So, things have been a little quiet in the Winchurst household of late (by “quiet” I mean there hasn’t been much interesting going on – it’s very difficult for things to be “quiet” when there’s a 17mth old, who does a very good Heffalump impression, running around like a loon!) – the only things to have reported would’ve been things like doing the washing and clearing up after Isabel for the 400th time in one day, none of which would make for thrilling reading!

This last weekend saw Dan disappearing off to Munich to sample the delights of Oktoberfest. He arrived home yesterday armed with a wealth of goodies – a “Miaow” for Isabel (only of the stuffed variety!), Chocolate for Mummy and a variety of Beer festival items, one of which is a “Stein”(at least, I think that’s how you spell it!) that weighs an absolute tonne when full! (It holds 2 pints of liquid!) Apparently, someone was seen carrying 14 of these at once – I was very impressed given I thought I might go into premature labour just carrying one with nothing more toxic than squash in it!

Not wishing to be outdone, Isabel and I went to London on Saturday to stay with Aunty Catherine as an early birthday celebration – Catherine’s birthday was in fact on Monday, but she was inconveniently going to New York so we had to bring forward the partying! Isabel had a lovely time entertaining Catherine’s flatmates and decided, therefore, she had no need of sleep and it was 11.30pm before I persuaded her otherwise! I had also chosen to gloss over just how wriggly she is whilst asleep and opted to share a bed with her – needless to say, I am in no hurry to repeat this event and will probably vote to sleep just about anywhere else in the future! (especially as she then chose to get up at 7.10am on Sunday – about and hour and a half earlier than normal!)

Today, Isabel has been continuing her new found joy of embarrassing Mummy in the supermarket by fondling peoples bottoms whilst queuing up to pay! So far, people are generally very forgiving when they turn round to see a curly haired scrap beaming innocently up at them – some are also quite disappointed, but only momentarily!
We were also interested by an item on the local Chinese Restaurants menu – I was pondering it as an option for dinner tomorrow (given it is our Wedding Anniversary!) but am less inclined to go now given that one of their delicacies is “Szechwan Dick”! I’m quite adventurous in the gastronomic department, but even I would draw the line there! We’ll keep you posted as to whether we venture in there!

As promised, if a little belatedly, is news on when “Bob the Bump” will make his or her entrance into the world……..

It would seem that my initial wonderings were in fact correct and I was further ahead than first suspected – that meant a revision in due dates and brought it forward to………. CHRISTMAS EVE!!!! Excellent timing on our part we feel, and it has been suggested to us that we could have considered this a little better in the planning stages but hey, who are we to mess with Mother Nature!!?? In truth, it won’t be Christmas Eve as I intend to have an elective C-Section this time round to avoid all the palava that we went through in order to get Isabel – my darling sister says that it’s not that I am too posh to push, I am just too lazy!!!

This coming Monday is turning into a veritable Baby-fest day – I have my long awaited 20 week scan at 10.30am (which means we have made it to half way!), an appointment with the Consultant (whose name I can’t pronounce!) at 10.45am and then a visit to the Midwife at 3pm………..it seems this baby lark is fast becoming like the proverbial buses!!

Not much to report other than that – we’d like to say a huge Congratulations to Uncle Paul and Aunty Rachel who got engaged last week at the bottom of the Grand Canyon…….it was lovely to see them at the weekend at Rachel’s birthday – Isabel was particularly pleased to be able to play with her Uncle Paul after so many weeks of being so cruelly separated from him!! I think she might already be saving her pocket money to pay for a possible trip to New Zealand for a wedding!!??

We are finally back online so, with a bit of luck, we should be able to put posts up more often! (We can but hope!?)

We are all moved into our new house – having said that, our stuff arrives from New Zealand next week and, according to the official documents, there are 72 items coming! Quite where we are going to put all this stuff has yet to be seen (and what we are going to do with Isabel whilst it all gets delivered is another bridge we have yet to cross!) but I’m sure we’ll get through it all eventually – if it all goes quiet for a while, you’ll know it’s because we are drowning amidst a sea of boxes and packing materials!

Isabel gets bigger by the minute and can now say “fish” and “cheese” – she does occasionally use them in context as well, although she did say “cheese” a lot this morning but seemed very pleased when I gave her a piece with her breakfast – perhaps it was a request after all??! She also had to have new shoes yesterday – Mummy felt very guilty to discover that she was wearing 3 and 1/2 G shoes when her feet were measuring 5 and 1/2 F!! In Mummy’s defence, her feet have grown 2 sizes in 2 weeks but that didn’t alleviate the guilt!

The other news, for those who don’t already know, is that the Winchurst clan is set to expand with the arrival of Baby Winch 2 around the end of the year/beginning of next – we apologise for the vagueness but we aren’t entirely sure of the due date and, as we discovered yesterday, this Health Authority doesn’t believe in offering dating scans so we have to wait until the 20 wk scan to find out for sure! With a bit of luck, the midwife will be able to have a squidge of my middle and give me a vague indication of what she thinks – but ti could be a while before we can confirm with any certainty!

Anyway, we will look to keep you posted (no pun intended) of the progress of the expansion of my waistline and the ever increasing size of Isabel!

Many apologies to those who think we have fallen off the face of the earth – we are still here and yes, we are still living in a hotel which isn’t anywhere near as glamorous as it sounds!

Sadly there isn’t a lot to report – just doing our best to adjust to being in Southampton and getting to grips with the fact that we live here now and that we aren’t just on our holidays!

Once we get settled in a place of own (soon hopefully!) we have plenty of pics to upload and so will bore you to death with those!

Unitl then, at least you know we are alive and well and always glad to hear from people!

…….an update on how things are going in not so sunny Britain!!

Having spent most of our 1st week in the “Frozen North” (which it quite literally was but that was fine with us….nice to get back to the cooler climate!) we headed south at the weekend to Dan’s parents’ house in Devon.

We arrived on the Saturday night (after a much shorter 6hr drive than the 8 1/2hr one at Xmas!) just in time for Mothering Sunday the following day – this was celebrated with a Winchurst family lunch (including Dan’s Uncle Clive and Aunty Avril) at the local pub.

On Monday we went to Liskeard (via Bodmin Moor) for a bit of nosey round and then on Tuesday we ventured to Port Isaac – for those of you who watched “Doc Martin” when it was on, Port Isaac is the real name for the fictional Portwenn and so we were able to see a lot of the places we were familiar with from the show.

Wednesday we packed up the car and headed towards Eastleigh in time for Dan’s interview on the Thursday – we stayed in the “New Forest Lodge Hotel” which was actually in Landford, 9 miles out of Salisbury on the A36 (in case you were wondering!).

Thursday was D-Day (or should that be I-Day?) and whilst Dan was busy, Isabel and I wandered round Eastleigh, looking in shop windows and investigating the house prices (just for future reference!). Dan thinks the interview went well, so it’s just a case of waiting to hear back from them.

We are now back in Devon for the next few days – we’ll have a better idea of where the wind will take us next week once we have a decision on the job front.

Isabel has continued to be snuffly and, therefore, pretty grumpy at times and she definitely seems to be going off being in the car-seat for any length of time – I’m doing my best to entertain her (and let’s face it, I am pretty funny!?) but sometimes it just isn’t enough and the only thing that will placate her is the chance to get out and run round like a loon until she gets grumpy again and falls asleep!