Another day out for Big G

spacespacespace A few more photos from G's day out.  Daddy is missing his editing software (and his cats) quite a lot, but only a few more days until he is reunited with Photoshoppy Goodness. In a late change to the itinerary, Rachel and George are staying on in NZ for another week to chill out, while Daddy brings home the proverbial bacon...

George with Aunty Amanda:

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Hanging with Uncle Eugene in the afternoon (when Mummy and Daddy accidentally stumbled upon him in downtown Auckland and tagged along for a few wines):

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And one last photo from the Stanley Bay ferry:

Photos of various people around New Zealand holding George :-)

Haven't got time to edit or organise photos, but here are a few I grabbed from the camera of little George with various new friends around New Zealand - firstly with Grandma Shanti (one on the couch and one just before bathtime), George and Aunty Jane-O, George and Aunty Kate, George and Uncle Aaron and finally a few of George with Honorary Grandma Joy:

A day of play

spacespacespace George met his mates Thomas and Angus this morning, and in the afternoon hung out with Claudia, James and their respective parents.  Daddy went nuts with the camera, and despite not having his editing software here in New Zealand, there are some very sweet ones of the day.

Firstly, Thomas and Angus tearing up the back yard:

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And then some of Teams Pearce, Hayes and Georgeous at Chez Hayes:

A few photos from holiday

Holiday is passing all too quickly, but I've managed to take billions of photos in any event... The flight was fine, and we sat next to a lovely Kiwi girl Jenny and her 4 month old Isabel on the way here.  George was impeccably behaved on the flight, and with the exception of a pants explosion before the flight, and a minor flipout after we landed, he was an angel. We went to his Aunty Momo's wedding on Saturday, and again he was impeccably behaved.  Slept through the good bits, smiled through the photos, and passed out during dinner.  A few photos from the week and from the wedding. More to come later in the week:

The Daily George takes a short break

Internet access in NZ is suckysucky, and so the updates for the next three weeks until Easter will either be sporadic (at best) or via my mobile phone. But I will be taking plenty of photos of him, and I'll upload what I can whenever I can. Rachel packed his stuff today, and I think it's cute that a 4.5kg kid has a 12kg bag of stuff.  I also think that the days of sprinting to try and get to the front of customs and immigration are long gone, and I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that we'll be needing a luggage trolley for the next, oh... 15 years?  Not to worry - tomorrow will be a wicked learning experience.  Our taxi arrives at 4:30pm and our flight leaves at 7:15pm.  Plenty of time to chill out and settle the wee man - and we get to take the stroller right up to the door of the plane (it magically meets us when the plane doors open, too).

I'll leave you with some photos of post-breakfast playtime this morning:

Bathtime - tantamount to child torture, it would seem

Bathtime appears to suck in the eyes of little George.  Any peace and tranquility that may have been present pre-bath is abruptly ended and once dunked into the tub-o-death, the screaming begins. Stage 1 is the yelling - which is usually the first dunk, the tummy wash and the start of Daddy washing his hair.

Stage 2 is the bottom chin quivering while the yelling continues, and you really know that he wants to harm you by then. This is usually the end of the tummy clean and the flip over for the back clean.

Stage 3 (the final phase) is when the chin quivering magnifies and the little high pitched squeaks of resignation start.  Unfortunately for poor George, this is also the Stage that Rachel and I find most hilarious, and his squeaks and grunts are highly amusing to us. Not so much to him.

Stage 4 is the good bit - he loves getting placed in his little towel and wrapped up. The Earth returns to normal at this stage and life on Planet George is once again bearable.  He also looks ridiculously cute wrapped up in his towel. The photos I got today were a bit crappy, but I'll post them anyway. Two of bathtime with Mummy (featuring guest hair washer, Grandma) and one of him just chilling out on Rachel's lap after "dinner". I may have cropped the bathtime ones to hide the fact that he gets bathed directly over the toilet (so we can pull the plug in the bath out and the water drains away down the loo - handy!)

The "Oh no, it's Aunty Momo" face

spacespacespace I took a few photos of the little guy this morning, but they're sitting on my camera at home.  Will upload those tonight, but thought you'd like this photo we snapped of George last night - it's the face he used when we were chatting to his Aunty Momo in Auckland, NZ.  It's a face a lot of us use when chatting to Aunty Momo...

Proof that I am the funniest man alive

Spacespacespace Because my goddaughter thinks I am:

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This was taken when I was at a conference in Singapore, and managed to find the Challis Circus for lunch (taken on a Pentax K1000 with Kodak ISO400 film, if you're curious)

bangkok - good timing on our escape

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as lovely as another few weeks in the hotel would have been, i'm quite glad that we got out of bangkok when we did.  a week later and we might have been stuck in the airport - protesters have blocked the roads to the airport, causing all flights to be cancelled.  ouch.

a few photos from bangkok

back after a blissful weekend of eating, sleeping and doing nothing.  apart from thai taxi drivers all thinking that they are driving formula 1 cars, it was a fantastic relaxing time. and possibly the last time we fly as just the two of us for a long, long time - eek. as i think i mentioned a few days ago, the peninsula upgraded us to a great big awesome suite and left us a birthday cake (chocolate - delicious) - certainly got us off to a great start.  to be honest, we didn't do a lot that's worth talking about - sat by the pool, swam a bit, i hit the gym a few times (and then promptly reversed my good work in a hotel restaurant), and we picked up a bit of new cutlery that rachel was coveting.

