march 2011

march 26

wow - another busy few days...

• a trip to the lever art gallery [disgraceful that i hadn't been before considering how close i lived to it for more of my life]
• a movie night with my friend ana, and her two children
• dinner with ian, lin, nick and sam [nice to meet you sam!]
• robertos for coffee with everyone
• a day in liverpool on the duck, a visit to the beautiful catholic museum, the tate museum at the albert dock, a meal at 'what's cooking' [which i haven't eaten at for about 25 years!], a trip to see anthony gormley's 'another place' and a visit to benjamin and pauline's house.

and now today is the day of benjamin and pauline's wedding at thornton hall. i was so excited i couldn't sleep

liverpool catholic cathedral:

lady lever art gallery in beautiful port sunlight:

march 22

the gang on the monorail

we're just over half way through our trip to england. we've been having a lovely time - a really good mixture of time with family, time with friends and nice outings. the weekend in seattle before we flew out was great - it was nice to spend some time together before we went away. we went to the children's museum, the space needle [or 'the noodle' as zoe called it] again and we also went on the underground tour, monorail and to pike place market for the first time.

aly at the space needle

since we've been in england, we have been to spaceport, birkenhead priory, the walker art gallery in liverpool, seen high[ish] tide at parkgate, seen a bit of mayhem in liverpool for st. patrick's day!, visited my old primary school, seen my friend, Hazel for the first time in about 20 years, seen a couple of owls, and eaten fish and chips in new brighton. i've played pitch and putt and aly has been to a local girl guides meeting and to a new friend's house for tea! we also spent a day in wales at flint castle [who knew there was one?!], conway castle, llandudno [which brought back horrible memories of a geography field trip when we had to survey strangers!] and up the great orme at sunset.

aly at spaceport

llandudno front

flint castle

conway castle

golf at new brighton with di and ron

i'm on a quest to taste all the type of crisps i've been missing since i moved away. in north american, they tend to use msg in all their exciting flavoured crisps, so i get stuck eating either plain or salt and vinegar all the time. so far i've eaten skips, bacon rashers and chip sticks. i've got my eye on hula hoops and monster munch next!

most importantly, i've had lots of meals with family, played 15 or so games of scrabble with my mum and sister, and had plenty of nice cups of tea.

when i first got here I was a bit guilt ridden about ditching the rest of the family - especially zoe, but a couple of days in, i realized how little time i've spent with aly since zoe has been born and it's not like it'll be any better when we get back - that's the trouble with her being the easy going, problem-free, oldest one!

aly has resurrected her blog for our holiday. it's at: http://horsegirl-violet-ice-cream.blogspot.com/

march 11

last day at home today - tomorrow we head to seattle for the weekend and then aly and i get dropped off at seatac on monday morning ready for our flight to the uk. it's been a chaotic week of course so i'm hoping for a relaxing flight, with a chance to catch up on some movies with aly. i gave zoe a dora suitcase this morning to do her packing - 'gracias' she squealed with delight [BIG dora fan!].

i finally got some photos off my phone [which seems to be the only way i take photos these days], so here's what you've missed from the past couple of months.....

first, our lovely [if short] trip to grouse mountain with dani, where the clouds disappeared to reveal our beautiful city below us...

a trip to granville island with grampa:

yes, you know your husband's into sailing when he goes to stroke boats IN THE SNOW

aly climbing at a friend's birthday party:

family skate at the oval [maybe we shouldn't go skating at naptime though]

zoe finding out whether you can poke someone in the eye through a hockey helmet [turns out poking someone in the nose is the best you can hope for] it seems gloves might be just as important as a helmet when toby's finger got trodden on by an ice skate blade in the changeroom early in the month. fortunately it's healing well [and who needs a fingernail on their ring finger anyway?]

march 1

my favourite phrase of zoe's at the moment 'dewicious' [delicious] - often declared loudly to waiters, much to their amusement.

only 2 weeks to go until england. aly has been desperate to start packing for a least a month, maybe i should move from notes on my iphone to actually putting things in bags - that way i will have plenty of time to remember the things i've forgotten to pack! have i ever mentioned how much i LOVE my iphone. what did i do before it came along? in the course of the average day, i probably use it for texting, facebook, email, calculator, suduko, sleep cycle tracking/alarm clock, camera, and phone [in that order!]. that's a suitcase full of small appliances in the 1990s, a small room full of appliances in the 80s and a large house full of appliances in the 70s. i'm so happy i was born when i was :)

we had a very nice day or 2 of snow at the weekend. it arrived just as we were leaving for granville island [where my crazy boat-obsessed husband looked at boats and we looked in toy stores], stayed around for us to have a play and a sled ride the next day and then was pretty much gone in time for work on monday morning. a very considerate snowfall all-in-all.

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