Baggas’ Blog

Miss Mia’s first travel booking

Originally uploaded by baggas

For some reason I thought this was cute, seeing Miss Mia’s name in print like this

Jennifer and I are going to Adelaide in September for our anniversary for a few days, and Mia will be coming along for the ride.

It’s been some time since I’ve posted any videos of Mia so here’s a quick clip of her from yesterday. Also enjoy the music, which Luke created (with a little help from me) using Apple GarageBand.

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Originally uploaded by baggas

A while since I’ve posted any photos of Mia on the blog so here she is

Even this photo is a few weeks old. I’ll try and get some fresh ones onto flickr in the next day or so. It’s on my (new, paper based, super-functional and actually effective) to-do list.

Time to update after a busy few days.

We spent the weekend down south in Manjimup visiting Jen’s brother. Stayed in a farm stay cottage which was nice for the kids, getting to feed and play with all the animals - donkeys, ponies, sheep, cattle, birds, an alpaca and others. Did a bit of four wheel driving in the Karri forrest down there and overall just had a good relaxing time. On the way back I trusted the GPS to take us the shortest route however this was not necessarily the quickest - we wound up driving along the “Blackwood River tourist drive” which was an incredibly beautiful winding drive along the river through hilly forest and farmland… but very slow. Lesson for the future : if the GPS says go one way and my judgement says go another, trust myself instead of the computer (assuming of course I have a fair idea of where I am and where I’m going).

The last few days have been busy with work and other things. Yesterday I got my car serviced and went to Perth to do a few bits and pieces. Sure glad I don’t live in Mandurah - the drive from Perth to Mandurah is just that little bit too long for my liking.

The other thing which may or may not be happening is that there is a chance I may be going over to Myanmar (Burma) soon to help in the relief efforts in the aftermath of the horrendous cyclone. Of course this is dependant on whether their government decides to issue visas for foreign workers to come and help. But my name is on the list with an organisation who are hoping to send a medical team in so we will see what happens. I would have mixed feelings about going and leaving Jen and the three kids including baby Mia, so it would necessarily be a fairly short trip but hopefully I would be able to do some good for people. For this sort of thing it’s Jen making much more of a sacrifice than I would be, by allowing me to go. So please pray for both of us, and the entire sitatuation over there.

Anyway for the time being there’s work to be done here and patients waiting to be seen, so I’d better get on with it.

Here’s the latest video of our baby Mia - now nearly eight weeks old. My how she’s grown!

Time for a blog update as it’s been a while…

4:43pm on ANZAC Day and Jen and the boys are working on cooking up a huge batch of Anzac biscuits - suddenly I have a big appetite for them That’s about all we do in our family to commemorate Anzac day, although every year I consider taking Owen along to the dawn service.

Speaking of Owen he’s now playing the Star Wars theme on the piano - about the only song he knows. Wish I could work out how to get him more enthusiastic about practising the stuff he’s supposed to.

Work has been busy again this week - although I’ve been working short days in the surgery while the kids are on school holidays, the baby business has got busy again in the last 2 weeks. March worked out to be an extremely quiet month for me in terms of obstetrics, which was most providential as that was when Mia was born. But this week I’ve had 5 deliveries so it’s fully back up to speed. Plus I’m on-call for this weekend, which I’m not too pleased about since I’ve been on for almost every public holiday this year. So far no calls though - hopefully it will stay that way.

A big part of yesterday was spend rebuilding my desktop PC, which died on Wednesday night. I think I must have shortcircuited the motherboard whilst tidying up the mass of cables behind the computer. Anyway it’s not such a bad thing - I’ve now got a new motherboard with a new much faster Core 2 Duo processor and a clean install of Vista which is ticking along nicely so far. I was tempted to take this opportunity to switch over to a Mac desktop (either iMac or Mac Pro) but couldn’t justify the expense right now so that dream will have to wait a little while.

Anyway that’s enough for now. I’ve uploaded our latest set of camping photos onto Flickr and will work on getting a new video of Mia up over the weekend (recently got a new Sony HD video camera so have been busy filming her over the last few days…)

It’s taken me a little while to get around to it, but here is Mia’s first YouTube video, from her first few days in hospital. Starting with footage from minutes after she was born, then meeting her brothers, her first bath, and her impression of a frog. Enjoy.

Also added a few more photos to my flickr page, like the ones below.. what I haven’t uploaded though is the video which follows of Owen taking off driving round the house with Mia on his lap!

