Hand plate

In case you're wondering why I have posted a picture of Jake's plate from IOW it is because I have been playing with my new toy! I've got a new phone today (Sony Ericsson C702) and excitingly it turns out that I can post directly from my phone to my blog, so I took this photo with my phone, and have managed to send it directly to my blog.

Now that's clever!!

21 days

It's that Sunday morning sat by the side of the pool moment again. Nicky has kindly volunteered for the tip trip (in the rain) with the rubbish from yesterday's efforts at Haig and so I'm sat here watching Jake swimming up and down in the deep end!
It was another busy week this week - I was in Gatwick, Reading, Guildford and Brighton at various points, Jake was off school on Monday and Tuesday with a throat infection (still on the antibiotics) and as well as continuing to grow the holiday fund, Nicky has been organising Haig valuations. Wards say they would market it at £100,000, but would listen to lower offers, and Nicky is getting someone from Clive Emson in tomorrow to get an auction value estimate.
My next job is to go and see Nationwide - if they won't lend us any money then we're a bit stuck!
The photo a day project is still going. My work phone is dying so I am going to get a new one with a decent camera, so this should help with getting some interesting piccies!
Only three weeks to go until our Florida trip, and we've booked our accommodation for the next one already! 10 nights at the new bit of the Animal Kingdom Lodge - Kidani Village from 16th December to 26th December. We will be a party of 5 but have booked a 1-bed villa as we know that they have both a sofa bed and a chair bed in the lounge (both comfy) and also that the new Kidani Village 1-bed villas have two bathrooms. We've booked this now, as we can book 11 months in advance at our home resort. When the 7 month window comes around (which is the earliest that we can book at other resorts) we might try to swap to a 2-bed villa at the Beach Club (right next to Epcot) but at least this way we know that we have definitely got something.
We haven't organised flights yet, partly because booking flights direct with Virgin they make you pay in full straight away, and this is already an expensive month for holiday costs as we have just paid out annual dues for DVC. Unfortunately we have to pay in dollars, and have just paid a fair amount of money over at the worst exchange rate for over 20 years! Still, at least I can console myself with the fact that when we bought DVC we got a rate of over 1.9. When it comes to booking flights we will call the Virgin Flying Club and see if we can finally use some of our points to get either some money off or an upgrade (or both!).
In other holiday news we have booked to have a week at Shorefields on the south coast in the summer holidays - staying in Mrs Cook's caravan!

(By the way, can't type this fast on the ipod screen, so post finished off at home!!)

Chelsea Boy

We have admitted defeat! The JJB sale proved too much for us, and so the Chelsea Boy has got his way! Difficult for me to argue too much seeing as my team are at the bottom of the league!

Sunday blog

Well you can tell that it's been a week of back to work, as I'm back to my Sunday blogging. We've all made it through our first week back, and as is tradition, I will be off to Brighton for the week next week.

Jake and I went to the London Boat Show yesterday. It must be somewhere between 15 and 20 years since I last went, and the first time that I've been to the show since it moved to Excel (which is a great venue, and dead easy to get to - about 40 mins in the car, through the Blackwall Tunnel and turn right). Jake and I had a great time having a look around some seriously stunning boats. We spent a long time on each of the Fairline, Sunseeker and Princess stands, and managed to get on all of the largest boats. Jake also really enjoyed having a look around the HMS Westminster.






Today Jake's been back to swimming for the first session of the New Year, and then we went over to Hempstead Valley for a haircut and for some lunch. The dog's had her walk in the woods, and we'll be over to Nanny and Grandad's for tea soon.

Health news is rather mixed. Mum and Dad are on the mend, albeit it is taking a while. Hopefully Rew and Frances are too, although I haven't spoken to them since mid week. However, we had a call from Phil this morning to say that Kate has been causing the medical profession no small amount of concern after her operation on Thursday. Apparently the operation itself went OK, but the next day they realised that Kate had some serious internal bleeding and rushed her to another hospital for another operation. Phil tells us that at one stage there was a team of 20 people all working on her, and it didn't entirely dawn on him how serious the situation was until a nurse came over to him and said "they're doing everything they can". It sounds like the second operation was a success, but that Kate will be in hospital for longer than originally planned! Hopefully Nicky will be able to get over there soon and give her big hugs from all of us.

Amazingly, the 365-2009 project is still on track. Mid week I did resort to taking some pet piccies just to keep things going! It was a shame that I didn't have a camera with me on Thursday evening as I was at an event in Leeds Castle, and it looked really impressive all lit up in the wintery night.

365

Last day of holidays today - it's back to work and school tomorrow. We've been taking down Christmas decorations today. Still, we can console ourselves with the fact that it is six weeks today until our next trip to Orlando.

I have decided to start a new project for 2009. I have created a set on Flickr called "365-2009" and the plan is to take a photo every day of the year and put it in the set. I've managed the first four days of the year so far, so I'm already over 1% of the way there, and that's longer than New Year resolutions to keep diaries usually last with me!

Here are the selected photos from the first four days: Jake playing with his new Guitar Hero game on the 1st, the empty garage at Haig Avenue on the 2nd, Nicky and Barley on a walk in the woods on the 3rd, and taking down the Christmas tree today.

Christmas holidays

Time for an update as I haven't posted since our anniversary at the start of the Christmas holidays, and sadly it is nearly time to go back to work. One more weekend and then it's back to the coal face. Still I've managed to avoid checking my work e-mail so far, and plan to see it through until Monday morning. I figure that if anyone really wanted to get a message to me they would have called!

So, what were the Christmas holidays like. Well, affected by sickness unfortunately. Mum, Dad, John, Rew and Frances have all had (and mostly continue to have) a flu-like virus which has really laid them all low. This meant that Mum and Dad didn't manage to get to us on Christmas Day in time for lunch at the pub, which was a shame, although they did make it here in the afternoon, and stayed for Boxing Day. Rew and Frances didn't make it to us for Boxing Day tea (or to Bec's on 27th), but Frances was well enough to come around for a cup of tea and present exchanging. We all went over to Bec's on Dad's birthday and Mum and Dad stayed there, heading home on the 28th.

Nicky and I have managed to avoid the lurgy I am pleased to say. Jake has had a nasty cough, but is hopefully pretty much over it now (just in time to go back to school!).

We've been making some great progress with Haig Avenue during the Christmas break. Nicky, Rew and I were all over there on 23rd and managed to do some clearance in the garden, start on clearing out the garage, and Nicky cleared the kitchen. Then I went round on 31st and finished off emptying out the garage, removing fairly large amounts of used engine oil and unidentified engine parts. Today Nicky and I have been there and have cleared the dining room, filling about 10 boxes with various papers, crockery and so on, and moving lots of stuff out to the garage. Whilst I did a tip trip, Nicky did some more garden clearance so that we could get to the patio doors, as the table and the sideboard are too large to take out through the kitchen. Unfortunately it transpires that the patio doors no longer open, so we've had to leave the larger furniture in there for now. Could make getting the remaining piano out rather interesting!

So, what did Santa bring at Christmas? Well we've all done very well. Jake has lots of new games for his Wii (and went to the shops yesterday to spend his Christmas money on Guitar Hero as well) and also has his own digital camera. I also got a new digital camera, a Sony H50 with a 15x zoom. Should be lots of fun for the theme parks. John and Margaret bought me a new tripod to go with it (to replace the rather erratic one that they bought for me in the Caribbean), so I think that I will now be an even bigger source of embarrassment to my family on holiday. They will have to send me out by myself on special photography sorties! This means that all three of us have our own camera now. It's going to be a challenge keeping Flickr up to date.

One of my other presents was an elephant! Bec and Mark have sponsored an elephant for me - her name is Emily Kate and she lives in Kenya!