Happy Christmas Everyone

Things are really busy in the run up to Christmas with the kids involved in various activities. Dan is 'typcast' as an angel in the church Christmas kids play (which was the whole service and was much funnier and better than you'd imagine a kids play to be).
Becky had her ballet show

There's the tree to decorate

Gingerbread houses to assemble

Parties to attend and host. We had a work party at a restaurant in Minneapolis on the Thursday before Christmas with drinks tokens for beer and wine but the bar didn't enforce the policy and some people were ordering $50 whiskies and we overran the tab by $1,600 which I had to put on my credit card! Let's hope Carphone will cough up for that one.
We also hosted a party for about 50-60 of my team on the Saturday at our house followed by a party for our youth group on the Sunday (if you've got to tidy the house best to just do it once)
Here's the youth group playing the chocolate game (favourite with UK youth groups and opening some White Elephant gifts). I've also finished leading the study group for the year and have a couple of weeks off. We finished with an interesting study on the prophesies around Christmas including the less well known one from Daniel 9 which predicts the year Jesus would come as well as the usual Isaiah and other ones - really amazing stuff.


Then it's just waiting to see if Santa has brought you everything on your list. In case anyone wonders what a 6 year old in 2009 wants for Christmas here is Dan's list preserved for posterity

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

A bit of top drawer marble action
Treat-tastic



One present was an obvious choice, so much so that Andy and I both bought it for each other - let's hope we kept the receipt.
The weather was a picturesque white Christmas
We went for rib of beef this year rather than Turkey, it was really, really good
So good that we all had it for tea on a bit of Yorkshire pudding and gravy - perfect!

After a hearty lunch we had a weather emergency - it got a little warm.
This may not sound drastic but believe me it was - it actually went above freezing for the first time in December. Why is this bad? Well imagine you have 18 inches of snow which is nice and powdery and easy to shift and then it starts getting wet and heavy. Now imagine you have a pretty big driveway full of this snow that tomorrow when the temperature drops down again (and probably doesn't go above freezing for the next 30-60 days) is going to turn into something resembling concrete.
The closest analogy I can give is to thing that someone has dumped 18 inches of wet concrete into your driveway, it weighs a ton but you have to shift it right then because tomorrow you just won't be able to even if you attack it with a metal spade. So for 2.5 hours on Christmas day we shoveled wet snow while the kids played until they were soaked to the skin. We certainly earned our Christmas pudding which we enjoyed with some real custard and icewine - maybe it was the exercise but it was the best Christmas pudding combo ever!

Tomorrow is boxing day where we'll be sledging and I'll go over a pretty big jump and wipe out - but for now I'll sleep well having a had a wonderful Christmas with the family.

About to REALLY start snowing

We've got a winter storm warning in effect at the moment, the worst is yet to come as we're expecting 20 inches but we've had a fair dusting already as you can see!

Winter Commuting

Had a few chilly cycles recently, this morning was -21C before any wind chill, so somewhat brisk on the bike. Thought it might be worth showing what I wear for this sort of cycle as a few people at work have asked what to wear for a winter cycle.

Headgear

• Baselayer of Northface hat/earmuff thing which has an underchin tie (important so you can have it on tight, if you don't have something to keep your ears warm its game over)
• Balaclava on top of that to ensure my neck and chin stay warm
• Helmet for skidding off protection

Even with all this my cheeks and nose get very cold, especially at the start of my journey

Body

• Baselayer of lycra sports top
• Mid layer of bog standard fleecy jumper
• Top layer of cycling jacket

So you can see that I don't wear too much on my body, this is important as its easy to overheat once you get going. Typically your core doesn't get too cold anyway so the most import thing is the windproof outer layer

Legs

• Cycling shorts
• Lycra cycling leggings
• Fleecy tracksuit trousers

A few layers is the key here, you need to keep the wind out and not get cold sitting on the saddle

Shoes

• Walking boots - forget cycling shoes in this weather, you're not going that fast anyway

Gloves
I just use my Burton snowboarding gloves, they're the best ones I've come across so far, they're not as thick as some of the others I have but for whatever reason they seem more effective

So that's what works for me on my cold rides in, of course it doesn't really help your lungs and by the time I'm in my balaclava is half white and covered in frost from my breath but that's all part of the experience.