I’ve already introduced you to Mia, but my other new baby is a Fender acoustic/electric mandolin, which I got the other day.

I’m afraid I got a bit mixed up about which one belongs in the case though

Plenty more new photos (of Mia, not the Mandolin) online at flickr….

Time for bed after another good day, most of which was spent at the hospital with my girls

I’ve put more photos from today on flickr here : http://flickr.com/photos/pbaggas/sets/72157604054807202/ but here’s a couple of the cutest ones…

Just a quick note to say that our baby, Mia Grace, was born at 6am this morning, weighing 3014 grams

Will update more soon, but all is well.

More photos online here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/pbaggas/sets/72157604045019286/

Thought I’d better update after a few days away from the blog. We’re all still here - baby still well ensconced inside Jenni’s tummy although hopefully she’ll come some time soon. I’m cutting back my work hours a little in preparation for the birth. Basically I’m booking my mornings and then deciding on a day by day basis if I’m going to work in the afternoon. That way if Jen goes into labour and I need to take days off it only means cancelling half a day’s worth of patients. I had the whole day off on Friday though, since Jen was sick and I was exhausted after spending almost the whole night at the hospital in one of the most awful experiences of my medical and obstetric career. Sometimes this job is one of the best in the world, other times it’s one of the worst… Today is an in between day - keeping fairly well to time but a couple of patients who concern me, although I had some promising news about my patient in ICU. I’m finishing a bit earlier than usual so I can catch up on a little shopping and get the boys from school which makes the day a little less daunting too.

Here’s a picture Luke (age 4) drew of his mum this morning

How cute is that!

Four weeks to go now until our baby is due - hopefully less! I’m now at that point that every time my phone rings or there’s a text message the first thought that crosses my mind is that it might be Jen … sadly it’s usually someone else’s baby about to be born, not ours.

First day of school for 2008 today. Owen started grade 2, and Luke had his first ever day at kindy - both looked super cute in their uniforms as you can see in the photos (more on flickr). So now we have both our children at school with no kids full time at home… at least for a few weeks until the next one comes along…

Here’s the second part of the video from our weekend in Denmark. It really is a beautiful spot down there - lovely countryside and some great coastal scenery.

It’s another long weekend here down under, this time for Australia Day, January 26th. We’ll be having the customary lamb dinner tonight with some chops before yet another public holiday on-call for me tomorrow.

So far this weekend’s been good though. Jen and I went out for dinner and a movie on Friday night - saw Charlie Wilson’s War which is an excellent cold war political drama starring Tom Hanks. Full of history, humour, and irony, if you like The West Wing (my all time favourite TV show) then you’ll probably appreciate this movie. I also like the understated way the movie referenced the USA’s failure to capitalise on its victory over the Soviets in Afghanistan - as the characters discuss the dangers of not following through with helping rebuild the country, you hear the ominous sound of a jet airliner flying over Washington in the background.

Saturday we took the kids to Garden City Shopping Centre in Booragoon to do a bit of shopping and see a movie. Our only choice was Alvin & the Chipmunks which was not the best but the kids seemed to enjoy it. While doing that I dropped our Prado into a hand car wash they have in the undercover carpark there to get all the dirt off it from our previous weekend down south. The beauty of that place is not only do they do a great job for a pretty good price, but it saves me having to drive around for 20 minutes looking for parking. Now the car looks like new again, or perhaps even better than new

Speaking of last weekend, I’ve posted a video on YouTube with some footage I took while we were down south. Have a look here if you like :

In the next few days I’ll upload the rest of the video. Also I’ve posted all the photos from the trip on my flickr page.

Happy New Year and all the best for 2008!

So far it’s been a nice relaxing start to the year. Spent most of the day at home taking it easy with the kids. Got a few jobs done including taking the Christmas tree down and Jen has started setting up the nursery (which has been a storeroom for the last 2 years since we’ve moved in) - needless to say there’s lots of pink stuff

Two trips out in the new Prado today - one to the hospital for the first birth of 2008, and one to Bunnings with the boys to grab a few things. Yesterday we spent the morning down at Rockingham Beach playing around on the family boat, enjoying the new SeaBiscuit tube that Kyle got. Here’s some film of it :

Half way through a fairly good day at work. No one in labour today, which is a nice change.

Looking forward to this weekend, which is another four day break from work. It promises to be warm again so lots of swimming, and in general just hanging out with family and friends, and lots of driving around town … mainly because I’m picking up our new car this afternoon after work and am keen to take it for a spin.

On a similar vein, partly with the aim of giving the Prado a good long run in, I’ve booked a mini holiday for three week’s time. We’ll be going down to Denmark in the far south of Western Australia for 3 days. I was looking for a good place to go, something a little different to the usual Busselton/Margaret River triangle, and was inspired by Hamo’s recent trip down there. Might even be some good spots to take the car off road down that way. Initially I was planning for this trip to be just me and the boys, but the accommodation I’ve booked looks fairly nice, so I might see if I can talk Jen in to coming along also, depending on how she’s feeling with the pregnancy. Either way, I’m really looking forward to it

Back at work today after an excellent relaxing five day Christmas break. Yesterday was not entirely work-free - I had to deliver a baby after dinner and had a Caesarean at 1am this morning, but that’s not too bad for a day on-call.

Work today has been very easy going. I think I’ve seen about 80% pregnant mums, 15% kids, and only 5% adult medicine.  If only every day was like this work would be a joy! Oh, and I had another delivery at lunchtime today, maintaining my average of a baby a day for the last two weeks.

Fortunately today’s a bit cooler after yesterday’s record breaking scorcher, but I think it will still be just right for a dip in the pool after work… or maybe a walk down to the beach - the boys got Boogie boards for Christmas so they might want to give them a try out in the surf.

Well we had a great Christmas Day yesterday. Plenty of time just relaxing with family, an excellent church service, and time in the swimming pool. It was a pretty hot 40.7 degrees Celsius (that’s 105.26F) yesterday but today looks like it’s going to be even warmer 41 degrees! Might be a good day to spend inside in the air-conditioning watching the cricket, and maybe jump in the pool or take a run to the beach later in the evening. The only potential problem with that is that I am on-call for obstetrics, and already have at least one patient in labour…

Anyway, here’s a taste of our Christmas Day 2007!

EDIT : just had a newsflash while watching the cricket. Apparently Perth has it’s hottest Boxing Day on record - 44.3 degrees Celsisus (according to the BOM site) - that’s 111.174 degrees Farenheit. In fact it’s the hottest ever December day also. Yesterday was the second hottest ever Christmas day 40.7, but certainly the hottest in my lifetime since the previous was in 1968.

Another video I quickly threw together - this one is Owen and Luke playing around in London…

We’re back home now from Owen’s eye surgery. Overall he coped very well with the whole process, although when the operation was delayed by 2 hours he was understandably not too happy about being hungry and thirsty from fasting. He was promised a ham sandwich earlier in the morning by the catering staff and would not let us leave in the afternoon until they had brought it. This was during one of his few lucid periods - even now, 6 hours after the surgery, he remains very sedated. Owen tends to have a prolonged reaction to anaesthetics I think.  It’s not a bad thing though, as it means he’s not suffering or complaining with eye pain. His eye certainly looks very red and sore.

Too early to tell how successful the surgery has been. That will become evident over the coming weeks. He has his first check-up with the surgeon tomorrow morning so we shall see how that goes, and then another check in a week’s time.

Back in July I posted about when Luke wanted to give some of his toys and food to a little child begging with his mother in Kampala.

Here’s some video of that, plus a general view of the traffic in Kampala as seen from our hotel.

I’m gradually working my way through some of my video footage from the last 6 months, so expect to see more of these YouTube clips over the next few weeks. Working with iMovie on my Mac makes it so easy to produce these - it literally took only about 5-10 minutes to put this clip together, whilst watching a DVD with the kids. Otherwise life is way too busy at the moment. Work is getting fairly hectic, lots of other functions on, plus we have Owen’s surgery this week. Tomorrow is our church’s big Aqua Carols event at the local aquatic center -  swimming, eating, and just generally having fun whilst our church music team provides the entertainment. I’m playing and singing in about three different bands - rock, acoustic, and country style! Should be a good day

Haven’t been blogging much lately - life has been crazy and December is looking like it’s going to be busier than ever with work, church, and family stuff. I do have a few YouTube videos made on my Mac that I’ll put up here when I get a moment.

