Author: neil

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School Dinners

Harry likes school dinners in America.

To give you an idea why the following are a couple of things he has had this week. On Monday he had a great big pile of nachos with cheese all over it.

On Tuesday it was turkey dinosaurs and chips and on Thursday it was the best of the lot! Belgian waffles, with whipped cream, bananas and a turkey sausage on the side. It was delicious! Although he was a little upset that there was no pudding!

No wonder Jaimie Oliver despairs with American school dinners! But what does he know? Harry loves them!

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Snow Park

We’d bought the snow chains back in December, the snow had been falling in the mountains, we’d bought two new sleds and the boys had their salapettes – clearly it was time to hit the snow!

On Saturday I’d conducted a test run of fitting snow chains to the tyres. It went badly. At no point did the chain ever get fixed to the tyre – even though it should only take five minutes! I thought about persevering with the test but then decided that it was bound to be okay and we wouldn’t need them! A quick search on Google confirmed that the road was dry and clear – so the snow chains could wait until another day!

On Sunday morning we were up and at them! The car was loaded with sleds, coats, hats, scarves, blankets, food and water (the last three items for if we got stuck in the mountain pass because we couldn’t fit snow chains!) and off we went. The destination was Hyak Snow Park. Hyak is not a ski resort and doesn’t have tubing – it is just an area with trails and sledding areas so we thought this was a good place to start and get a feel for it all.

As we drove up the mountain side towards the snow Toby saw two bears by the river – one of which was just oiking a fish out the river – and if that was not enough, just a few miles further on he also saw some penguins playing by the river!

Forty minutes after leaving the house we parked up in the snow and the fun began! We put on our thermals, layers and winter coats on and started playing. Minutes later we were all sweating and wishing we hadn’t put so many layers on – lesson learnt for next time! The boys spent ages going up and down slopes, Tracy kept disappearing up to her waist in snow with squeals and giggles and I managed to floop about quite a lot too! In fact the only one who didn’t suffer from sinking in the snow was Toby – he’s obviously a very lightweight little boy!

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There are a lot of videos but don’t worry they are only short!

httpv://youtu.be/0zSaBf8F0OU

httpv://youtu.be/hH07nRa-2mU

httpv://youtu.be/Er1ojqTIPXg

httpv://youtu.be/JqBjBmsSYjM

httpv://youtu.be/XA3M0zlFm_k

httpv://youtu.be/4nnIVvz2i7g

httpv://youtu.be/WbzRLuDron4

httpv://youtu.be/kZfTKVlNpnc

httpv://youtu.be/PKjQExwPsA0

httpv://youtu.be/0mgSva3eMfU

httpv://youtu.be/PJoLuuG0E_U

httpv://youtu.be/IfNwtNhfroE

After a couple of hours of fun in the snow we thought we’d check out the tubing area but it was chaos so, as we were all ravenous, we decided it was time for hot chocolates and brunch! After stuffing ourselves with pancakes, omelettes, hash browns and eggs benedict, it was back off down the mountain.

And forty minutes later we were back home on a mild, slightly overcast January day with no sign of snow at all.

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Sunrise

There is another new year resolution that I would like to keep but I don’t suppose I will and that is to take a photo from our front door every day so that we have the whole year recorded. Completely without intention I have the first two days captured and the one today (January 2nd) is a lovely view. The sunrise this morning – just before 8am – was a beautiful pink sight. The pictures don’t really do it justice but they are not bad!

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New Years Day

New Years Day 2012 started quite early – at about 5:30am – which I suppose is progress on the last couple of mornings. After watching the previous nights celebrations on TV we decided to have a morning out ahead of our lunch reservation at Ray’s.

The plan was to visit the old Gas Works park on Lake Union and then go along to see the Fremont Troll that lives under one of the bridges. Toby spent most of the morning insisting that he didn’t want to go and see the troll – he clearly hadn’t appreciated the jokes about how the troll eats naughty boys. I guess after breaking some of his new year resolutions about 20 times before we’d even left the house this morning he thought this placed him in the naughty boy category.

