House

We bought the house we were renting. At the end of last year the housing market, in St.Albans anyway, was going a little bonkers. Decent houses were being bought for way above asking price. We were lined up to buy a house, ready to exchange, when the sellers dropped out.

Then our landlords gave us notice that they were going to put the house on the market. We decided to buy it, offering a bid to take it off the market. That worked, and we exchanged late last year. I'm not sure I have posted on this, nor uploaded any pictures of the house yet, even when we were renting it. So here is one, albeit of the back.

Garden makeover

This is what our garden looked like not long after we decided to rip it up.

And this is what it looks like now:

We had a tree removed, the lawn flattened, and new glass put down. Oh, and we had the sun come out for the picture. Don't think that our little arch has half a door on it. I have just noticed that it is the chalet door opened so it looks like the arch has half a door! And if you look carefully, you can see the bounce-a-lene behind the trellis.

Boys get prizes

It was George's year's annual prizegiving last night. He won a prize for science, for his form and played in the band at the start of the evening. Unfortunately, I missed it as I was getting ready for a big pitch. One effect of missing the event was that I wasn't able to take a picture of George getting his prize on stage. So instead I have loaded a picture of George in York with at least three, if not four, beanie hats on. The number continued to rise in the thirty minutes after this photography was taken.

I did, however have my camera for Ollie's annaul St. Albans City football club awards a few weeks earlier. Here he is, with his team, receiving their awards. For easier identification purposes, Ollie is the one in the middle wearing a black tie and holding a yellow pendant.

Molly's 80th

Last Friday, 26th June, we celebrated Auntie Molly's 80th birthday. Molly is my mum's sister. She is quite an amazing lady and has survived quite a lot of tragedy in her life. She seems to get up, brush herself down and just get on with it.

The party itself was at Ponsbourne Hotel in Newgate Street. It was a lovely summer evening and lots of Molly's friends were there, as well as a full family turn out. I looked a little shoddy, having dashed from running a two-day American Express workshop.

For those of you who don't know, from left to right is Anna, Molly and me!

Duxford

Whilst Jill was playing tennis, boys and I went to Duxford aviation museum. We had an excellent time. Here are some of the highlights. First, the Blackbird, the fastest and highest flying plane ever:

Secondly, Ollie and Charlie underneath the bomb bay of the Vulcan. It is big. It was built to put nuclear weapons in:

A MIG -21 (very fast Russian plane):

The mammoth American Stratofortress:

And the 'never-to-go-into production' TRS-2:

There was lots of other good stuff too. Eight hangers of stuff. Too much to do in the time we had. We had a good look around the Big No.1 Hanger, the No.8 Land Warfare Hanger (including lots of WW2/D-Day/Monty), the No.7 American Hanger, and No.4 (I think), Battle of Britain Hanger. Definitely worth at least one long day, and probably two.

New Couch

Okay, so we have had this couch a while now, but I haven't posted for a few weeks. So some catching up posts to do. This corner used to be where the our desk was - it was butted up against the wall that you can't quite see on the left of the pic above. This corner sofa was from IKEA. We thought it would be horrible to assemble. It was pretty easy and the whole thing must have taken no more than 90 minutes to get up, and most of that was getting the covers pulled taut over the frame and cushions.

Easter Monday Trip To York

Weather a little dodgy today, so we drove to York. First stop, the world's largest railway museum, the National Railway Museum. All boys got very excited. It is a fantastic place. Best exhibits were a Japanese bullet train:

Officially world's fastest steam locomotive, 'Mallard' (there is some dispute over the real record holder):

The beautiful Duchess of Hamilton:

And a mad, but great looking ad, proclaiming that Skegness was bracing (in which case why on earth would I want to go there):

After the National Railway Museum we went into town. York is one of those fantastically historical towns, which has layers of history each built on top of the last. Founded by the Romans, then added to by Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans and medieval Britain, it has historically been one of the most important English towns. It has considerable stretches of city wall and everything is a very walkable, because when it was built there were no cars. We had a look at the Minster:

The tiny Medieval streets, the thinnest being 'The Shambles':

And circled the very photogenic Clifford's Tower:

Before settling upon spending some more time with railways, this time a model railway exhibition near the real York station, before setting off back to Addingham with the feeling that one day is not enough. York really needs a long weekend, or two.

Easter Sunday Dales Walk

Up in the Yorkshire Dales for a week; staying in Addingham. Today we went for a walk around Grassington to get ourselves acclimatised to some walking. Here are a few pics:

It was one of those days when it was bright skies one minute and rain the next. The photo, above, illustrates this rather well.

Sportsman George

Not content with bagging a brace of goals recently for London Rd in a game against Evergreen FC (his first for London Rd) George had a good showing in his first fencing competition.

George has recently taken at fencing at Verulam. He also has a friend across the road, Clement, who fences with the local fencing club. They both went to the University of Hertfordshire recently for a competition; George's first.

There were six competitors and George came a tidy third (Clement came first). As they were leaving the University sports village, the venue for today, Paul, George's fencing teacher said "Well done George, how does it feel to be third in the county?"

I think henceforth we will be finding a few more minority sports and throwing the kids at them to see if we can get a decent showing.

Matthew's Bar Mitzvah

We were honored to be invited to Matthew Altman's Bar Mitzvah in Chappaqua. I managed to schedule it with a business trip to New York. It was a huge shame we were not able to all go. It was an amazing occasion. I have never been to a Bar Mitzvah before. It was a wonderful mix of traditional  - cutting bread, lighting candles, speeches, raising family members aloof on a chair - and modern - the karaoke style of the entire room singing along to 'living on a pray' and some of the more 'urban' dressing up, as demonstrated below, provided a rather intoxicating mix.

But the highlights were when the family came to the fore: the grand entrances (below Steve and Lydia), 

the speeches from Matthew, Steve and David, and of course, moments like this:

It was a special night.