The main news is that Owen is going in for eye surgery next Thursday the 13th. We saw an ophthalmologist last week who suggested that operating to correct his squint may be worthwhile sooner rather than later, and were promptly booked in. We had thought maybe in January but having it sooner is a good thing as it means he should be well and truly recovered by the time school starts next year - and if it goes really well he may even be out of his glasses! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Had a great day on Saturday with my brothers and dad and our kids. We went up to Dwellingup and went 4 wheel driving in the state forest. There was a little bit of rain which was just enough to create some big puddles for us to splash through and get the cars nice and dirty.

On the way home we had some technical problems with one of the cars, and we limped into Pinjarra where we waited for the other car to return after rescuing someone else, and Jen to arrive with our Honda to give the kids a lift home (she’d just finished at a Women’s conference thing). But the kids enjoyed playing in the park by the Murray river in Pinjarra and exploring the local graveyard. Some of the graves date as far back as 1844, which is pretty old by Western Australian standards (the first settlers arrived in 1829) .

(from Left : Dylan, Kaylee, Alexa, Ethan, Luke, Owen & Rohan)

For those who aren’t familiar with the clan, my two boys are Luke and Owen (in orange and green) - the others are my brother’s kids. Dylan and Kaylee belong to Kyle; and Alexa, Ethan and Rohan belong to Scott.  The only cousin missing here is Scott’s new baby Tobias, who was born in August and therefore still a little young to come 4 wheel driving. With two more babies due next year (making a grand total of ten) these family photos are only going to get more tricky - it’s impossible to get them all smiling at the same time :) 

Anyway, I’ve uploaded a few more photos from the day onto my Flickr account.

Over the last couple of days I’ve uploaded a big bunch of photos onto my flickr account. I’m about halfway through the ones from our recent trip and will get the rest online over the next couple of days. So far there’s a whole lot from Hawaii, Disneyland, and London. Take a look at my Flickr Page here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/pbaggas/

Well another week is drawing to a close. I know this sounds cliched but they seem to be going faster and faster. This week has been pretty good. A few babies born, a couple of minor emergencies sorted out. Kids are doing well at home - Owen has done great on his school homework. Jen has still been unwell, due to a combination of morning sickness and a bad cold, but we were treated to a nice dinner prepared for us by a friend at church earlier in the week, which was a big help. On the leisure side, I’ve been reading a biography of C.S. Lewis, playing a bit more X-box 360 than usual (which isn’t hard since I hardly ever play at all - Owen uses it more than me), and of course discovering Facebook. Now this might sound lame, but I’ve also been watching the Fedex site tracking a package sent from Florida on Aug 27, through Tennessee, Honolulu, Sydney, and now Perth. Hopefully it should arrive here before I leave work this afternoon. It’s nothing special, just some HDDVDs I ordered, but I just love a good shipping tracking site, don’t you?

This weekend I am on-call for obstetrics, which I greet with my usual feelings of ambiguity. I really can’t be bothered working and would love for it to be a quiet weekend, especially tomorrow for Owen’s soccer finals carnival. However this is my first on-call since being back from our trip and may be my only one until November (since it is now only 5 weeks until I leave for my next trip to Uganda) and since these on-calls are where I can earn a bit more money to help pay for bills and time off etc I kinda need for it to be a bit busy. Anyway, we’ll see what happens. I guess I’ll choose to be happy either way.

Anyway there’s a drug lunch calling so I’d best be off. Have a great weekend!

Glad to be coming to the end of the working week. It hasn’t been too bad a week, lots of colds and flus, lots of minor procedures today for some reason, only one life and death emergency the other day which all worked out okay. But it’s my first full 5 day week for around 2 months so I’m glad to be approaching the weekend.  Next weekend is my first on-call since being back, which may not be a bad thing to help pay the bills, and to start saving for my time off in October on the next Uganda trip. Have had a few emails over the last day or so from various people regarding the medical team which is a timely reminder that I need to start thinking about it and getting organised. Especially I need to start brushing up on my tropical medicine again - I might get out the cool African medicine textbook I picked up last month in Uganda.

Also today I was dropped off two big boxes of Lego which I bought off eBay from a guy in Mandurah. It was nice of him to drop it in to me at work, saving me a trip to pick it up. Also, in addition the the one box I had bid on, he threw in an even bigger box of Lego he had found. So it looks like me and the boys will be busy building stuff this weekend I used to love Lego as a kid and we are all pretty enthused about it after visiting Legoland. They had a cool “pick-n-mix” shop where you could fill a bag with lego pulled out of these little bins, kinda like a lolly shop. Anyway, better see my last couple of patients and then get outta here.