First stop was Gas Works park and some lovely views of the house boats, sea planes and downtown Seattle. We took a walk around the park, with Tracy moaning all about the goose poo and the boys, completely oblivious to the goose poo, asking if they could roll down the hills. Not only were they clearly unconcerned about the goose poo density levels, they had clearly forgotten that 10 minutes earlier they had been told they couldn’t get muddy as we were going for lunch.

After leaving Gas Works park we drove the short distance along to Troll Avenue! What a great name for a road! As we parked the car under the bridge we could see the trolls beady eye staring down the road at us. Toby wasn’t happy and seemed quite reluctant to get anywhere near it! Not even the 3 billy goats gruff standing nearby put him at ease – clearly the troll would prefer to eat them over naughty boys.

As we looked at the troll (and the VW beetle in its hand – look closely at the pictures) Toby hid behind the bridge pillar! Eventually, after it was agreed that he could kick the troll he decided to take a closer look. And kicked it 3 times. After a few minutes of climbing over the troll we left to go back to the car and as we drove off Toby looked out the window and said “bye, bye troll, love you”. It’s amazing how quickly he went from fear to love!

The last stop before lunch was Chittenden Locks. It was all very quiet – only a handful of boats and no salmon. After Toby had sung the “I am starving” song for about the 20th time (he’s clearly back in the American way) we decided to go to Ray’s albeit with a slight detour along to Golden Gardens beach park. We expected it to be quite quiet but it was absolutely packed. There were clearly a couple of New Years day traditions underway. The first was a New Year swim in the Sound – plonkers – it must have been freezing. The second was some sort of burning of the Christmas tree thing. Cars kept turning up with trees strapped on top while others were already piled high on the beach burning alongside lots of barbecues. Good job it was a lovely sunny day!

To round the morning off we enjoyed a fabulous meal at Ray’s. We had a table right by the window and enjoyed the great views of the snow covered Olympic mountains as we ate and ate! And if that wasn’t enough, as we sat finishing our drinks a pod (or whatever they are called) of sea lions started leaping out the water and putting on a fabulous show for us. Unfortunately my camera was in the car but they did look amazing leaping clean out of the water. Apparently the local expert (the waiter) said they are often out there feeding on the salmon – so they were clearly having a good old New Years lunch out there.

As we left Ray’s I asked, “where shall we go next?”, to which Harry and Toby replied “home”.  “Home? Haven’t you had fun today then?” I enquired? “Nooooo!”. Oh well, new year, same levels of enthusiasm.

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Fireworks!

There hasn’t been a firework post for a while now so New Years Eve/Day seems like a good time to have another. If we hadn’t all been suffering from jet-lag we may well have made it over to Seattle to watch the Space Needle fireworks however we were suffering and the New Years Eve schedule went along the lines of:

6:30pm Toby announces he wants to go to bed (without any tea!)
7:00pm Harry admits to being a little bit tired, which is almost unheard of, and he goes to bed
7:30pm Tracy and I go to bed

The fireworks did wake Tracy, Harry and I up at midnight but fortunately we all got back to sleep. Next year we will make it but for this year we will just have to be satisfied with someone else’s recording of the show:

httpv://youtu.be/-GRPs_qRIAw

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Resolutions

I don’t for a moment think we’ll keep them for very long but our New Years resolutions are as follows:

1. Do more cooking – Neil
2. Stop talking like a baby – Harry
3. Keep my body fresh – Toby
4. Stop hitting, punching, kicking and biting – Toby
5. Stop getting told off for the same thing over and over again – Harry and Toby
6. Help mummy and daddy with cooking – Toby

Tracy hasn’t thought of any yet.

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Christmas Morning

It began at 5:29 – their earliest rising yet on a Christmas morning. It didn’t however start with the sound of presents being ripped open but with the noise of two little boys chitter chattering. I was half asleep at this point but I could make out the odd reference to Bellevue, going to Disney last year, mince pies and talk of going on a train to see if they were good.

