Charlie's Worldcastles castles and more castles (part 1)
Posted on April 18, 2010
The thing about England (and the rest of the UK come to that) is that almost everybody lives in a castle.
There are simply millions of the things scattered about the country that if you don’t live in one, you live next door to one or a pile of stones that used to be one. I’m not even kidding – where I grew up in Kent, where my parents still live, there are probably 30 castles within 20 minutes drive of their house. There’s even a handful of Roman Villas, an old (now ruined) Palace (one of the biggest in the country in its day) and a bunch of pre-historic remains.
Kids love castles – they come with tales of knights, dragons, torture, kings, princesses, behead-ings, dungeons and, of course, garderobes (toilets that empty poos into the moat)
So we went to see some of the local ones.
First up – Leeds Castle. Not near Leeds, West Yorkshire, but Leeds in Kent. Its one of the prettiest best preserved castles anywhere, set in a large parkland with a fairytale moat and stories of King Henry VIII, plus it has a massive maze and lots of things for kids to do.
Sadly, it was frickin’ freezing and miserable on that day, but we kinda wrapped up (not enough though) and just went for it.
There were also (as is customary in these places) lots of peacocks.
official wedding photos
Posted on February 11, 2010
Just checked our photographer’s Facebook site to find a sampler from our wedding photos – woo 🙂
Not decided if I like the vintage processing or not – it’s really excellent in some of the shots though and I love the one with the texture.
That chick in the white dress looks HOT! Shame there’s that slightly chubby bearded bloke in 1/2 the shots though, he looks well dodgy!
We’ll get an album of proofs and some prints done – maybe in a few years we’ll save up for a wedding album too – they look lovely all done properly, but its a lot of money for us right now.
so, for your viewing pleasure –
New Years Eve
Posted on January 7, 2010
NYE was the last day in Oz for my kids – the flight out wasn’t until 2am (yeah, I know..) so we had a full day to have fun.
We drove off to Mandurah for a walk, a play in the park, an explore and a coffee – its only a 30 min drive and its quite pretty on the board-walk.
The kids had loads of fun exploring, looking for fish in the harbour, cleaning up litter (yeah, we have a bunch of conscientious environmentalists on the books) and playing in the park. We went for a longer walk over to the marina which was nice – its looking like its going to be a much nicer version of Hillary’s Boat Harbour (which I hate with a passion) – somewhere I might actually want to hang out. Hopefully they don’t spoil it.
It was a lovely afternoon, really relaxed and a good finish for the kids.
We scooted back to Rockingham to get fish and chips and scoffed them on the foreshore and listened to the NYE entertainment starting up. After a good feed, we had a little play and then headed home to pack 😦
Here are some pics from the day 🙂
Some tearful farewells later, I drove off with Ella and Henry to get the plane back to Singapore and then onto Heathrow. Its a shame we live so far apart as we had such a lovely time all together.  I get to see them much more often as I’ll fly back to the UK a few times a year, but we simply can’t afford the AU$10k+ it costs to get them all here to Perth or for us to go to the UK en-masse very often. Ah well..lottery win, where are you?
The trip back was uneventful – its a bloody long way – the kids were shattered by the time we took off and were asleep for a good chunk of the trip. They were good as gold really given how tired they were and how much they just wanted to either stay or get back depending on how they were feeling.
We picked up the hire car and drove to my mum and dad’s place on New Years Day where their mum and her parents (my ex-wife and ex-inlaws) came to collect them, saving me a 4 hour+ drive there and back. It felt a bit odd, but we all get on ok and I like my ex-inlaws.
Was sad to see them off cos it was so lovely having Ella and Henry here for 10 days, but I know we’ll manage to do this again sooner rather than later.
After an very short sleep, I was off back to the airport and despite having to change terminals for Malaysian Airlines, I was uneventfully back off to Perth via Kuala Lumpur only 15 hours after I arrived.
Jet lag, what jet lag?
And so ended 2009 and began 2010.
family time
Posted on January 6, 2010
After the wedding, we had a chilled out day, my parents came back to our place for a few hours to see us before they flew back to the UK. We sat about, chatting, replaying wedding memories and watching the kids play. Very cool.
The next day, my mum and dad flew back to England and we went out for lunch by the beach, but the heat was really cranking, over 40C so we didnt stay at the beach for very long. The kids played on the Wii for the rest of the afternoon.
After that, we went to the park just behind the house for a few hours of play
Christmas
Posted on December 30, 2009
Only 5 days late – lol.
So, Christmas morning was a late one, the kids slept in as we had dragged them around the Christmas lights late the night before – I even had to go wake Henry at 8:30 as he was still sound asleep.
Got some excellent presents, a wide angle pin-hole Holga, a fish-eye lens for the other Holga and a Wii cricket game that I am yet to play as the kids have been on Wii Sport Resort morning noon and night.
Loved seeing all the kids get their presents – they all got surprises which was cool. Everything was a surprise for Henry though and he had a lovely time.
My parents came over, followed by Jays parents and Jay’s brother – we had a wicked feast and lots of presents and we had a brilliant day. We all sat outside on the patio in the 30+ degree heat and drank wine and chatted. Bliss.
Some pics from the day 🙂
Henry with Thomas the tank engine presents
Ella with Littlest Pet Shop presents
H in his Thomas t-shirt
amazingly that t-shirt stayed clean for 3 days despite heavy chocolate consumption, jam sandwiches and running about boy-style-ee.
Cos we were so busy, I don’t have many other pics – Jay’s girls were off playing within seconds of getting their presents and that was that – what with a houseful, I never did get to play family snapper. Ah well..they all had buckets of fun.
a brief moment
Posted on December 30, 2009
yup – the kids are playing, we have guests (well, Jay’s friend Cher is here) and I have finally managed to slink off to write a quick update..
We’ve had an awesome week with my parents and kids being here. We went out to meet my parents in Fremantle and headed over to have dinner in Wagamama on Tuesday (was that really more than a week ago? – man, time is rushing by) which was cool – they cater well for gluten free and vegan diets which was a major draw for us.
Other things we did – it all seems so jumbled up now:
- we’ve been to the beach a few times for a paddle in the surf
- went to Penguin Island on Christmas Eve to see Western Australia’s largest colony of Little (or fairy) penguins
- had a walk down the street with all the Christmas lights
- had the whole family over for Christmas lunch
- had a quiet boxing day with a walk on the beach
- got married (more on this later 😉 )
- had lots of friends over
The kids have had a lovely time so far – we’re going to play in the park thats just behind where I live later which should keep the monsters at bay for a few hours.
Here’s some pics from our trip to Penguin Island on Christmas Eve
Still to come, Christmas Day and our wedding 🙂
Charlie's World 