Here’s the first photo of the latest member of our family, who we expect around the 12th of March next year. I nearly had a heart attack today when Jen’s doctor who did the scan (who’s a friend of mine) rang me up and said congratulations on the triplets! Fortunately for all of us he was kidding…

Ten weeks and one day today by the ultrasound date.

As I keep telling everyone it’s good to be home, although I’m less enthusiastic about being back here at work today. Looks like one of my patients will be having her baby later today also, so it’s not even a gentle ease back into work. Nothing much seems to have changed though. I’ve been here 2 hours and already half of my patients have either been late or not turned up at all.

We arrived home from Sydney late on Friday night and have spent the last 3 days unpacking, catching up with family, and starting to get the house organised again. I’m aware of the need to be organised as it’s less than 2 months now before my next trip to Uganda, which will be more full-on two weeks plus of medical work. I’m sure that time is going to fly.

Overall it was a great trip - we went to some cool places and spent time with some great people. It was good to be able to relax a bit in Hawaii last week since by that point we were all getting a little tired, especially the kids and Jen. I’m totally sold now on the concept of a tropical island vacation As for the round-the-world trip idea it might be a few years before we attempt such an ambitious trip again, especially since we have a new baby coming in March next year and we would want to wait until that child is 3 or 4 before we were to travel on so many flights. So for the next couple of years we’ll keep our family holidays within Australia or nearby countries. Having said all that I really loved visiting America so I do look forward to getting back there at the first opportunity.

OK, time to go check if any of my patients have showed up…

Final day of our trip today and we’re looking forward to being home in a few hours. At the moment I’m on an internet kiosk in the lobby of our hotel in Sydney whilst waiting for a taxi to come and take us to the airport. We arrived here last night after a 10 hour flight from Honolulu and spent the morning having a quick look around Sydney. Caught a ferry from Darling Harbour to Circular Quay, took the obligatory Opera House and Harbour Bridge Photos, walked into the city, relaxed in Hyde Park, browsed the Queen Victoria Building shops, and then caught the monorail back to Paddy’s Market’s which are directly across from our hotel. A very rushed day in Sydney, but not a bad one. The weather here is absolutely perfect although I’m afraid the forecast for home in Perth doesn’t look so pleasant.

The few days we had in Hawaii were great. It’s such a beautiful place that I look forward to visiting again. The first day we spent in Waikiki, hanging around town and then on the beach. The next day we took a drive to the North Shore, had a swim and snorkel in Waimea Bay and then drove clockwise around the island of Oahu back to our hotel in Waikiki. Certainly it was one of the more scenic drives I’ve ever had - so many beautiful beaches and spectacular mountains. On the third day we went to see the memorial at Pearl Harbour but the wait was over an hour and the kids were too tired to endure it, so we ended up going into Downtown Honolulu for a while and then spent the afternoon swimming before a wonderful dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, as recommended by my mum.

Anyway our taxi should be here in a minute so I’d better go. Next time I update it will be from home :0)

Aloha! This morning I awoke to find myself in Hawai’i, and so far it is living up to expectations – beautiful surroundings, perfect beaches, friendly people. After another sub-par American Airlines flight from LA (they had the five of us, including 2 little kids, seated in five randomly separated seats – this time it didn’t take too much time to fix it) I was exhausted last night, and couldn’t wait to collapse into bed, after hauling the luggage up to our rooms and consuming the obligatory Hawaiian pizza.

This morning I woke up, pulled open the blinds, and I was in paradise. This is the view from our hotel in Waikiki…

We decided to take a leisurely stroll through the streets of Waikiki, had breakfast, and did a bit of shopping at a local market. Waikiki is very reminiscent of the Gold Coast back home but somehow feels a lot more relaxed and less frantic. I’m not sure if it was because it was Sunday morning but there weren’t too many people about, except on the beach itself, which is where we will be heading after lunch. The other thing that surprised me about Waikiki is how compact it is, once again compared to the Gold Coast. There’s only two or three streets between the beach and the Ala Wai canal, and the length of the strip is only a mile or so.