The talk then moved on to Barcelona, Liverpool kits and Fernando Torres. All the while, their Seattle Sounders Christmas stockings hung on the door handles. They were completely oblivious to them.

The next few minutes were spent discussing how hard it is too get to sleep on Christmas night and then moved onto the relative merits of Joe Hart, Pepe Reina and Petr Cech. At 5:59 there was still no mention of the stockings on the door handles.

At 6:02 Harry went to the toilet and Toby followed. Toby did give the stocking on the office door a sly glance but they both went back to bed and started wondering what the time was. By the sounds of it, they looked out the window, saw it was dark and Harry’s best guess was that it was about 4 or 5 in the morning.

They wanted to get up and Harry said, “why don’t we just get up?”. Before coming up with a reason as to why they shouldn’t, Harry mentioned that he loved whisky (they both had a little sample yesterday). I’m not sure of Toby’s response but I got the impression he wasn’t so keen.

Talk then moved back to what time it was and wondering where a clock was. Harry mentioned there was one in Mum and Dad’s room. At 6:08 I lay very still in bed as Harry crept into the room. He walked around to Tracy’s side and then went back into their bedroom where he informed Toby that it was 4 or 5 in the morning – he’d checked the clock.

At 6:09 Harry came back to our bedroom door and pulled the door close – I think he was covering his tracks! Having established it was 5 in the morning they then decided they needed to wait another 3 hours before present opening. This wasn’t good news and George the cat started miaowing – he clearly wasn’t happy either!

Five minutes later, at 6:14 they wished each other Merry Christmas. Two minutes later they moved onto the world of world of football management. Harry told Toby he would be signing him as a squad rotation player, and then announced he had to fly to Barcelona to watch then play tomorrow. At 6:17 they arrived in Barcelona and went boot shopping.

This could only hold their attention for a short while though because at 6:20 Harry announced he was bored, “what shall we do?”. Toby replied with “I just want to open my presents”. “You could go into Mum and Dad’s room and ask them if we can then”.

At 6:21 Toby came into the room …

httpv://youtu.be/SaoxfzC0td0

By 6:28 all stocking presents – 22 each – were open! It was the best Christmas ever!! As a bonus to all their presents Harry announced that Rudolph hadn’t woken them up farting like Uncle Jack said he would. Apparently Rudolph also does a poo on top of your house every Christmas Eve.

As the boys played with their presents we lay in bed watching Santa’s progress, and at 7 in the morning he reached Seattle, I wonder if he has left anything there?

7am he delivers to Seattle?

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Water Slide

Along with the food, drink, dogs, large garden, Chinese, staying up late, pulling about 38 crackers, opening presents, eating as much chocolate as you like and seeing Nanny and Grandad there was also the fun of the new, giant bath. The giant bath was big enough to 1) get my Christmas belly in, and 2) act as a slide for two little boys…

httpv://youtu.be/aEowaxs4FcM

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Social Butterfly

Never mind a relaxing December back in the UK. It’s been chaos for everyone who has had us to stay and real hard work for Tracy. It took a few weeks to organize and another few to execute but the social butterfly has flitted her way through appointment after appointment. I think we’ll probably need a nice vacation in January!

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On The Train Again!

Wow! The alarm went off at 6:10am and it wasn’t a good feeling! I’m not sure when it last went off that early but it was a long time ago. After a quick shower and getting dressed, Jack gave me a lift to the station. As I opened the door to get out the car I nearly managed to knock a bloke off his scooter as he went past! I’m not sure if this was because I wasn’t really awake or just because I’m not prepared for scooters – I don’t think they have them in America!!

To ease the pain of going on the train I decided Expedia could treat me to a 1st class ticket so at least I would be able to sit down rather than be squashed like cattle. As I stood on the platform 2 (at a time that I am still normally in bed) I recognized all sorts of faces from when I was doing this journey 7 months earlier (maybe over 8 months ago as I did work from home rather a lot at the end!). I don’t know why I found this strange/surprising but I did.

