Films

Over Christmas Mark and I have been making the most of our Sky Movies subscription, something we rarely use. Most of the films were ones we've seen before, but a couple were new ones...

Casino Royale: I really enjoyed this first time around when we saw it at the cinema but I'd forgotten just how good it was. Probably my favourite film from the following seletion.





Mean Girls: This was a new one - Mark had bought it for a couple of pounds in a DVD bargain basket a couple of months back, but even so we were putting off watching it! But it's actually really quite good - much much better than I expected it to be! It's almost as good as 10 Things I Hate About You'!
;)

Gladiator: I love this film and it's another that I'd forgotten how much I enjoy it. Joaquin Phoenix makes such a good baddie and I especially like how the score compliments the visuals throughout!




Inside Man: We saw this on our very rainy weekend in Belfast, and I've seen it again since on a plane. Still very enjoyable third time through though.





Enemy of the State: We used to watch this quite frequently on DVD, but not seen it for several years now. I always feel bad for Will Smith's character though, but I suppose without that there'd be no film so I can get over it!



Hot Fuzz: This was the other new one, and one I've been meaning to watch ever since it came out on DVD. I always enjoy Simon Pegg's work - Spaced is one of my fav series and Shaun of the Dead is another DVD we break out too often. And I wasn't disappointed - if anything it was better than I expected. The only thing missing was an appearance by Jessica Hynes (Stevenson)...

The Wedding Singer: This is another on our frequently watched DVD list - it has to be said the sound track is really very good. And I love the ending with Billy Idol - class!

Christmas!

Yey! I love Christmas, and it was wonderful to see Tully getting so into it this year too. It's just a shame Markie was so poorly that he missed out on most of the fun.

Jonny made a really delicious dinner - sorry Mum but I have to say it was the tastiest turkey in the world ever! I was very spoiled as he had made me my own personal dish of bread sauce! He also made the famous mile high pie as the veggie option (well, it's famous if you know Jon and Mand anyway!). I'm not sure he did it justice with his picture on his blog so I've added it in large size below! Yummmmmy!

Thanks to Jon, Mand and Sarah for letting us share their Christmas.

Big piece of pig!

The only thing Mark put in a special request for whilst I was making the shopping list was a giant piece of pig! As I'm not all that keen on pork (yuk!) I got this huge piece of gammon instead. Think it meets requirements?

Merry Christmas and all that!

Every year we go to visit Mark's Nan and Grandad on the last Sunday before Christmas, and the visit now symbolises the commencment of the festive period in my head. So, today being that auspicious day, we headed up to Accrington and I can start celebrating! Woo hoo!

Am I ready for christmas? Pretty much - after getting the fear about how busy supermarkets would be this weekend I ended up making a snap decision and went late on Friday evening. I even made a list (!) and so far haven't thought of anything I've forgotten so I'm quite pleased with myself.

The presents are all bought and wrapped with 1 rather important exception! Honestly, you'd think nursery could have given us more warning of the only thing Tully wants in the world for Christmas... But hey ho - it means Mark has something to do to pass his lunchtime tomorrow instead of staying at work - I just hope one of Asda, B&Q or Homebase come up trumps otherwise we'll have 1 sadly disappointed little girl on Christmas morning!

New Bedroom TV

We finally got round to sorting our broadband out the other week (we were still on a really old BT package that was 8 times slower and £5 more expensive than their current offering!), and as part of that we were entitled to free BTVision which we've put in the bedroom. The problem with this is that the current TV in the bedroom is the one I bought as a teenager and it doesn't have a SCART input... So finally, a good excuse to buy a new one! ;)

After much kerfuffling and investigating we decided on a Samsung one - and I'm really pleased with it. The only problem now is that we need a better aerial. Still, that can wait until the New Year!

Woohoo!

The search for giant bug balloons is over!!!! I should have thought to try Wilkos! The only problem now if finding chance to go there without Tully in tow in the next week, especially as she's asked if Father Christmas can bring her a yellow and pink one!!! Is it too decadent to get them delivered?

Oh, and is it just me that's excited by the idea of elephant balloons!?

More Christmas celebrations!

We had our company Christmas do last Saturday at the Radisson SAS at the airport. It was very pleasant: the food actually decent for once, nice location etc. The only problem was that normally we are supplied with rather more booze than was freely flowing this year. And whilst most people are mroe than happy to buy their own the prices were ridiculous! £5.45 for a glass of wine!!!!!!!!! Outrageous! The best thing about it though? We'd persuaded Mum and Dad to come and babysit and booked ourselves a room there so I got a really good and proper lie in! And when I finally managed to drag myself out of bed it was just in time to go downstairs for a full english! Bliss!

Then today I had arranged a lunch / afternoon / evening of celebration for our team. As I was a bit busy with other things (mostly work and small children!) by the time I got round to finding time to phone and book a tables not many places could fit our group in. In the end La Vina on Deansgate said they could take our party. Luckily the food was delicious and the wine very free flowing: well, what do you expect if I was in charge of organising it! The only downside was that Mark was also invited so we had to decide who got to stay on for the evening part and who had to come back to pick Tully up. As it's been a while since Mark had a night out I volunteered to come back so I hope he has fun! Still, I'm not having a bad night - catching up with things in general and watching a girly film - Love Actually to get myself into a festive spirit!