The other thing I found amusing was that driving the streets of Honolulu and Waikiki last night felt somehow familiar, and then I realised it was because of my Xbox 360 game, Test Drive Unlimited, which is set on Oahu. I now realise just how authentic that game actually is. I could have brought the map out of the game box and it would have helped me get around here. I look forward to taking a drive out in the countryside tomorrow and taking in some of the scenery of this beautiful island

I suppose I should also recap on the last few days, since it’s been a little while since I last blogged. Thursday we went to Disney’s California Adventure Park, which was surprisingly good.Much quieter than Disneyland itself but with a heap of good things to look at and some great rides – the best of the ones I went on were the California Screamin’ roller coaster and the Grizzly River Rapids ride. Friday we took it fairly easy, did a bit of shopping at a huge mall in Orange County – South Coast Plaza, and took the kids to see the new movie Underdog, which was excellent.

And that’s our plan for the next three days we have in Hawaii – take it fairly easy. Spend some time on the beach, take some drives around the island and mostly just relax. I don’t know if we will get around to see the big tourist sites like Pearl Harbour since the kids probably don’t have the energy and patience at this stage of the trip. Any suggestions for things to do or places to visit from Hawaii veterans out there?

Today we again went to Disneyland, and this time had a much better day than we did on Saturday. It was a bit cooler and less crowded (although we ended up missing out on the Nemo ride since we didn’t want to spend two and a half hours in line). Overall we did a lot more rides and had a great time. Owen once again got to take part in Jedi training - now he has fought both Darth Vader and Darth Maul, and we watched the Disney parade which was nice. Best ride of the day was Splash Mountain. Tomorrow we hit Disney’s California Adventure park.

For now, here’s a few photos from our time so far in California - from Disneyland, Legoland, and in Hollywood. I’ll leave it up to you to work out which is which…

Quick update from our last few days in California.

We arrived on Friday (eventually) after an extended delay when our plane broke down at Dallas airport. They found us another one and we managed to get to LA, get our car and make it to our hotel in Anaheim before dark.

Saturday we went to Disneyland, which was perhaps not the brightest idea. It was very busy and quite hot so much of they day was spent sweltering in lines. They have a fast-pass system where you can take a ticket and come back later to avoid the queues but you can only get one such ticket every 2-3 hours which kinda defeats the purpose. My favourite ride so far was Space mountain but we’ll be going back tomorrow to do the rides we missed on Saturday. Also disappointing was just how few Disney characters were walking around - compared to say Movie World in Queensland there were much less characters to take photos with.

Sunday was a quiet day - spent time in the hotel and went and saw The Simpsons movie which was great. I had planned to maybe go and check out Saddleback Church which is not too far from here but by the time we’d slept in that idea was out the window. Guess I’ll be well and truly overdue for some church time when we get back.

Yesterday we drove down to California Legoland, which is towards San Diego. In contrast to Disney, we had a great day there - plenty of cool rides and interesting things to see. It wasn’t quite as hot but there were plenty of opportunities to get soaking wet which we took advantage of. Food and merchandise were not too exorbitant there and they had a cool “pick n mix” shop where you can fill a bag with all sorts of Lego pieces so I grabbed a pounds worth. I used to love Lego when I was a kid and my boys are showing a similar liking so it’s good to build the collection. Would definitely advise everyone travelling to southern California to consider spending a day there. And if you do, be on the lookout for coupons - almost everyone I could see buying tickets had coupons of one sort or another. I was lucky that on the night before I’d seen an ad for Burger King offering some free child entry coupons with any purchase so that morning before we left I drove around the corner to “BK’s” and for the price of a cup of coffee got some coupons which saved us $88, getting both kids in for free!

Today I had considered hitting Disneyland for the second time but once again by the time we were all up and ready it was a bit late. Also Owen was feeling a bit worn out today so in the end we left him in the hotel with his Nanna, and Jen and Luke and I drove up to Hollywood, which was actually quite a pleasant day. We saw the Hollywood sign, walked along the walk of Stars on Hollywood Blvd, and Luke got his photo with a heap of movie characters (there were more there than at Disney, including an amazingly true to life Captain Jack Sparrow) - on the way home we cruised along Sunset Boulevard, where I received a text message saying that my newest nephew “Toby” had just been born. Congratulations Scoot & Kim and family! Weirdly, his birthday is the 1st of August which is strange considering it’s still the 31st of July here - his birthday is in the future! Anyway we thought it was kinda weird and cool.

But for now Jen is wanting to use the laptop so I’ll bring this post to an end. I’ll try and get a few pics up in the next day or two.

