June Baby

Baby Scan Photos

Above are the two photos I was given at the 20 week scan. Not, as you would imagine of a baby.....noooooooo. The first is a foot - can you see that?! The second, is showing you the bottom, and if you look really, really carefully....you might be able to see an arrow showing you that there is 'nothing there'!

IT'S A GIRL!

Of course, I am still having moments of disbelief mingled with the excitment of knowing that I'm going to be lucky enough to have two boys AND a girl. She has slightly dilated kidneys right now (which, as the kidneys are constantly processing liquids, they do change size when filling up and emptying), so we have to go back for a growth check scan on March 18th. I will be getting them to re-check the sex too! And maybe ask them for a 'proper' scan picture!

Our home in California

The Living Room at Via Gabarda. It's such a huge space that I've been trying to make it a bit cosier now that it's winter.
If you look very carefully, you can see snow on Mount Diablo (approx 3600 feet high). Apparently this is a very rare occurrence and gets front page news on 'Lamorinda Weekly'!
We have discovered that the Californians moan about the weather nearly as much as the Brits - they just complain about centimetres of rainfall and how often it dips below 60 degrees though, so not quite on a par with British weather!

Winter hot tub

We decided one afternoon to have a decadent hot tub in the middle of rainy January - why not?! We heated it to bath temperature and Harry and George thought it was fabulous. Only problem was getting them out once it started to get dark.....

New Year Storms

We had some terrible storms at the start of the year - the trampoline flew down the garden, leaking windows which soaked the spare room carpet and an electricity pylon fell across our driveway blocking access and cutting off power to the house and our neighbours for two days.


The boys thought it was a great adventure and loved watching the PG&E men fixing the power and sawing through the old pylon to take it away. The fallen cables were live for a while, so we weren't able to access the house. We camped out at a friend's house until Simon came home from work and went out for dinner. When we got home, we had to climb over our gates (no power to open them!) and fish for torches, candles etc. Thank goodness we had juice left in the portable DVD player so we huddled around the 7'' screen to watch a film! The next day, the power was still not back on, so we went to the warm cinema to watch The Water Horse and munch on popcorn. Then we decided to leave it as long as possible in the hope that the power would be fixed, so had dinner out again and shopped for more candles and logs for the fire - much more prepared.

The PG&E men worked through the night to get the power back on and they succeeded at 11pm at night - we were in bed asleep when the TV came on, the bedroom lights came on, etc etc! We didn't complain because we were so excited to have 'power' again!

New Year in a new country

These are a selection of photos that I took on New Year's Day 2008 standing outside the front of Via Gabarda, our first home in California.

England and our friends seemed like a long way away at such a significant time of the year, but we were able to watch London celebrate midnight and Big Ben's chimes live on BBC America at 4pm our time.