Oops, it's been a while.

Ho hum, once again time has passed me by and whilst I've been good at keeping Tully's blog up to date mine has fallen somewhat by the wayside...

In my defense I have been a tad busy - since I last posted I've been to Lisbon for a conference for a week. It was at the Dom Pedro hotel which was nice enough but not the style of hotel I'd choose to stay in myself. I wore myself out there though - I worked out afterwards I'd done about 5 hours of presentations across 2 days, as well as moderating for day which means being mic'ed up and getting up and down every 30 minutes making announcements, introducing speakers and answering questions so even though not presenting it was pretty tiring. The good thing about this trip was that for once I got a half day free to explore which was nice as I've never been to Lisbon before. It's a nice enough city but there are other places I'd rather visit again before going back...

I've also been up to Edinburgh for a couple of nights - the work part was quite stressy and not only because we went to the wrong place and had to jump in a cab and whizz up to Dundee where the people we were meeting actually were! It was rather amusing looking back but not ideal at the time! But it was lovely to be back in Edinburgh - it's a city I love and I'm determined to go back for pleasure instead of business soon. We stayed in the Radisson SAS on the Royal Mile so in a fab location and wandered up to The Thai Orchid just by the Castle for a very yummy dinner.

Work is somewhat hectic which I mostly love, but sometimes I do find hard to combine with being a Mum... Tully is wonderful in almost every way, but is also at a rather challenging age (or maybe it's just her!) and at times I feel like I've been strugglong to cope.

Still, I've a reasonably quiet run down to Christmas now which is good, and not too much planned over the festive period itself so hopefully I'll be all relaxed and ready to tackle next year! Or is that just wishful thinking on my part? Anyway, enough ramble for now. I'll try and not leave it so long next time as I'll be less likely to waffle on so much!

Am I smarter than a 2 year old?

Never mind the show 'Are you smarter than a 10 year old?' (which I have to say I am quite enjoying even if they do insist on dragging it out at times). The question I'm left asking myself more frequently these days is am I smarter than a 2 year old, and unfortunately more often than not the answer is no!

The latest outsmarting? Well, in the last few months Tully has steadfastly refused to eat pretty much any vegetable, always repeating the mantra 'I don't like vegetables' whenever they are offered to her in any form. It's a shame as when she was younger she would eat pretty much any veg, and in fact I worried she ate too many and not enough other foods...

Anyway, I read on a website the other day about ways to entice toddler to eat veg, one idea being to pretend (as an example) that broccoli is little fairy trees, or that mushrooms are little houses...

Tonight we were preparing tea, and broccoli is on the menu so i decide to give it a go. She's very into it, and wanting to see her little trees in the pan, and paying lots of interest when I am serving up! Whilst we are eating she is again paying lots of interest in her little trees and asking if Mark and I are eating them / enjoying them. Woohoo I think, somewhat naively, this might actually work. How foolish was I?

"Tully" I say, "Would you like to try one of the little trees?".
"No Mummy" says she, "It's broccoli really - I don't like broccoli. We are just pretending it is little trees aren't we...".

Back to the drawing board.

Any helpful hints appreciated!

Miami

I've just come home from a conference in Miami, at the Marriott Doral Golf Resort. It was a bit of a whistle stop tour as I got to the hotel after 10pm on Monday evening, and left again at lunchtime on Thursday.

The hotel was really nice, the accomodation being in a number of 'lodges' set around the pool area which looked lovely - pity I didn't get opportunity too use it!

My Shutterfly Book!

It's turned up, and I'm really chuffed with it. Rather annoyingly I've now spotted a typo - grrr. And it would be nice if I could have chosen the finish of the pages to be a little more on the matt side, but overall I'm very impressed. Would definitely recommend it.

Shutterfly

During my trip to Boston last week the trainer of my course waxed lyrical about the joys of shutterfly, with particular reference to the photobooks.

Now I used to enjoy collating albums from important events or holidays, but since we've turned digital I've not bothered so much, mainly because I'm so lazy at getting round to getting photos printed out so I thought I'd investigate.

As shutterfly are a US based company I looked around for someone offering a similar service in the UK. Photobox, whom I've used several times before and always been impressed with, do offer photobooks but the choice of styles is non existant in comparison with Shutterfly.

As I couldn't find anyone else so decided to just go with Shutterfly and pay the shipping to the UK. So this week I've been working on a mini project getting a book compiled from our trip to New Zealand.

The interface is really nice and easy to use - I was really impressed. The finished book is now been sent into production so I'll let you know what the finished results are like when it turns up in a couple of weeks.

Quote of the day...

At Knowsley Safari Park... Bear in mind this is after seeing lions, tigers, monkeys, rhinos etc.

"Wow Mum! Look!" This is the most excited Tully'd been all day. I was surprised she was so excited about an ostrich...

