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the one with the train

Posted on October 30, 2009

Are you ready for some foot­ball?!?!  Amer­i­can foot­ball that is.

Are you ready for some foot­ball?!?!  Amer­i­can foot­ball that is.  On Sun­day we headed down to Lon­don town to watch my beloved NE Patri­ots play at Wem­b­ley.  To say we were excited would be an under­state­ment!

I picked up a white turtle­neck (roll­neck to you Brits) shirt for Squidge to wear and Wal danced around like a loon when I tried it on her.  LOL wish I had a cam­corder!  We had a fan­tas­tic time but I wish we had more time.  We decided to have Por­tuguese food for lunch so headed toward Stock­well(?).  Lunch was good but that meant we were run­ning waaay behind and missed all the pre-game stuff. Live and learn I sup­pose, that is the only thing I would have changed about the day– oooh and miss­ing our train and hav­ing to pay an addi­tional £130 to get on the next train!! But, other than that we wouldn’t change a thing! We were haul­ing it up to the sta­dium and could hear the national anthem being sung.  Did I men­tion Wal had Squidge on his shoul­ders at this point?!?!  Once inside and set­tled we finally were able to relax and enjoy the game.  I taught Squidge to say “GO PATS!!” and she spent the first quar­ter shout­ing it and danc­ing– sooo cute I wanted to eat her up!! LOL gotta love this kid!

We had fan­tas­tic seats– row 20 on the lower level!  I don’t own a zoom lens (85mm is all I have as i don’t need one in my day to day busi­ness) but I would have loved to have one dur­ing the game.  Ah well next time I’ll rent one… or not!

Squidge was sooo good dur­ing the game. We were wor­ried that her atten­tion would wan­der and we’d end up try­ing to keep her enter­tained.  Luck­ily she became fas­ci­nated by the cheer­lead­ers and spent a lot of time stand­ing on my thighs and try­ing to copy their dances– again, wish I had a cam­corder!  At one point she was thirsty and Wal went to buy her a drink.  He came back w/ a JUMBO (although they called it a small) Fanta.

She drank it all up, barely let­ting me have a sip.  Whoo boy did she have a sugar rush– it was funny to watch.  It lasted until the end of the game and then it was a mad dash to try to get to Euston to catch the train back to Man­ches­ter. As I said before we missed the one we had tick­ets for.  I thought we would just be able to get on the next one but nope they made us pay full whack to get on the next train.  Pretty heart­less of them and it’s no won­der peo­ple don’t travel by rail much– it expensive!!

We can’t wait for the next NFL game but we also know that this was a once in a life time event. I mean really when will the Patri­ots play another reg­u­lar sea­son game in Lon­don?!?  Prob­a­bly not for a long time.

Expectations

Posted on September 21, 2009

On Sun­day Wal, Squidge and I went to Der­byshire.  We took pre­cious moments away from the bath­room remodel to look at a loca­tion for our wed­ding.  We had booked a table for Sun­day lunch and were look­ing for­ward to it.  I think we all had dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions of our after­noon.  I was look­ing for­ward to show­ing Wal the  beau­ti­ful house and talk­ing about what I wanted. Wal I sus­pect was look­ing for­ward to a tra­di­tional Sun­day lunch.  Squidge was dream­ing of run­ning around and play­ing hide and seek.  All of our expec­ta­tions were met yes­ter­day.  It was a glo­ri­ously sunny after­noon.  The weather could not have been bet­ter and Cress­brook Hall shined.  Lunch was fan­tas­tic, starter, main and dessert– nom nom nom.  We ran around a lit­tle bit w/ Squidge.

We chat­ted about what would hap­pen, where it would hap­pen and when I couldn’t answer some of Wal’s ques­tions we spoke to Bobby who owns the Hall.  She made Wal com­fort­able and answered all of his ques­tions.  We ten­ta­tively reserved the date with promises to call Bakewell Reg­is­trars office to book them.  After book­ing the reg­is­trar we were to con­firm our reser­va­tion w/ a deposit, Wal was OK with this.  We went home and about an hour after we got home Bobby called.  She called to say that her daugh­ter had taken a book­ing for the day we wanted…sorry…unfortunate…better to tell you sooner rather than wait until tomorrow…blah…blahh. blaaaaah…

To say I’m dis­ap­pointed would be an under­state­ment.  I almost cried.  My reac­tion to this set­back pissed me off.  It’s just a feck­ing wed­ding.  Wal and I have been together for a while. We have a child together.  We want another child.  We’re plan­ning on buy­ing a new house.  This whole marriage/wedding thing is not going to fun­da­men­tally change our lives.  I don’t have any idea why I’m allow­ing myself to get sucked into this emo­tional roller­coaster.  There are other dates avail­able.  I’m going to talk to Wal tonight and see what he thinks.  If it begins to get all weird and bridezilla-ish well just for­get all about it and con­tinue to live in sin.