Once the train arrived I started reaping the rewards of an extra pricey train ticket with a cup of tea, a bottle of water and a copy of the Independent:

More importantly than all those benefits I got wireless which is good as the data on my phone wasn’t working which I need to sort otherwise they’ll be no tweets for the month of December! And that, I’m sure you will agree, will never do!

 

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Homeward Bound

With the flight back to the UK almost upon us there were only two things to do – shop and go out to eat. Twice! Having started the packing process it became abundantly clear that I clearly didn’t have the right pj’s, shoes or work bag to go to the UK with. Fortunately Macy’s had some kind of crazy sale on which meant that I could stock up on all these items at truly bargain prices. So on Friday evening we went over to Bellevue for a trip to the mall and some pizza at Zeeks – our first visit to the one at Bellevue. I think that as much as we love Zeeks it will also be our last visit to the Bellevue version – it’s not quite up to the standard of Kirkland and Issaquah. On a positive side, I did manage to order the pizza that I actually wanted this time which is progress.

On Saturday it was time to watch soccer, tidy the house, watch more soccer, go to Red Robbin and then after being asked about 247 times “what time are we going to the airport?”, we went to the airport. We had booked the car into offsite airport parking and it was really rather nice! Firstly it meant we had to go south on the I-5 further than we had been before which in turn meant we had some views of Mount Rainier which we hadn’t had before. We got more of a side-on view and saw some of the foot hills. It looked mightily impressive and I’m sure it just came out to say goodbye to us.

When we arrived at the offsite parking we were pointed in the direction of where to park and unlike most airport parking facilities, as we drove to find a space a small bus followed us so we didn’t have to walk back to a bus stop with our luggage. They loaded us and our bags on and drove us to the terminal. It was all very civilized!

After getting through security with no hassle, we waited a couple of hours and then boarded the plane. BA seriously need to review their hand luggage policy – it’s clearly being abused with people bringing stupid amounts of bags and buggys and stuff onto the plane. This simply served to make the passengers grumpy as they had to wait for people to stuff it all into the overhead lockers (or whatever it’s called) and the BA staff became grumpy as they tried to force luggage in. Anyway, eventually we were all set and we were off.

After watching some TV and eating what I thought was rubbish food but Tracy and the boys liked we attempted to get some sleep. Toby did the best curling up on his seat, Tracy did pretty well despite having Harry leaning on her and I was rubbish. I was hot, sweaty and cramped and only slept for a couple of hours which is not good because I normally sleep for most of the this flight. I’ve obviously grown taller since being in America because there really wasn’t much room at all. On the plus side, the flight was only just over 8 hours so the suffering didn’t last too long!

With our bags collected from the carousel very quickly (probably because everyone else took their luggage on as hand luggage) we met Uncle Jack and drove back up to Clapham. My initial impressions of returning to England was how flat it all was! I guess I have got used to seeing mountains in every direction, so heaven alone knows what it will be like in Norfolk!

After an afternoon of catching up with everyone Tracy and I were getting tired but the boys were like duracell bunnies – they just kept on going and showed no signs of tiring. In the end (around 8pm) they were dosed up with some herbal sweets and packed off to bed. Although they weren’t overly happy about this they were very quickly zonked. Tracy and I made it until 10pm which I thought was quite impressive and then we took some sleeping pills and knocked ourselves out. The pills clearly worked because we all slept through until just after 7am when Harry appeared in our room and woke us up saying he’d heard something making a “whooshy” noise and was scared. Doesn’t matter where we are in the world, some things never change! Naughty monkey!

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Garden d’Lights

I’m not sure how many years it has been going but for the last few the Bellevue botanical garden puts on a display in the lead up to Christmas. We bought our tickets and set off to see what on earth it was all about. We made a quick pitstop at the Cheesecake Factory and then with darkness having descended and the rain having stopped we arrived.

The pictures probably don’t do it justice but it was a very pretty walk around the garden. There were squirrels, frogs, spiders, waterfalls, leaping salmon, the loch ness monster and a Christmas tree amongst other things:

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We’ll definitely be going back next year!