First snow of of our tenure

We got our first bit of snow this week, it actually snowed on a couple of occasions; nothing settled but we are getting an appetiser of what's on the menu for December to February. We keep hearing about the halloween of 1991 when there was 30 inches of snow in a day! Someone we know from church got stuck for 2 days in their car in that one.

First snowflakes, taken from my office window

The weather has been around minus 2 or 3 overnight and staying that way for my ride into work which means I need to wear my silly hat. Actually, its only silly if you don't have to cycle in freezing weather, when you do its a really sensible hat. Over the last couple of days I've felt like I'm coming down with something so I guess I need to freeze the flu germs out of my system. Either that or start taking the car into work. Here when they say that it often doesn't go above freezing for days at a time in January and Feb its easy to forget that they're talking about Fahrenheit!

Had a meal out with work this week to celebrate our first project going live, I honestly think it was some kind of miracle. Literally no-one on the team thought we had a hope of delivering it, including me, but somehow it made it so we got to go out and blow some cash on a meal. One of the key people in the team was also leaving to start his own wine tracking company that week so we got some very decent wines in. No pictures but for many of you this will be an easy thing to visualise :-)

On Friday both Andy and I finally managed to take our driving tests, and both passed (hoorah). It was very bizarre as we didn't even have to go out onto the road, it was all done in the test centre. Still, we're not complaining and now we are legal; in fact I think it was harder in the test centre as it wasn't exactly real-life situations. For the reverse park you had to park inside some flags which when you hit them (as I did) doesn't give the same satisfying crunch as it does when you hit a real car.

Later on Friday we had friends from church round for an evening meal and sleepover. We made the mistake of being outnumbered by children as there were 6 adults and 7 children. They actually behaved them selves really well, most of the time

Dan teaching Anneka and Abi how to play chess

We didn't get some of the other fun stuff on camera though, like the time it was quiet for a while and Andy found all the kids in the bathroom standing in the bath in an inch of water with their socks on.

Also bought a toy for us at the weekend, in the true style of Rolf Harris, from the picture below can you guess what it is yet?


While you're guessing that one, here are a couple of shots from my phone which I think merit a place on the blog.

Becky has a unique style of eating rice

Dan and Becky had to share a bed when we went to Duluth.

And here is Andy and I playing with our new toy in the unfinished part of our basement
I won't say who won, especially as it can't be easy for Andy playing against the 'Undefeated World Indoor Lorden's Basement Table Tennis Champion of the World'.

The current plan is to finish this masement and make it into a proper games room. The door at the back of the last picture goes into where I hope to make my home cinema. At the moment it is the storage room for Andy's chocolate. She made her first batch of chocolates this week and they have gone down rather well, the bailey's truffles are just gorgeous. We gave some to our next door neighbours a couple of hours ago and Andy is really pleased as they just phoned up to say how much better than Godiva they are and that Andy should sell them; which is completely true. So if my work goes pear shaped we now have a fall back plan.