Family weekend antics

I know it's been a while but here is the latest bloggings. We've had an absolutely fab weekend and I couldn't possibly think about keeping it to myself. 


My old man has reached the ripe old age of 60 so we thought it would be a great opportunity to go all out and do something a little special. So we threw a BIG party!


As it was Isaacs birthday the next week (Isaac is one of my little nephews) Charlie was invited to his party.

There was party food! YUM!

Bear cookie making

And bouncy castles!

Then when the kids went to bed it was time to start the REAL party. My youngest Bro Zach did a really good job of being MC (complete with 'Dad' jokes). I have put together a little movie of it all:

Dads Bday bash

Charlies recent happenings

It has been a while since I last updated you peeps on what was going on. As my life pretty much revolves around my lil boy here is what he has been up to recently:

unfortunately this has become a regular occurrence at dinner time, i think he just loves going in the bath!

We went to the river boat races and met some storm troopers

We met Chewie too... But, Charlie was petrified... Bless!

Charlie got his first ever hair cut

He was such a good little boy and didn't even flinch. We both thought he was going to be more interested in the scissors. Plus he still has both ears! Great success!!

Charlie LOVES being behind the wheel...

Thankfully he doesn't know how to turn the key yet!!

Being July, we got to spend 2 whole weeks with Nanny and Granddad Baxter! 

Charlie escaped whilst being changed one night and became "Bath boy!". Check out that costume!

I thought I'd share this as he just had me in stitches! 

FOO FIGHTERS!!!!

Yes peeps, the time has finally come. This last weekend Lauren and I thought we'd take a quick drive over to Milton Keynes to visit the Bowl to see..... The Foo Fighters!

From past experience I knew that the car park is a nightmare so I thought ahead and booked us a nice room in a hotel in Stevenage. The hotel was nice and the room served its purpose so it was defo a good idea.

On our way to Stevenage we noticed this:

There's actually a place called "Nasty" (it's top right)

Anyways, on our journey we thought we'd stop off for a bite to eat. So we ended up finding this leisure park which looked like an industrial estate at first but luckily we found a Chitquito restaurant, YUM!

But as we got out of the car we were greeted by this:

I did have a video of it moving and dancing but it wouldn't load :-(

After eating we thought it a good idea to get to our hotel and set up camp and then make our way to the venue.

As expected, traffic was a nightmare! But we followed the signs and successfully found the car park... Well... A car park. This car park ended up being a good 20min walk to the venue!

Still, we got there and found a nice little spot on the hill and got comfortable. The Foo had a band called Tame Impala supporting first followed by Death Cab for Cutie and then Biffy Clyro and to be honest I didn't care much for Tame Impala or Death Cab but Biffy were AMAZING!!

Here's a taste of what you missed out on:

Then came the Foo:

What a fab gig!! Here is the set list:

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/foo-fighters/2011/milton-keynes-national-bowl-milton-keynes-england-23d36c8f.html

Oh and yes, that's Roger Taylor from Queen and Alice Cooper!!! How cool!

A mind blowing experience was had by all

Grohl was kind enough to finish up with one of mine and Laurens favourite songs:

Wheels by Dave Grohl - Foo Fighters at Milton Keynes

Sorry, once again it should be a video but it wouldn't load on here! Grr!

The one you've all been waiting for

Yes, that's right people I have finally sorted out the next blog. Well, I have cheated in a sense as it's a video compilation that I did on my iMac of Charlie in the park.


So here it is, enjoy:

New Charlie vid

If you're able to leave a comment please feel free to do so. I'd love to know what you think.


We visited Longleat the other day for Laurens birthday so expect another video compilation soon....

Monday night treat

We had a fab day a couple of Mondays ago. We were able to go and get our photos taken at AKM Photography which was a real laugh. The photographer was great and had us in all kinds of positions and had a bag of balls to play with Charlie, plus Charlie was as smiley as ever. I couldn't wait to see how they turned out. As it turns out, I'm a little behind in writing this blog so I have a few of the pics (see below).

We chose this as one of our free photos, love him!

We chose this one too but in colour

Our photographer has kindly put a few extras up on facebook

After our photo shoot we decided to stay in town and have a little mooch about especially as we were having such good weather. It was nice to be able to spend some time together. After we'd had enough of town we remembered that we needed to go food shopping. As is the case most Mondays we really didn't feel like cooking anything so we decided we wanted to eat out. So we had a little look at prospective restaurants which included Pizza Hut, Chiquitos and Las Iguanas. In the end we decided on Frankie and Bennys.

As it was a Monday night they had a special 25% off offer on so we took full advantage of that! It was quite funny yet a lil upsetting that as we were looking at the menus we noticed Charlie kept bursting in to proper tears! We couldn't quite figure it out until we noticed that he cried every time he looked up. 

As we looked up to see what it was that was upsetting him we noticed that he was sat right underneath a huge ceiling fan! He must have thought that it was going to get him! Bless! Needless to say, we moved him on to the other side of the table where he was a little happier but he never took his eyes off that fan! Lol!

