Category Archives: Family stuff

Gap family skiing trip

On the day after boxing day we all abandoned the UK and headed for Gap.  On Top of us, mum dad and Rachel, Ryan and Ann went to the white alps in search of snow, sun and cheese – we weren’t to be disappointed.

The first day we went to Orciere to see what state our legs were in – this turned into a GS style day of us hooning down pistes trying to remember how to ski again (Lara below)

The sun was shinning and skills quickly regained.  It was great to be back skiing in the alps again.  The legs took a pounding as on many runs we refused to stop, by the bottom the legs were on fire with lactic but faces were stretch with smiles.

The holiday was blessed with mixed weather which a) allowed us rest days when needed, and b) gave us loads of fresh snow. New years eve was spent going to bed early (10pm – I now we are boring) as we were on a promise for an epic powder day at my fast becoming favourite place to ski ‘La Grave’.  Setting off early on New years day with no other car on the road was strange, the place was journey was devoid of cars, suppose the rest of france were nursing sore heads.  We were right at the front of the lift que for it to open and what ensued was a monster day of first tracks and more burning legs – below is Lara on a great day.

La Grave is a pretty impressive ski resort, no pistes, just a huge steep mountain.  Ryan was a little amazed at it, as he had never skied anywhere like it before. 

After this some family ski time was required.  Poor Rachel had suffered from a stomach bug which had meant she was not able to ski with us for 4 days.  Finally she made it out and we all had a great day skiing together in Orciere

Unfortunately the ozzy crew had to leave at some point as they had jobs and lives to go back to in Oz :(. We had a few more days left.  Once again the weather was great us and we got another dump of snow.  Mum and Ann had been amazing the whole holiaday and did a whole heap of baby sitting for us so that Lara and I could go skiing together.  It was so so so so so so so good to go out and play together again, we have had the odd day together here and there since Ellis joined us, but this was different.  Ann and Mum when you read this thank you so much – it really gave us a fantastic holiday.  Anyway, back to the skiing, Lara and I got to Reallon early doors for another blue ski powder day

Wow – run after run of the fresh stuff.  There is a lot to be said about the smaller french ski resorts, they don’t get tracked out at all and Lara and I explored all over it and found some amazing lines and bowls that no one touched all day ( apart from us) .  We skied till legs could give no more and the light was fading and went home to a fondue!  I love france!

Our last day was spent touring – we felt we had to do a little bit of uphill to try and ease off our fast expanding mid drifts from the excess of the last few weeks.  We went up to a mountain called Pointe de la Vanesque.  it Was a lovely 2.5 hours climb to the top with views all around us.  I spend the whole time trying to remember good looking lines for future trips.

Lara was worried her fitness was not up to it, but she made short work of the 1000m climb.  The descent was brilliant, once again fresh tracks in awesome powder snow all the way back to the car.

We had a fantastic time skiing and spending time with the family, the weather, snow and babysitters made it!  the rest of the pictures can be seen by clicking here

Xmas 2011

Xmas was a rather large affair this year in Stoke Holy Cross.  I think it was the size it was as alot of people were keen to be there for Ellis’s first Xmas.

We had the ozzy crew fly in, the Tadeusz crew drive up to mix in with the Smith family.  Overall we had just over 20 in the house for Xmas.  After the present frenzy that is the norm in the morning, we set about making a rather huge xmas dinner.  Mum along with her many helpers played a blinder and happily filled up all our bellies with a great lunch and we all retired to the seats to rub our rather large and stretch bellies.

Uncle Ryan was at hand to start of Ellis into bad habits.  We can not say we are a classy family – we even have flashing hats, very sophisticated indeed!

It is at the this point most normal families will start to play board games, watch the queens speach or play a game that invovles films, book or theatre.  Not us, the house turned into a casino and all the hardened gamblers came out.

I blame Frank!  🙂 thankfully no family fueds were started and all walked away with their xmas present stash intact.

It was a brilliant xmas, great company and great fun.  Look forward to many more like it.  The rest of the pictures can be seen by clicking here.

