl. She's really well behaved and just makes me laugh so much sometimes. It was really funny today to see how she reacted to their cats - although I'm not sure who was most freaked out - I think the cats were most perturbed by Tully than she was of them!

Night out

Alison and Liz had offered to baby sit again, so last night we went out with Jon and Mandy to celebrate (belatedly) Jon's birthday. First we stopped off for a swift G&T in the Hog's Head, and then headed across the road to Jitrada, a very good Thai restaurant. We ordered loads of food (we were actually slightly embarrassed as we felt we were really over ordering), but we managed to clear all 3 courses without too much effort (mixed starter, soup, main) It really was incredibly tasty! Afterwards we wandered back to the Hill's house to try out their new sofa and have another bottle of wine... Yum!

Quiet weekend

We didn't get up to much this weekend. On Saturday we had grand plans for a nice day out, but coldn't think of anywhere to go so just ended up walking to the park. Again... Then on Saturday night Tully was a nightmare and decided not to sleep from the hours of 3-6, so we were all broken on Sunday.

Luckily for me, Markie was nice and took her out for a really long walk so I could get a bit of sleep and peace for a couple of hours. Thank goodness she slept really well last night, otherwise I think she'd have been out in the wheelie bin! (When I say she slept well I mean I only had to get out of bed for her twice, which is good for her!) I can't wait for her to start crawling / walking in some ways so she can use up some energy! Although I suspect looking after her will become exponentially more tricky once she's mobile. Oh well. I guess it's all downhill from here...

Poor Markie

I had to go to Teddington (a London suburb) yesterday to give a demo, which meant driving south on Wednesday, so Markie had to look after Tully solo again. Wednesday night was fine, but poor lad - on Thursday the nursery phoned him up at 10 in the morning to get Tully as she had a bad tummy... So he had to have her all day too, and then my demo ran late which meant I didn't get home til about 9!

Orchid revisited

You might remember a while back I was gibbering on about how chuffed I was at having not killed my birthday orchid... Well, it appears I spoke too soon! :)
All the flowers fell off about 3 weeks ago but I was too embarrassed to confess to you all about it. But, I noticed this morning that a new shoot is growing at the bottom, so maybe I haven't killed it after all!!!! Woohoo!

MIL

Mark's mum, June, came to stay this weekend. She lives out in Tenerife so it's not easy for her to pop to see us. It was her first visit to see Tully and they seemed to get on pretty well. it was a shame the weather wasn't very good as it meant we were a bit limited in what we could do on the entertainment front, but she seemed to have fun! She's now gone up to Oswaldtwistle to stay with her brother for the rest of her holiday.

Tatton Park

It was such a lovely day we took Tully out for a wander round Tatton Park to get some fresh air. It's one of my favourite places to go for a walk, but I rarely go there as it annoys me that I have to pay for parking even though it's part National Trust (of which I'm a fully paid up member!)... Anyway, I thought these snaps were quite good so thought I'd share them with you here.

Come dine with me

'Come Dine with me' is back on again! I wrote about it back when I was waiting for Tully to arrive, but I think this series is even better! It's on at 4pm every week day on Channel 4, so I accept it's not ideal viewing time for most people, but it's something I'd say was definitely worth setting the video for.

Another New Arrival

Congratulations to Katy and Brian for the birth of their baby daughter Daisy earlier today. She weighed in at a respectable 7lb 3oz, but arrived at the incredibly anti-sociable time of 2:21am!

Week in Miami

Well, I've just got back today from a 4 day sales meeting in Miami. Very nice I hear you cry! Actually no.

Firstly we were staying in the Miami Airport Marriott, which whilst nice wasn't quite up the standard of most Marriott's I've stayed in, especially the conference facilities (there were 2 big light fittings with large glass cylinders that hung down, but they airpcon made them move enough to hit against each other so there a constant, very annoying, background jingling going on, which'd drive even the most sane person round the bend! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!)

Secondly, the length of the conference meant I didn't get home until this morning (Saturday), which is never ideal. Also, bad weather meant we had lots of delays on the way home...

Finally we had organised events every evening we were there, so the only time I left the vicinity of the airport was on a bus to a generic American Mall to go 'competitve team bowling', or to a restaurant that could have been anywhere! I know Miami airport is a bit away from the touristy places, but it'd be really nice for the organisers to recognise that some people have travelled a long way and it might be nice to see something relevant of the place we are visiting...

Ok, rant over! It was actually relatively useful, and really good to see lots of people that I've not seen for ages. I'm pleased to be home though!

Alex Knight

Here's a photo of Steph's son at just over 4 months. How cute is he?