"Mum, a chicken!" :S

Trip to Boston

I've been in Boston this week for a training course, held at the Hyatt Harborside at Logan airport. As airport hotels go it was ok - a little away from the terminal so you did at least feel like you'd left the airport behind. By far the best bit though was the view across the harbour to the city, and somehow I managed to blag an upgrade and get a harbor view room too!

Another plus aws that the water taxis stopped right outside the hotel so it was easy to hop on one and head into town -lucky really as there was nothing much to do at the hotel so I ended up going over every day.

As trips go this was quite a good one. Still glad to be home though.

Holiday

I know, I know. Tully has more than covered it already and everyone one other than me is bored senseless of reading about it... But I do feel compelled to put something on my blog too about it, purely because despite the weather doing it's best to ruin things it really was completely and utterly wonderful, and that is all down to the hotel.

I can't praise it enough - and also struggle to describe it. Clearly it is very kid friendly, but it doesn't feel like that is all there is to it. It actually felt rather grown up and relaxing, and that was the ambience that came across rather than it being all about the kids. I suspect it was because the kids were so well catered for that it meant they didn't need to be demanding attention from their parents. And, on the whole, all the kids there were extremely well behaved.
The adults only spa area was a perfect haven too (and yes, I did pop for a treatment - it would have been rude not to!). This was actually in the interconnected sister hotel next door, that also has a posh bar and restuarant we could use if we had chosen to. As it happened the food we got was so good we didn't feel the need to go next door - whilst the kids buffet catered more than happily for every childs needs and we got served some rather delicious grown up style food alongside it which kept everybody happy.

We were rather lucky in that I think we got one of the best rooms in the hotel. I'd chosen a Kitzsteinhorn apartment for us, which were in a seperate building to the main hotel connected via an underground tunnel (which we used rather a lot given the rain!). Ours was the left hand 1st floor balcony...


View 1 from our room...


View 2 from our room...


So, would I go back to Hotel Hagleitner? Certainly. Would I go back to another Kinderhotel for either skiing or in the summer? Definitely. Would I recommend either to anyone that has 1 or more children under the age of 8 or so? Absolutely!

"Mum - I want some crocs!"

It seems the request for branded clothes / shoes is starting early. Whilst walking past a shoe shop on Monday displaying some crocs in the window, Tully spotted them and instantly shouted out her demands... Luckily she spotted some pigeons to chase soon after and completely forgot about them!

Well, that told me!

During our visit to Drusillas on Saturday...

Me: "Ooo Tully, look at those pretty birds."

Tully (with a look of complete disdain on her face): "No Mummy - don't be so silly. They aren't birds. They are flamingos..."

Harry Potter

It has been a bit of a Harry Potter week for us. Firstly the book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) arrived last Saturday and Mark had finished it by Monday, before handing it on to me, and I had finished it by Thursday. And very very good it was too

Then this Saturday we went to watch the film - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I really enjoyed it, much more than I remember enjoying the book.

Caught red handed!

I've been suspecting that a squirrel has been at the bird feeder for a little while, and today I caught him red handed!

Bit of a catch up...

Since I last posted we had another night out courtesy of our friendly baby sitter across the road. We went round to Jon and Mand's for a very pleasant evening. Jonny cooked non-meat meat balls for tea, and they even broke out the 'special' gin so we were very honoured!

Since then we have had a few nights away in Philadelphia. Both Mark and I had to go to the same meeting (not something that happens often luckily) so as Mum and Dad were being shipped over to baby sit we thought we'd get them over early and we could have a lovely weekend away.

It only partly worked - Philadelphia was having a bit of a heat wave and since neither Mark or I do hot places it was unbearably unpleasant. The meeting was being held in the Sheraton Society Hill at the other end of Philly from where we normally stay for work which was nice. We managed to have a wander from about 8 to 10 in the morning on Sunday before facing defeat and heading back to the hotel and air con! Still, in that time we had time to wander past the Liberty Bell (again) and tour Independence Hall.

We had done this before during our East Coast US tour in 99, but it was interesting to do it again. The tour had changed slightly, and as I have the most useless memory in the world when it comes to historical stuff it was still interesting. What was most interesting though as to see how much the area to the front of Indepedence Hall had changed. The Liberty Bell is housed in a new building and display, and there is a big shiny new visitors centre too. They are still showing the same old video though from the old visitor centre (which, incidentally was right next door to our hotel and now seems to be living history museum).

Monday we managed slightly better - I persuaded Mark to let me go on one of the duck tours. I'd fancied them in Boston but couldn't bring myself to be that much of a tourist! And it was really good. It took us to some parts of the old town we'd not seen before and was very informative. Plus we got 'quackers' so Tully was sorted out with a present! Afterwards we had a look around the new National Constitution Centre - which other than the good air con was a big mistake. I'm sure if one is American it's really good, otherwise it's verging on offensive. We both felt robbed. After that we jumped in a taxi to take us to South Street to sample one of Jim's famous Philly Cheese Steaks before finally admitting defeat to the weather at about 11:30 and heading back to our cool hotel room. Monday afternoon all our work chums arrived and work started :(