A day in the life of Squeaker (Ellis)

First off I like to go into the bathrooms and empty the cupboards of all things in it and distribute them around the house (note the red marks on my forehead where I like to headbutt stuff)

I then like to venture into my room and empty my nappy bag all over the floor, I know mummy loves it when I do this as she always makes a funny noise when she finds them all over the floor

Once the bag is empty, I always wonder what the surplus white things are on my feet, they don’t need to be there, so I pull them off, if mum or dad put them back on, I think they are stupid so i just pull them straight back off again.

It is usually by this point my mate Sophie comes around to play, she is a great post to pull myself on, she has long hair that is great to pull, she is a lot bigger than me so one day I think she will thump me one, but till them I think i will carry on using her to have fun with.

Once Sophie has left, I am a little sad, so I venture into the toilet and bang the seat for a while, it makes a great noise. If I want to get a reaction from mummy I will pretend to eat the bog brush, she makes all sorts of funny noises and comes running.  Very fun!

After she has kicked me out of the toilet, I head up stairs. I usually take froggy or Kev the koala with me.  I love climbing stairs.  Mum and dad always seem to follow me up with hands out just behind me with a look of fear on their faces.

Don’t know why, I am wicked on steps.  Haven’t quite worked out how to get down them yet though, I usually just sit at the top until one of them carries me down and I will go back up them.

A glorious morning

A glorious morning and with Lara away I thought it best that I fled the safety of home and took Ellis for a walk on the beach.  Was an utterly lovely morning with the Ferret who was happy making noises at the waves being carried around on my back.

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Viva Espana!

Dave was needed in Cadiz, south west Spain ,for work for a few days so Ellis and I tagged along to see the place and to catch a glimpse of the sun before the Aberdeen winter.

The journey there takes a day and a half from this part of the UK due to limited flights. Neighbour Euan kindly took us all to the airport on Sunday afternoon in plenty of time for our flight only to discover it was delayed due to fog in London. So, five hours of hair pulling and general running about ensued:

Monday afternoon we finally arrived to Cadiz after an hour or so transfer from Gibraltar (weird place). We were staying in a residental part of the area called Vistahermosa. The hotel Los Jandalos was lovely except that it was pretty much closed for winter.  Sadly therefore, the pool was not open and neither was the restaurant or the bar! Luckily our room was very lovely and therefore not such a pain.

Dave was busy working every day from 7 until 6 so Ellis and I did some touring about while waiting for Dave to come home. The first day we did a walking self-tour of Puerto de Santa Maria; the nearest town to Vistahermosa. It took most of the day to get around it despite all the attractions being closed due to being off season. Still, we saw the outside of lots of lovely buildings like the Cathedral in the imaginitively named Plaza Catedral!

That evening we went out to a local bar with some of Dave’s work colleagues to say hi.

Wednesday Ellis and I went over to Cadiz on the ferry! It was much more open for business than Puerto and we had a lovely day wandering about the bussling streets and of course drinking coffee in the Plazas. We got the train home again and it was Ellis’ first train ride! She had some difficulty remaining upright!

Thursday Ellis and I headed to one of the beaches at Vistahermosa so that she could try her hand at walking on the sand… and eating it. It was picturesque (other than the view of the Cadiz fab yard) and practically deserted.

Friday was Dave’s last day at work and our last full day in Spain. Sadly I was rather ill on the Friday perhaps due to the alcohol connsiumed the night before with his work buddies but I think it must have been dodgy albondigas! When Dave got back from work we all went to another of the Vistahermosa beaches for a play and then out to dinner in the evening. It was the first time we had made it past the bar and beyond the tapas!

A lovely break away for Ellis and me and perhaps a sightly more interesting week at work for Dave.

You can see the rest of the photos here.

A fun Weekend climbing and dressing up

Saturday afternoon was spent holding onto sharp objects and trying to move in an upward motion.  We had entered a round of the Scottish dry tooling competition being held at our local climbing wall.  This basically involves using ice axes and climbing with them rather than hands.

It was a bit alien to us, but great fun and a rather good work out. both of us felt like some one had kicked us hard all over afterwards. 

The organisers had done a great job of route setting with a massive variety of moves and techniques required, from torquing,  to wood and bike frames being used as obstacles to get up and over. Ellis was cheering us on as we took it in turn to climb from the viewing balcony and even took some interest in climbing gear.  I reckon she will like climbing

A great event and something we hope to do again, good training for the fast approaching winter coming

In the evening we went to Gus and Lorraine’s fancy dress halloween party.  Here they are in their amazing home made costumes

We decided that as it was halloween we would go with the ghost theme and go as something to do with the legendary ghost busters movie

Yes that is me hiding inside there.  I some came to realise this was a better costume for deepest darkest winter months as I was roasting in there and it was like wearing a duvet all night!  We had a brilliant time, dancing, playing games and having one to many drinks.  Our old neighbours had generously offered to baby sit Ellis for the night and for her to stay at theirs, so we were free to go out all night with out having to think about her.  thank you very much N&R – you are brilliant!

(yes , funnily enough I did chose Lara’s costume………)

Family Visit to Dubai

Work needed me to go over to Dubai for a week, Lara had never been so thought it a good idea to combine both.  Dubai is not a place we would normally go on holiday so was a great opportunity for Lara to come and see it and get a bit of sun (which we all know she misses living in Scotland!!)

During the day I would go off to work at the Fab Yard in Jebel Ali.  I spent a large part of my time in a boiler suit sweeting  uncontrollably and craving the heaven that was air conditioning.

 whilst Lara would do the touristy things and generally relax around the hotel pool or on the sea with Ellis,

  Mid sun was a little too hot for Ellis so the pool was her refuge with some funny results!

We managed to catch up with some old friends of ours Daisy and Whizz and let Ellis meet her future husband – Bertie!  they had fun in their paddling pool becoming friends!

Once I got home we usually went out along the beach and went out for dinner and a few drinks whilst Ellis was great and came with us sleeping in her pram.

A great week for me to get some work done and some sun for Lara. The rest of the pictures can be seen by clicking here

Getting a good pounding in the North Sea

Getting excited emails from my surfing friend Mr Fryer about a decent swell coming in on saturday morning, it was time to try my hand at surfing again.  We arrived at Aberdeen beach at 7am just as the sun was rising and the swell was looking good, a little too good.  Both Scott and I rather inexperienced novices at this sport we both looked at each other rather worryingly at the size of the waves!  We thought we would get the hero photos first before we went in as we were certain it was not going to be a pretty site after!

Once in I remembered how hard it is on your shoulders to battle through the white water to paddle ‘out back’ to were it is relatively calm before the waves break, we then sit on the boards bobbying around admiring the sunrising and choosing the wave we would try and ride in and get a pretty sure thing pounding by mother nature as we fall off.  Well we did get a good pounding trying to surf in, both getting up a few times and really enjoying it.  Mr Fryer caught a few beauty rides and it made us want to get better so we could surf like him as it just looked magical riding the waves like he did. 

The rest of the day was spent playign with the baby, she has started to love playing with building blocks

When i say playing there is nothing intellectual going on here, she is not making towers or spelling out words.  She mainly just throws them around and waits for us to pick them up and place them back in front of her before she throws them around again.  When she gets bored of this she does laps around the coffee table with her new found crawling skills.

Once she had tired us out we put her to bed and all chipped in and made dinner together and had a good dinner talking about everything and everyone. 

Was a great evening and thank you Caryn and Frank for all your help and baby sitting this weekend.

Isle of Lewis

On Thursday 29th September, Ellis and Lara piled into the car to meet Granny Caryn and Grumpsy at Inverness Airport. The plan was to spend until Sunday travelling together through Lewis and Harris, Lara and Ellis would then return to Aberdeen while Caryn and Frank continued through the Islands and through Scotland also to Aberdeen the following Friday.

We arrived at Inverness Airport to meet mum and dad and all had lunch in the airport. It is a teeny airport with lovely views! I had decided that it would be easiest to jump into mum and dad’s hire car rather than drive two over to the hebrides so we shoehorned buggy, bags and people into a peugot thing and set off for the West.

We spent a lovely evening in Ullapool where we had dinner in the Arch and stayed in a hotel called the Riverside. Ellis managed to pee on the floor in the room but I managed to soak it up so you couldn’t tell…

We caught the morning ferry to Stornoway. Mum was prepared and had travel sickness prevention pills so we popped one of those each before setting off. The crossing was pretty tame (mum and dad had been told it was rough) so we were lucky.

It was a typical grey Scottish sky which made photos a little uninteresting so we did the best we could with my limited photography skills! The best photos are the people shots!

Friday we thought we would head over to the Iron Age House on the western coast of Lewis. It is on a beach and supposed to be interesting viewing, according to the tourist websites. It was a shame therefore that they didn’t mention that it was closed after the 9th September, especially since it is about an hour’s drive from the capital. Nevermind we thought, at least we got to see some views and sheep. We headed back to Stornoway to go to the museum and catch a glimpse of the famouse viking chessmen. Unfortunately this was also shut so we trotted to the art gallery which we knew to be open as we had seen people coming and going. We were out of luck again though as that was the day that they changed the exhibitions over… All in all a rather unsuccessful day of tourism.

We stayed in the Jannel B&B which was fabulous. The owner was very accommodating and chatty and the rooms were very clean and well done. It was a very comfortable place to spend a couple of nights.

I had done a small amount of research and discovered the eatery of choice was called Digby Chick. We headed over there on the Friday night but of course it was fully booked. We took the recommendation offered by one of the staff there and headed to a restaurant called the Boatshed. We had a lovely dinner where mum and dad had the most enormous and delicious lingoustines and I had a lovely rack of Lewis lamb. We should had taken a photo of they food becasue it looked incredible!

Saturday we headed to look at a Blackhouse, where the Islanders used to live and then off to the Callandish Standing Stomes for a lovely sunset and some Henge style masonry.

We went back to the Boatshed for dinner on Saturday where Ellis tried to shove chewed bread into Grumpsy’s mouth.

Unfortunately Granny was Tom Dick on Sunday. Dad and I visited the first beach (pics in gallery) and Ellis came with us for the 2nd. I reckon it was all the kisses Ellis bestowed on Granny before dinner on Saturday that caused her being ill…

All the pics can be seen by clicking here

back to Gap (at last)

Firstly not sure why this has taken me so long to update, nearly 6 weeks late – errr I was busy….  well that is my excuse and I am sticking to it.  Due to this holiay being so long ago, I am going o find it hard to remember what we did (that is why I write this blog as a reminder to myself ).  So it it will mainly be snippets.

Due to Lara’s hand being broken our idea of doing lots of biking went out the window, so we spent quite a bit of time walking in the mountains, Ellis being the cool Little lady she is sat on my back happily waving at cows as I keep my nervous eye on them ( they are all evil and out to kill me). 

We also spent a lot of time by the Lac de Serre Poncon which was lovely.  We bought her a little tent and Granny Smith was great at entertaining her singing ‘twinkle twinkle little star’  I can honestly say that song didn’t start to grate after the thousands time…… it kept Ellis amused anyway!  Lara and I would go swimming and Lara managed to soak up the sun which she desperately misses in Aberdeen.

Ellis thought the water was too cold and didn’t like going to play in it……  she is definitely her mothers daughter as everytime Lara went into it is was one of those inch by inch slowly wading in type of water entries that if I tried to speed up I got a short sharp shouting at and I knew she meant it “ ONE MORE SPLASH AND I WILL ####### KILL YOU!!!”

Not being great at sunbathing I decided to take up windsurfing, dad handily has a new one hanging in the garage so i decided to havea  go.  Great fun!  a little wobbly to start off with but the more I did it the more my confidence grew and the faster I went.  I look forward to more summer time spent on it.

The lake in question – the biggest man made fresh water lake in Europe and bloody lovely it is too!

Some days it was a little too hot to take Ellis out into the sun, so Granny Smith would stick her in the bath and feed her on the Patio.  She would sit and happily splash around for ages, and then when she was finished you could easily clean all the food she had liberally distributed all over her self, a great two in one system!

On these hot days I would take the opportunity to go and get out on my bike, i managed to get out on my bike and tick off a couple of classic Tour De France climbs.  The fear Mount Ventoux  (having done it now i understand the hype, it is hard!)  and the Col D’Izoard.
Ellis went to the swimming pool once, she loved it and it was great for her to play in but unfortuntaly her skin did not like the chlorine and until her skin gets a little less sensitive she will have to give it a miss.
Other than that we spent a lot of time with our local friends we made out there when we were in Gap on out Honeymoon, was great to spend time with them and go out biking / walking with them.  Granny and Pops were great at babysitting, Granny spent most of the time getting beaten up
and we had to resort to caging the beast!
the rest of the pictures from the holiday can be seen by clicking here