here are a few photos - one from our balcony, one from the restaurant, one taken by me standing on the bed and one of me... um, jumping on the bed:

away for the weekend

heading to bangkok in a few hours - unless there's wireless internet there, no updates here until monday night here's a little bit of the poppycat monster for you though:

a few more edinburgh photos

am back from singapore - it was an exhausting weekend (not helped by a 5:45am pickup for golf on monday) and i finally got back on tuesday. a few things to do this weekend; i think we are buying a cot or something like that this saturday, then on sunday it's little sam binnington's 2nd birthday party.  before that we have vic landells in town for a few hours, and we'll take her out to lunch somewhere before she wines and dines at some cocktail party somewhere  :-)

i got some of the b&w photos back from mr photo man yesterday. i still have another roll to come (the iso 3200 one - sweet), but here are some of the iso400 photos (as always, click to open bigger slideshow):

...and then a few non-wedding ones.  the first is from just before the wedding in our bathroom, and the second was taken on the plane en route to london:

a few more photos of the wedding

just pulled a bunch of photos from rachel's camera from damon and lynn's wedding in edinburgh. first a few from just after the ceremony (my photos from the ceremony are on film, so they'll be up in a few weeks):

... and then some from the reception.  first is damon and second is when the damon and paul dragged me onto the stage for a few songs:

more photos from edinburgh

am just digging through our photos from the holiday and have picked a few from edinburgh which were taken both in the main castle and also when wandering around the streets on sunday.  when you open each pic, there should be a little caption in the bottom left, but it's all pretty much self explanatory. as you can see, sunday was really quite an amazing day - although it was a tad chilly...

lazy saturday

had a lovely afternoon in hammersmith at a pub, where we caught up with kirsty, her hubby james, anna moo, nic, steve & emma, dale, ricky and fen. gorgeous day, great food and great company. perfect way to catch up. bbq at jonathan and laura's last night, j's parents were in town, and it was a nice chance to catch up with them. delicious feed of burgers, snags and chucken - I could hardly move by the end of the evening...

heading to covent garden today to meet up with john and jane pascoe, and then am going to kill a bit of time with the camera while rach has her baby shower at tim and sarah's place.

a little bit of charlie for barbara

barbara's favourite 2 year old does a jigsaw with mum :-)

london part 3

just had a lovely morning out with sarah and the kids; then lunch with jane loveday and a ride on the london eye (although i had forgotten how bleurgh the tube is). will add some more photos later on, but here's one from my phone taken from the downward bit on the london eye. what a view...

balham! (london part 2)

made it to balham and are now hanging with sarah, charlie and penny. after a bit of yelling (at me) penny is now asleep and charlie is doing jigsaw puzzles with rachel. charlie is hilarious - he says "uh oh" and "cup of tea!" constantly! here's a photo of feeding time at the zoo:

edinburgh

just back from edinburgh and we're looking out at a wet and gloomy tuesday morning in london.  had an amazing time in edinburgh and the wedding was fantastic - a spot of rain during the day, but the ceremony was lovely, the reception was absolutely marvellous, and we met - and reunited with - some awesome people.  i took a load of film photos which won't be ready for a few weeks, but we did take a few with rachel's camera. damon and lynn looked fantastic (damon was in a kilt!) and everything went beautifully.  i was actually playing music with paul (the best man) when he met damon and so after dinner when they were bashing out a few tunes on the guitar, they invited me up on stage for a few kiwi songs - great fun.  thankfully i had tanked up on red wine so wasn't nervous at all...

sunday we wandered around edinburgh and went to a lovely michelin star restaurant "number 1" in the balmoral hotel.  loved it - great food and great staff in a beautiful old building. a bit of an indulgence, but hey - it's not a regular occurrence  :-)

monday we saw the castle (photos are on my other camera sorry)  and then caught manju and sunethra for lunch at a small organic cafe in downtown edinburgh (urbanangel).  took a bus trip around the sights to kill a bit of time and then we had a cheeky wine in a beautiful old bank building called "the dome" before heading to the airport.

a few photos from the wedding are below, but i've got plenty more from the weekend on the other camera - but i'll sort those out when we head to sarah and tim's place today (we're staying with them for the rest of the week).

london part 1

landed safely in london after an uberlong flight - 12.5 hours. thankfully we managed to upgrade to premium economy using points, which put us upstairs in the nice quiet bit. i ate a monster amount of food and watched a ridiculous amount of tv - all good. the crew were awesome and i even managed a bit of sleep despite it being a daytime flight. had a great dinner with katy, sam, anna and kieran at a local bar / restaurant "the duke" and today we had a lazy day, with a coffee in richmond, a 1.5 mile walk down the river, and then a great pasta lunch in a little italian-style cafe. i had forgotten how good gnocchi is...

currently chilling out at sam and katy's place and tonight it's dinner in covent garden.

off to edinburgh tomorrow afternoon from gatwick and then back monday. sorry, this isn't very thrilling but here are a few photos from the morning walk. click on them to make them bigger: