Birthday, flying solo

For the second year in a row I had to have my birthday without my family. Last year I was away at a work conference.

This year Jackie and Theo were NZ.

It's pretty sad being on your own on your birthday but I had a pretty good day.

I had already received a couple of birthday cards and a parcel, which I didn't open until the 25th. I had an added surprise when I spoke to Jackie, she had hidden a bunch of presents in the flat. She told me where to find them so I was able to open them while on the phone. There were two really nice cards, one from Jackie and one from Theo. It really made for a great start to the day.

I decided to have a day in the city, a nice coffee and brunch, walk around and then go to a movie.

I went to foxcroft and ginger for coffee and brunch. I came prepared with the paper to read. The coffee was very good, pan au chocolat was ok. I had a corn and potato fritter, it was more like a frittata than a fritter but still quite nice. I also had a fresh mint tea. I was there for a couple of hours just reading the paper and watching people come and go. Being in central London, Soho to be precise, it can be interesting viewing.

I then ambled through Leicester Square to the movie theatre. Going to the movies is a bit of a treat for me, I like going to the movies but never get the chance to go. I wanted to see the Hobbit but it wasn't on so I saw Skyfall instead, I'm a sucker for Bond films. I had a big hot chocolate and really enjoyed the film.

After the film I headed back to Tooting. A friend was having me over for dinner but I had some time to kill, but not enough time to bother going home. So I went and had a pint  at a new cafe/bar call Gravney and Meadow  in Tooting and read some more paper.

After that pint I went to another bar, Tooting Tram and Social, which is just a few steps down the road for a pint and more paper reading. The tram and social is based in an old tram shed, it's pretty cool.

Then one more pint and paper, this time at The Antelope, just a few more steps down the road.

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Then it was time to go and have a delicious dinner, complete with dessert.

So all in all I had a really good day, but next year I'm going to make sure that whatever happens I am with my family for my birthday.

Snow

The week after Jackie and Theo left for NZ we had our first proper bout of snow. There were lots of warnings about disruption to travel and school closures etc.

There is always some uncertainty as to whether the snow will actually arrive but the forecasters were very certain this time. So much so that some train companies were running an "adverse weather timetable" before the snow even started.

On Thursday morning, when it was all supposed to hit  I woke up to brilliant sunshine. By the time I'd got off the train for work though it had clouded over and before long light snow was falling. By the time I got to the office the snow was really coming down and it snowed most of the day.

The snow starts coming down on my way to work

Some people spent most of the day trying to get me to suggest we should all go home. We did leave a bit early because it is always a bit dangerous getting home in the snow.

Pendle St, just around the corner from home

In front of our flat

On the Sunday I went for a jog in the snow which was good fun, a bit slippery in parts but more like running in sand because the snow was still powdery. I went for another run on Monday night, the clouds had cleared and it was quite a full moon which reflected off the snow, making it very bright despite the sun being well and truly set.

The bowling green at the end of our road

The river out the front of work

It snowed some more on Friday and we've had some snow on and off over the past week. It hasn't got much about 0 degrees so the snow stayed around for a while.

Over a week after the main snow fall this igloo made in Tooting Common  looking as solid as ever

Christmas 2012

We love Christmas, we really get in to the festive spirit with the music, movies, food, markets and general happiness and excitement which seems so infectious at this time of year.

This year was a relatively quiet Christmas for us. We did do the usual winter things though including a trip to Winter Wonderland, lots of festive drinks and meals at cosy pubs, visiting various Christmas markets, lots of baking and cooking, and of course plenty of eating.

Theo enjoyed it all although he got in to the holiday spirit by sleeping in pretty much every day of the holiday, including till 9am on one day and 7.30 on Christmas day. We enjoyed the sleep ins but sometimes were left waiting for him to get up so we could start the day.

On Christmas day we had our cousin Carla over and had a traditional turkey meal with all the trimmings for lunch with trifle for pudding. We ate way too much, enjoyed each others company and just had an all round great day.

Apart from Christmas day we went for a decent walk every day so the damage done from all the eating and drinking was hopefully limited.

It was great to have ten days as completely uninterrupted family time and was pretty tough to go back to work.

Here's a few pics from the festive period...

There are some really nice front doors around our neighbourhood, made all the better with some impressive wreaths

Once again, our tree was the best decorated tree around

Theo checking out the Christmas display while mum is doing some Christmas shopping at Bentall's in Kingston

Merry Christmas Mum!

Pretty happy with my turkey although think maybe next year we might try something different

Not my best turkey meal but it did the trick. 

This trifle served as breakfast, afternoon tea and pudding for 3 days. 

We hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable festive period where ever in the world you are.

Movie time

I'm really sorry for the lack of posts recently. To make up for it here are a few awesome videos of Theo, he's such a joy.

I hope you enjoy those, a proper blog post won't be far away.

Winter Wonderland 2012

Wow it's been well over a month since my last post. Not sure where the time had gone. Theo is a very confident walker now. We bought him his first pair of proper shoes last week.

Sorry for the lack of blogs, I'll try and get back on track with regular updates from now on.

It's getting cold and festive here. Today we decided to tackle these two things head on with a trip to Hyde Park to visit Winter Wonderland.

This is the third year in a row that we've visited Winter Wonderland. We've enjoyed it every time. It's a huge Christmas market with tacky gifts, overpriced food and show rides. We love it, at any other time of year you wouldn't go but it's so festive you can't help but get swept up in it.

We started with Churros with chocolate sauce followed by German sausage with ketchup and mustard and finished off with a trio of hash browns.

We then went for a walk down Oxford St, popping in to Selfridges before walking back to Victoria station via Buckingham Palace. We grabbed Christmas flavoured coffees before catching the train home.

Theo was very well behaved throughout, we thought he'd sleep on the way in to town but he didn't, and he didn't sleep at Winter Wonderland either, he lay their looking at the crowds, the lights and the rides and soaking up all the Christmas songs that were blasting out of all the stalls.

Jackie has just pointed out there is no photo of Theo in this blog, I've just tried uploading one but have been told I have no space left to upload any more photos, not sure what this means for the future of the blog, I'll try and figure something out.

Walking

A couple of videos of Theo...

Theo's first birthday

We made it! We've been parents for one whole year and all three of us have survived.

We have done lots of reminiscing over the past few days, including having a meal from Raja Rowing Team like we did at the same time last year.

We remembered how scared we were when Theo arrived and we had no idea what to do. Even now we sometimes don't know what we're doing but we get by. All in all we've got an incredible happy, healthy, cute, smart little boy, even if we do say so ourselves.

Unfortunately the little man hasn't been very well the past week, just a bad cold, bit of a fever. He hasn't been sleeping well which means we've been not sleeping at all. The result being that we didn't do much on his birthday.

Out to the pub for lunch of course though which was really nice. Lamb chop for me and chicken and leak pie for Jackie. We had to finish quickly though as we went to see the doctor.

In the afternoon we had cake and presents. Both of which thrilled Theo, the cake in particular.

Theo is still not feeling the best, his cold has moved on to a cough and we're a little worried it's getting worse but he's still got plenty of smiles and seems generally happy so hopefully the cold will move on before long.

Thanks to everyone that sent presents. For Christmas we will send through some suggestions for things that can be purchased online and sent to us without the great postage expense many of you have paid.

For those of you not on Facebook I'll post a video of Theo walking soon.