Now that December is here it really does seem that Winter has arrived. We had a good 8 inches of snow on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and some blowing winds which caused big drifts and Dan's school bus to be probably 12 seconds late. I cycled in on Thursday and Friday which was painful for the first few minutes until I started generating some heat. Still, its looking better than this week and Tuesday might be the only day until Friday I can cycle in based on my work schedule and after work activities - may even be the day I break out the ski goggles.

I seem to get a lot more exercise in the winter too, shoveling the drive on Wednesday and I got out for a while snowboarding too in the evening. Cycling on Thursday and Friday and we had a family ski trip on Saturday to the local bump (hardly a hill really but good to practice on).

This was a classic moment, Andy let Becky go at the top of the bunny slope and she shot off down the hill with Andy running after her, I managed to get off the camera shot before tackling her as she whizzed by (Andy is the figure to the top left of Becky)
No such nervousness from Dan, you can't really tell but here are Dan and I on a slope with me eating Dan's dust, I'm on the snowboard and Dan is hurtling down the slope. He hadn't skied for a year prior to this so I wasn't sure how he'd do and he went off at such a pace that I thought he'd totally lost control but when I got to the bottom he was fine and just asked 'where were you'?' - this is going to be trouble.
Becky also had her first ballet show in the morning - it was for pretty young kids and Dan was sitting with us watching saying in too loud a voice 'they're so funny they don't know what they're doing' and really laughing. Still, we were obviously very proud of Becky and she is pretty shy so this was a big thing for her.





And this morning Dan was an agel in the church play/musical all done by the kids, and it was actually pretty good, even intentionally funny in places.


And slightly out of chronological order, the tree is now up

Winter suddenly

The windchill tonight is bring the temp down to feel like -34C, welcome to Winter - still deciding whether to cycle in tomorrow

Return to Florida

My first transatlantic trip ever was to Florida, a long time ago but I remember it well as I almost drowned 2 days in a row (the first being entire self inflicted due to me thinking it would be 'fun' to be tossed about in the waves of an approaching hurricane). So it was somewhat fitting that to celebrate me (somewhat miraculously) reaching the ripe old age of 40 I should return to the sunshine state for this reason and to share in another landmark 40th.

Yes indeed, 1969 was a great year for both hippies and geeks but it seems the I've more in common with the latter, unless you count my teenage Pink Floyd phase, although this was pretty much de rigueur for the time.

So back to Florida, though not to Disney although pretty much every adult who we talked to asked Dan and Becky 'hey, are you going to Disney?' to which they had to reply 'no' and so condemn us as mean parents, but I can live with that if it means I escape the most plastic place of the most plastic state - and anyway we had other fun things to see, which were much, much more exciting for the kids such as:

The actual command center for the Apollo 11 mission

And every child's favourite, the swing arm from the Apollo 11 flightBecky was really taken by the NASA Vehicle Assembly Building (this is pretty cool, it looks like a pretty big building but is actually a huge building (the 4th largest in the world by volume and the biggest single storey building in the world (each of the stripes on the American flag is 9ft wide).
One of my favourite things was the Saturn 5 rocket (like the one used for Apollo 11) which was housed in a special hangar - the thing is just massive, 36 storey's tall and too long to really get in a decent photo but you get some idea of seeing Dan next to it.And the launch site, though you can't get too close to that
Of course it wasn't all just educational fun for the kids, there were rides too, such as 'Nose Cone of Terror' which you can see the family enjoying here.
And it wasn't just rides, there was a park too, the Nasa Rocket Park
As well as There was Neil Armstrong look alike

In the late afternoon after visiting the space center we headed to the beach.
We also made it to Sea World, twice winner of the prestigious 'not so tacky as other theme parks' award which was so good we went there twice (which had very little to do with the second day being free - probably).





Probably the highlight was the killer shale show (or the Shamu show, Shamu being the name of the biggest killer whale they currently have in stock, job description - be very big and good at splashing people) This shot was a Shamu special, a little out of focus but a second after this was taken Becky and Andy (taking the photo) got soaked to the skin by this one, so much so that for our lunch booking at the shark viewing restaurant Andy had to buy new trousers.

Here is the shark view restaurant which was pretty neat as the fish could watch the humans being fed.

And this is pretty amazing, to see a couple of killer whales bursting out of the water in perfect synchronization with people standing on their noses is quite something.