Fun at the welsh mountain zoo!

A picture paints a thousand words.....

We've come on holiday by mistake....

This year marks the tenth anniversary of my wife and I's road trip around the world. In fact, exactly 10 years ago today we were 4wd'ing around Fraser island in Australia; definitely one of the highlights of the whole trip.

Now things are a little different. Our road trip this year was a little trip to north Wales to visit my in laws in their rather palatial new home. More on Wales later and possibly a discussion on the meaning of "downsizing".

To cheese or not to cheese

In my role as stay at home dad on Tuesday's, Wednesday's and Thursday's I get to do lunch with boy3. Today is a red letter day as we are reintroducing cheese into his meals for the first time in a few weeks.

Previous attempts to incorporate cheese have almost invariably resulting in huge vomits but we could never be sure that it was the cheese or just coincidence. Anyway, after a couple of ella's kitchen fromage frais in the last couple of days without incident we've taken the plunge with some fish and broccoli in cheese sauce.

As I write this things are going well and we've had no reappearances yet! Here's hoping that the previous vomits have not been allergy related but just chokes, coughs and the like.

Dear customer, congratulations on the purchase of...

I love the instruction manuals that come with equipment these days. The latest greatest example at home is our new copilot limo baby seat now sitting proudly on the back of my ancient Marin pine mountain. Whilst I must admit that their proud boast that the seat can be installed in 30 seconds is strictly (if only partially) true they did gloss over the traumatic experience on the preliminary fitting of the rear rack that the seat requires. 45 sweaty, sweary and knuckle skinning minutes later I was ready to fit the seat. (which did indeed take only a few seconds).

I hasten to add that all these problems are much more likely due to deficiencies on my part that any problems with the product, which appears rather excellent on first impressions!

sometimes its like a revolving door

No sooner had I taken on a new member of staff to cover a few hours a week in the shop than she turned round and revealed that she had accepted a full time job elsewhere. I suppose I shouldn't get too upset; in the current climate everyone wants to earn the maximum amount they can, I suppose and I couldn't offer her any more hours but its quite frustrating to go through all the hassle of recruiting for them to work a grand total of 12 hours before handing in their notice

Happy doors!

We saw these old warehouse doors on an evening trip to the river cottage canteen in Plymouth. Looks they were pleased to be part of the lovely Royal William yard development. Oh and the meal was fab too!

"summer" fair

Like I said the other day, it was the school summer fair on Saturday. A good time was had by all. Actually the weather pretty much held off but the beer rent and marquee were the most popular locations. Face painting was, as ever, popular with the kids with a camouflage theme winning favour with boys1 & 2:

a new lunchbox for boy2..

Boy1 plays tag rugby for the U7's at our local club.  He enjoys it a lot and I have to say, if its not raining, I really enjoy a couple of hours on a Sunday morning in the fresh air with the other parents on the touch lines. 

I thought it would be a nice touch to mark their first full competitive season (one in which they lost only twice!) by presenting the squad with a lunchbox each featuring a great team photo.  These went down really well and boy1 has been taking his packed lunch to school in his since the end of season presentation at Easter.

Of course, "you can't have anything by yourself in this house" is something of a motto in our family and if boy1 has a new lunchbox you can be sure that it won't be long before boy2 starts mithering for his own.  And so it came to pass that boy2's new personalised lunchbox was produced by lunchboxesetc.co.uk and he proudly took it to school this morning:

Of course, putting up a photo of this personalised lunchbox does rather give the game away in terms of my identity!

Its the olympics....get the tissues ready

It seems these days that I can't stop crying.  Not over important things, you understand but the one thing sure to give me moist eyes is individual British sporting success. Or failure. Or a near miss.  So, yesterday you would have found me welling up over Andy Murray (after having also cried when he beat Tsonga earlier in the week).   Even Strauss's recent century against the West Indies had me all choked up. 

This isn't such a recent phenomenon.  British medallists in rowing and cycling at the last olympics had me wiping my eyes and sniffing hard.  And you can bet it will be the same, only worse this summer with all those British hopefuls competing in London.  Go knows, if our local hero Tom Daley wins gold and dedicates it to his late dad, I'll be an absolute wreck for hours afterwards!

I'm ready for my close-up now!

This week boy1 discovered our video camera.  We spent  most of Sunday creating a stop-motion snake attack on a model village, which was repelled by some friendly dragons!  The final scene channelled star wars with a moving medal ceremony.  Impressive as this was I was still a little worried the next day to find that he was apparently recreating scenes from The Godfather:

The wettest month ever?

We live on the western edge of Dartmoor,just a few miles from Princetown which I (without fact-checking) confidently declare to be the wettest part of Great Britain.  Of course it has its advantages - we can be walking on the moor literally out of sight of any houses within 10 minutes and there is nothing quite as heart-lifting as being on top of a tor on a sunny day but really, this weather is getting beyone a joke!

Toady is the day of the Lady Modifords school summer fair.  So, of course, it has been bucketing down since 10pm last night.  No doubt the playing field will be muddier than the Somme on a particularly muddy day; never mind wellie throwing, we'll be wearing them!   Anyway, now I've downloaded the blogger app for my phone I'll be posting pics of the event later today.

Its a work day!

Friday is a regular work day for me.  Today that meant waving goodbye to everyone at 8.00am to head down to the shop.  We have a new assistant starting today so welcome Diana to the Handmedowns second hand baby clothes shop team!  Her presence is meant to free me up for a few hours to deal with lunchboxes orders, and to post new items on the handmedowns website.  We'll see, I'm pretty good at finding other things to do - like blogging for example.

Update on the souffles - they were pretty good.  Bit of a faff to be honest but tasty. Not sure that it will become a regular dish. 

Update on the sword - raging success.  Will post pics at some point.

Today's balancing act is....

So Thursday is a daddy day-care day.  And it starts a little something like this:

Wave the wife off to work at 7.45am, unload then load the dishwasher (putting back in all those dishes from yesterday that are still dirty - why can't they design a dishwasher that actually works?) wipe down the kitchen then the baby, head up stairs to get boy1, boy2 and baby dressed, teeth brushed, rooms tidied, Nintendo DS put away, back downstairs, shoes on, dinner tickets and homework into school bags, washable nappies on for a second short wash in washing machine, out of the door at 8.45am, into car, drive to school drop kids off, drive home keeeping baby awake, baby in cot for nap by 9.05am, cup of tea, blog.

Which brings us up to date.  Now things get a little easier.  This morning we head to Tavistock to 1) pick up this weeks orders of personalised lunchboxes from our friendly printers TavySigns, 2) Pop in to Handmedowns our second hand baby clothes shop to check that the girls are OK for the day before heading back home for baby's lunch. 

Also on the agenda today is a new recipe (which has been in our collection for about 5 years whithout being tried) for twice baked goats cheese souffe and an attempt to make a new sword for boy2 to complete his prince outfit for the school summer fair on Saturday!  To be continued....

Its a balancing act alright....

Life changes.  Ten years ago to the day my wife and I were in Yungaburra, Queensland half way through a brilliant gap year. Things were pretty straighforward then. Fast forward to present day and you find us settled on the edge of Dartmoor with 3 boys (7 years, 5 years and 8 months), two businesses ( lunchboxesetc -  purveyors of the finest personalised lunchboxes, and Handmedowns Devon's best second hand baby clothes shop!) and one proper job (hers!).  Balancing all these can be an interesting challenge and that's what this blog is all about - the successes, failures, procrastinations and everyday incidents of my life as a dad, husband and small business owner.