A little bit of down time this morning before we head off for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe  and a walk through the big shopping mall here in Nashville (which includes the Gibson store!) so I thought I’d upload a few of our photos from our time in the UK…

(1) Owen & Luke by the Thames

(2) The Tower of London

(3) A Tower Guard

(4) Return of the Jedi

(5) Parliament Square - Big Ben - Looks like rain?

(6) Picadilly Circus with Uncle Matt

(7) On Blackpool beach

Today was perhaps the best of our trip thus far. We drove over to our friends’ house in Nashville, where we spent a pleasant morning and had lunch. It was great to see how quickly our kids bonded with their two, who are of very similar ages.

After lunch we drove into the city and had a look around the centre of Nashville. Even early on a Saturday afternoon this city has a great atmosphere. Live country music being played in a number of venues along the street, buskers on the street, horse drawn carriages everywhere. We checked out a guitar shop (made me wish I was able to bring home 3 or 4 - the prices and range here are awesome), had some ice-cream, and then went down to the Cumberland river. After that we took a drive through “Music row” which is the epicentre of the music industry here, where big record labels, famous studios and tons of other related businesses all mingle in the setting of a couple of leafy suburban streets. Although there’s a few large office buildings, most of these studios and business are in old houses and even a church. If there’s one thing you can say about Nashville it’s that the place has character. The city centre has a great atmosphere, and the green, spacious suburbs have the feel of a big country town. It’s terrific.

We finished the day with a visit to a local park, where the kids enjoyed playing in the playground. By the end of it Owen had a following of about 6 kids leading them in some sort of time travel game.

So as I said before, this was one of the best days of our trip so far - in part because we are in a great city, but mostly because we spent it in the company of good friends. Looks like this is going to be a really nice week here in Tennessee.

Well we’ve arrived safely in Nashville, Tennessee after another long day of flying - we’re all pretty exhausted so I’ll have to make this brief.

Yesterday was my birthday (and also Matt and Jess - Happy Birthday!) which we spent in Blackpool, England. We went out on the pier and walked along the beach and the kids had donkey rides as well as some fun fair rides. Of course I had tobuy myself some Blackpool rock which I used to love as a kid.

Today we left Manchester early for 3 flights - Manchester to Boston; Boston to Washington; and then Washington to Nashville. All up a very long day of flying. Our flight into Boston was late landing which gave us a very rushed race to get to our next flight, which was fortunately a bit delayed. Other than that I’ve been quite impressed with American airports - very efficient and courteous staff - a big contrast to British airports. Unfortunately our second two flights were on a tiny plane which was uncomfortable and rough - made us all a little sick, especially Jen. I did get to see the White House, Capitol building and Washington monument out the plane window so at least I can say I’ve seen that much of DC.

Nashville airport we picked up our car, which is a great big Ford “mini”van and made our way to the hotel with very good directions from a guy at the gate. I didn’t get lost at all and only found myself driving down the wrong side of the road once, not too bad for my first time driving on the right hand side. The hotel is not bad but we got a smoking room which has a bit of a smell to which Jenni is especially sensitive. But we got a wonderful suprise when we arrived here - a gift basket from our friends in Nashville which really cheered us all up after a long tiring day flying. Looking forward to getting to hang out with them tomorrow, but in the meantime I seriously need sleep - the other three are all here snoozing around me.

After a crazy 3 days in London it’s great to be back in Manchester, where Jen and I spent a month or so back in the 90s. Our “quick” flight from London ended up taking a whole lot longer due to delays at both ends. But once we got out of the airport, with a lot of help from Jen’s uncle it felt great to be on the road behind the wheel and in control again, no longer at the mercy of taxis and trains.

The hotel we are staying at seems like paradise after our experiences in London. Well organised, kid friendly, comfortable rooms, good facilities, and a great restaurant. It’s really great to be here

A brief update for today, which was fortunately free of any major mishaps. In the morning we went on the London Eye, then took in the Star Wars Exhibition at the County Hall. Owen was picked to take part in ‘Jedi School’ which was very cool.

After that we had lunch sitting in Parliament sqaure in the shadow (almost) of Big Ben, walked around the city for a while, took a look around the British Museum where we saw lots of cool ancient historial artefacts including the Rosetta stone. We finished up with dinner in a pub before heading back out to our hotel.

Tomorrow is still a bit up in the air, except for the end which will be a flight up to Manchester at dinner time. We’re there for 2 days before we fly to Nashville, USA on Friday.

