Old Friends

On Friday evening, Vikki and I took Magnus and Vikki's dad's new friend Tim to Guildford where we met up with our friends Karen and Suchada, who both used to work with Vikki. Despite being a bit late (we'd forgotten just how horrible the M25 can be), we had a very nice meal and chin wag. Magnus spent most of the time looking at an attractive woman at the next table - thankfully her boyfriend didn't seem to mind too much.

 

 

Next day, we braved another trip on the M25 to meet up with Jim and Trish and their wee lad, Callum. They were good enough to give us lunch which was very nice, and to let us play with their Wii (it was about the only way to stop our kids complaining that they were bored) so that I could thrash Vikki at Super Mario Karts. Lachlan also built his new Lego car and we conducted some experiments to see how many household objects it could jump (see video below). It was great to catch up but we were only able to stay a couple of hours before we had to set off for Christchurch...

 

 

Look! It's ...Made of Lego.

Our holiday started with a horrible long drive to the well known holiday destination of Slough including a stop at possibly the worst Burger King in the world (and that takes some doing) at Stirling and an overnight stay at the Travelodge at Southwaite. Thankfully, the Copthorne had a swimming pool, decent grub, and comfortable rooms.

Slough is of course famous as the location for The Office but we were there because it's a short hop from Legoland, Windsor. We had two-day tickets which gave us enough time to get on all the rides we wanted to, especially as we missed the English school holidays so it was a bit quieter, and we went early and stayed right to closing time. My favourite ride was the Viking River Splash, Vikki's was the Jungle Coaster. The boys seemed to have a great time on everything, and both passed at the Lego Driving School. We managed to get soaked by a combination of rain and what the rides threw at us, but it didn't matter as we had a great time. We even had time to go to the shop where Lachlan got a new car and Calum got a cuddly Lego man who was named "Lego Ben" for about a day before he became "Digger Doug". I resisted the urge to blow £180 on a Mindstorms NXT kit but it was a close thing.

Anyway, here are some pictures, although you'd be best clicking on one and going to the Picasa site to see them bigger

Getting Back to Normal

(or at least what passes for normal round here)

Just a quickie to say we had a good time on our holidays, but are now back to the relative drudgery of normal life. Well, I am. The kids have another few weeks of freedom before school kicks in again. We took a bunch of photos and will be making an effort to share the best of them, along with some (hopefully) witty observations, with you, our dear readers, soon.