Lauren had a Calzone (and a ceasar salad! Which was thought was free... But we were charged for it!)

I had the biggest and nicest burger I think I'd ever had! YUM!

Charlie took full advantage of the dough sticks

We had an awesome Monday and looking forward to many more like it.

The week that was...

Usually a lot of what happens in my life is work related and therefore is forbidden to be shared amongst the masses. Fortunately this week has been a little more eventful, little being the operative word, so I thought I'd share it with you all.

First off, I have been re-paired/doubled crewed/teamed up again with my tutor who is just awesome! It's great because now I actually have some company whilst out on the beat and to give credit to her she hasn't forgotten a thing. I'm so glad she's back.

Secondly, I had one of my missionary companions come and stay with us and, bless them, they brought a little taste of america with them! That's right, LUCKY CHARMS AND REESES PUFFS for us AND some beef jerky for me! YUM YUM! Thanks again Jamie and Catherine! It was great to see them again and I had a great time reminising about all those years ago.... even if it did mean going to bed past 1 o'clock in the morning!

At the start of the week I had an email from a company called "Groupon" which is a company that offer special deals on... well... pretty much anything. Basically, what happens is they sell a "coupon" for 24hrs which doesn't become active until a set number of people purchase it. Hence "Groupon". The email was for an offer of a 45 minute photo session with a professional photographer (set up like Venture) and you got 1 x 8"x10", 3 x 7"x5" and 1 x 12"x10" prints all for £19! That's right £19!! After I had purchased my groupon we headed to the photo studio and have a booking for tomorrow being Monday 21st March 2011! Can't wait to see the finished article.

This next part is a little in-family joke but I had to include it as I know Hesbs and possibly Joe read my blog. (I hope it makes you laugh as much as we did!!).
After a hard day out on the streets my tutor and I went back to the station and whilst updating the system with what we had done my tutor came out with "oh! That's put the 'MOCKERS' on that!"..............
To fill the rest of you in on the joke. It occured during the Netherlands vs Spain world cup semi-final. We were all round Lauren's Nanny's house cheering on the Dutch... unfortunately our support was insufficient so Nanny came out with "Oh! I'm gona put the 'MOCKERS' on them!". Them being the Spaniards. This of course cracked us up as we had never heard of this "MOCKERS" but coupled along with Nanny's cursing fingers and "MOCKERS, MOCKERS, MOCKERS" chants it pretty much floored all of us! Brilliant! So there you go Hesbs and Joe it does exist but must be a generational thing.

Lastly, we had a great time at church today. We learnt a new song in primary today all about the prophet and apostles of our church. Hopefully I've been able to find a copy of it and put it on this post.
We were also given a new responsibility/assignment today to run a monthly event called "Faith in God" which is for 8+ year olds so we're eagerly waiting to get stuck in and do a good job.

And that's pretty much my week. Hope you have enjoyed!

Half term break part 2.

After spending time with my family we travelled over to Ipswich to spend sometime with Lauren's family. We were able to stay in Chateau de Nannie which is always a pleasure (especially as she is an amazing cook!).

We always have a wonderful time round Nannie Annie's and this time was no different. Plus she always bakes me an amazing carrot cake, YUM!

We thought about what we could do with all the kiddies and decided on going for a walk through the Heath in Kesgrave. It was a nice little walk that took us to a little co-op type shop where we bought them all a drink (apart from Jude who chose sweetie burgers) and I found a little bargain. They have a toy shop upstairs that sold Warhammer stuff!! Result! So I went upstairs to take a ganders. Have you ever been in a shop looking at the products/stock when you notice one is priced cheaper than the other? Well that's what happened. I found a box of little night goblins priced at £12 instead of £18!! So I took them up to the till and they were good enough to let me have them at the discounted rate!

Whilst on our way home, not only was I carrying Jude AND Rose, but we also picked up a dog too!! We had a couple come up to us with a little scottie dog and said that they thought it belonged to a couple down the hill in the direction we were walking. It was a sweet little thing, still not sweet enough to influence me to get one mind. Fortunately we found the owners who were thankful that we'd returned their lil pooch.

We ended up spending Thursday night at David and Beth's where we played Just Dance on the Wii. Can I just say... One of the simplist, most fun games I have ever played. Saying that, you don't half sweat whilst playing it though! I was offered a controller by one of the kids and found myself dancing to some iggy pop song that Jude likes (He's 5). I have to admit that I did get a bit excited when I was cycling though the playlist and found MC Hammers "U can't touch this". It turns out.... When playing against me... No one could ;-)

On Saturday night we finished the week off in style and went to a sacred music festival and were roped in to singing with my Mum's choir. Needless to say it was a good night out and my Sis and 2nd Cousin Jade sang a fab duet and defo rocked the best act of the night!

It was a great end to a fantastic week. Just wish we'd have avoided all the illness :-(