Well yesterday was certainly an eventful day. I’ll start mostly with the good stuff since it actually was a very good day for the most part, despite an awful finish.

We were awakened around 6am with a visit from Luke after a poor night’s sleep the night before - partly because it was quite hot and our cramped room had no air-con, fan or ventilation, and partly because the hotel was noisy. The walls were certainly not sound proof and I could hear everything that was going on - and I mean everything!

But anyway, after we’d all woken up and got a shower we hopped on the tube into Covent Garden where we met up with Matt, a good friend of ours who lives in London now. We spent a great day hanging out with Matt and seeing the sites of London from the top of a roofless bus. I’ll post some pictures later.Took the kids to the Tower of London to see lots of cool armour and weapons and the crown jewels, looked into an awesome bookshop, and finished up with dinner at planet Hollywood. Then we bid farewell and caught the tube back to our hotel in Marble Arch.

Arriving at the hotel we discovered that we had been moved from one of the small double rooms that we were in the night before to the triple room we had paid for, although still up several flights of stairs. Reasonably satisfied I went back down the stairs to Jen and my room to use the bathroom - and that’s where things rapidly deteriorated. I had locked the door in the bathroom when I went in there and on trying to leave I discovered the lock was jammed and I could not get out. And I had the key to our room so Jen could not even get into the hotel room itself. After tring for a few minutes to get the lock open I heard Jen knocking on the door outside so I shouted for her to get help. The lady showed up, let Jen into the room with an extra key and then disappeared again, for several minutes. Jen had no luck opening the lock from the outside and after a while had to get the lady back to try and help. She was worse than useless, initally trying to call people to come and help, and then banging around on the door with no idea of what she was doing. Meanwhile I was sweltering in this hot cramped room with this awful banging on the door. The kids had come down and were outside getting stressed about it all. I was just glad it was me and not them locked in there, or Jenni, who has been a bit sick at times the last week or so. Eventually, after more than half an hour of me being locked in this tiny hot room, they basically ended up kicking the door in and breaking it up, with me cowering in the corner of the tiny shower, worried about the door falling on me.

I took a minute or so of silence to recover my composure, had a hug from Owen, and then calmly walked into reception to inform them that we would be checking out immediately and would need a full refund for the next two nights. And this is where things got even more awful. I had got a “cheap” rate on this hotel by booking a non-cancellable or refundable rate, although in retrospect even that rate seems exorbitant for the quality of the room, but nevertheless I was not prepared to stay in such a hell hole any longer and considering my traumatic experience I considered it quite reasonable to expect a refund for our unused two nights. But this woman would not understand. She offered me a 50% refund but said there was no more we could do. I demanded a full refund. She tried to call her manager but he was unavailable in a meeting (late on Sunday night?) so I said she needed to take responsibility. By now it was coming up to 8:30pm and the kids were not in bed after a long tiring day. Anyway to cut a long story short it took over half an hour of arguing with this woman to finally get our refund. And I’m sure the whole hotel would have been aware of what was going on.

Once we finally had our refund I then had the task of trying to find us another place to stay, in London late on a warm rainy Sunday night. So I trapsed around looking for internet access - supposedly Starbucks had it but it wouldn’t work, neither would McDonalds. And no-one in this part of Beirut London seemed to be able to speak a sentence of English or give me any guidance whatsoever. Finally I found an internet cafe and started getting numbers and phoning around, but no-one had any rooms. Meanwhile Jen’s mum was talking to the staff at the hotel and the lady said she would try and find us a room. Eventually she came out saying she had booked us two rooms at a good price at a Travel-Lodge “not far away” and had ordered a taxi to come and pick us up in “5 minutes”

Half an hour later the taxi finally arrived, charged us 10 pounds more than the price we were quoted and started driving to our new lodgings, and driving, and driving, and driving…. After getting lost twice on the way and spending 20 minutes outside the wrong hotel trying to work out if this was the one, we eventually arrived at the travelodge, to find that they had no idea who were were and the lady had not booked us any rooms. Fortunately the guy here was very helpful, found us two rooms for the next two nights (very basic but at least we have room to move and a spacious bathroom with a working lock) and helped get the luggage and two sleepy kids upstairs for a much better night’s sleep.

So that’s about my worst hotel experience ever. I’d better stop this now as we half to walk half a mile to the station to catch a 35 minute train ride back into the city in time for our booking on the London Eye. Today is going to be a good day, no matter what.