While we were up in the Peak Dis­trict we decided to do a lit­tle ‘splorin.  It really is pretty up there when the sun is shining.

Quarry Bank Mill

Posted on August 6, 2009

This morn­ing we met up w/ B and Co. for a day at Quarry Bank Mill. While I was there I became a National Trust mem­ber.  It’s some­thing I have wanted to do for a while but just never got around to doing it.  The QBM is very nice– I had never been there so was pleas­antly sur­prised but it all.  The only thing we went for was story time at the Secret Gar­den.  Now the only secret bit about the gar­den was that it sucked  and wasn’t all that kid/pushchair friendly but we man­aged.  Here’s a photo taken when we were about a third of the way down.  Can you say HOLY STEEPNESS BATMAN!!

We got all the way up there and then had a bit of a pic­nic with the kids. Squidge was being a PITA about eat­ing– sud­denly she didn’t like sausages or toma­toes!  WTF kid you’d nor­mally eat those with­out a prob­lem.  So after threat­en­ing her (cuz that’s how I roll, although I will have to be care­ful or some­one might arrest me) she ate enough to sat­isfy me.

After a bit of run­ning around in the tall grass it was time to head back down.  It was a bit nerve wrack­ing as it was very very steep but we all made it down in one piece.

Then it was time for the real rea­son we went there story time.  Squidge is crazy for sto­ries so I knew it was going to be a big hit, I was just sur­prised at how big a hit it was.  There were no books the woman just read from memory.

I thought she was going to be bored but it ended up being the best ever as there was noth­ing to dis­tract her.  The last time we went to sto­ry­time at the library the woman read­ing was very cross w/ Squidge.  She was soo irri­tated that at the end she refused to read the last book and just ended it rather abruptly.  I was a lit­tle upset about it because the story time is for preschool­ers so she can’t expect them to be per­fect lit­tle angels and LORD KNOWS Squidge is no angel.  All she was really doing was say­ing she had a cer­tain book or why was this/that hap­pen­ing.   So I’ve been work­ing on her about this– chat­ting to her about how she can’t inter­rupt the per­son read­ing and to stay sit­ting down– yah know that sort of thing.  This is usu­ally pretty dif­fi­cult for Squidge when they have inter­ac­tive type books– open pic­ture win­dows or pull tabs– she want to do it all the time.  Do I inter­rupt and tell her to sit down dur­ing the story or do I wait until after and have a chat w/ her.  SO any­hoo off track here but this time she was pretty good.  Not too much talk­ing.  C & N got tired of it after about 3 sto­ries (I don’t blame them so was I!!) but not Squidge she stayed for over an hour lis­ten­ing to the woman repeat­ing the same sto­ries over and over.  I’m won­der­ing if the fact that I usu­ally have CD ver­sions of her books play­ing in the car helped her stay focused.  She was pay­ing atten­tion too because later on I asked her what her favorite story she told me.  She also was able to tell me a bit about the actual story.  Not bad for a 3 yr old and no book. I’m very proud of her.  Now if only she would fol­low­ing direc­tion when there’s a book involved. *sigh* baby steps. baby steps.

While Squidge was being enter­tained the rest of us were off to the side enjoy­ing the sun and kick­ing balls around and mak­ing friends.  Then it was off to a play­ground for big­ger kids (5+) were we didn’t have a very good view of the equip­ment so it wasn’t as relax­ing as it might have been.

We walked around and ended up in Styl vil­lage and just have a very pleasent day. Not much there but a few houses and a cou­ple of churches.  So it was back down the path to the cars.

It was  bit pricey (£4 carpark, £5 gar­den (so not worth it) admis­sion) but really we would have spent that much if we had gone to a soft play area and this way they got to enjoy the fan­tas­tic weather.  We need to get out there while we have it because lord knows it will prob­a­bly rain again soon enough!

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