Sunday after Christmas (by sarah)

The Sunday after Christmas we all went round my aunts again this time for a sort of kids christmas party - here are some pictures - warning it contains bobbles and wiggles and squiggle so cuteness over load for those who like kids and puke fest for those that hate them or find them annoying 🙂

Bah, back to Rails! (by alaric)

Gah. I was happily thinking that I was slowly getting rid of my last Ruby on Rails projects, when I've ended up on another one. Despite extensive hype, Rails is a bit of a dog... Ruby has some niceties, but also has a lot of misfeatures, and the implementation is still maturing. But Rails is dreadful, dreadful code. It helps you if you're working within its limited model, but as soon as you come across a problem that doesn't fit into that model, you're quickly working at pretty much the same level as PHP and everything else: writing Ruby code that is called upon an HTTP request and has to output some HTML back, albeit with access to a reasonable template language... And it's full of bugs and gotchas that keep you up all night screaming "Why doesn't this wooooorrrkkkkk?!?!?!?".

You see, the project is a major extension of a Rails project we'd mainly finished. We had the choice of rewriting the whole thing in something else (which would involve some time spent catching up with where we already are rather than producing anything new), continuing with Rails, or making a hybrid system, writing the new parts in something else while reusing parts in Rails (which would be a bit ugly).

Since the client wants to see interesting new things appearing after the first week or two, sadly, it had to be Rails...

Aunty Lizzy’s Birthday a.k.a. Boxing Day (by sarah)

Boxing Day happens to be my aunts birthday so we all went round there for a bit of a party boxing day - this was cool especially as two of my cousins had babies about 6 weeks either side of Jean. Add in my still school aged cousins and Rachel the new baby and it was full of a bit too much cuteness and definately far too many smelly potties!

There was also a nintendo wii which had alot of the sports accessories with it - much to my cousins Niels horror me and his girlfriend came a very close first and second in the bowling game where as he had about half our score!

Jean had a great time especially when she got a little fairy dress complete with gold angle wings - there where much cries of pretty dress - far too girly for my taste but she enjoyed herself!

Fred the cat was unfortunatly spotted first by Jean and then by Alaric - fortunatly he is a tolerant old thing.

At some point getting on towards the end of the everning a curly afro st gorges wig appeared which made its way with a fake beard and long witches noise left from halloween, onto a teddy bear. Then Jean found a tou pram and then said teddy was proclaimed - 'My Baby!' and thrust in said pram. Conor (or possibly Jordon) then stole the witches nose and well here are the pictures:

There was lots of food including some very tasty mediterian vegtables and stuffing balls that werent dry! Alaric also recieved more presants that he could happily sit and build 🙂

as everning set in properlly the babies begain to get very tired - mum and dad where actually stranded at my aunts place as once again their car broke down and my brother had to go and get them! This ment they stayed the night at my aunts with a Jean Jeany who slept quiet happily in a travel cot thats not her own.

Christmas Day At the Chateau de Pym (by sarah)

Christmas day begian for us in Highgate - Al had got me a bueatiful black highheel stocking with feathers and pearls all over it and purple glittery highheel shoe christmas decorations. Then to ungirlyfy things abit I recieved loads of dinosuar themed stuff which made me really happy - of course I'd managed to leave most of his presants in Gloucester so he only got a few old techniqual books and a cat money box!

We then packed the pie and christmas cake up and headed for Essex.

There we found what is possibly the most scariest santa clues ever!

For the meal itself I had made six glittery napkin rings - one for each of us - Jeans was the christmas tree, Davids the bualbal, mums the bell, mine the star, Alarics the holly and dads the santa hat (well he is the Hat Man after all!). Mum had made some snowmen christmas napkins for said rings to go onto.

The p0ie was baked and did Alaric proud - it contians fennel, quill pasta, spinache, pin nuts, red pepper, feta cheese, cream and marmite.

Probably Jeans favourite presant of the day was this puppet theatre that David had picked up in a charity shop - I got into trouble for playing with it too much though, apparently the wizard isn't dumbledore its merlin and apperantly Hermine is sleeping buety and Luna is goldelocks etc... I think they were all being very mean especial as I was singing the sing and every thing - snape snape severus snape - Dumbledore etc... (ok if I can find the link I'll post it later it was really funny at the time.

Alaric had bought her back some little planes with - Pretty lights mummy! - on them, from Dublin.

The night of mums operation I went and helped dad clean (him being a cleaner) and Jean came with us and fell in love with Henry the hoover of which there was fortunatly multiple ones so that we could still actually hoover! Anyway mum and dad got her this little henry which came with a dustpan and brush and all sorts of fun excessories - she loved it 🙂 I'm wondering if it would be seen as child labour to get her hoovering the house (once we have one again) 😉 Of course Alaric and David had to open the poor little henry up to see how it worked and if there were any brains in there!

As you can see the meal and excitement of christmas day resulted in Mum going for a sleep and Dad - well... Jean thinks sleeping people need teddys to hug 🙂

Christmas Eve in Highgate (by sarah)

Christmas Eve was spent making mulled wine both alcoholic and non-alcoholic even though it did mean sending someone to the shops on an emergancy tour! I also decorated the christmas cake I'd got dad to bake back at the Mill. I went for christmas trees on the snowy tundra (it would have been spikey but this was my first time using the instant royal icing mix rather than making it up myself). Becuase I am me and was thus unprepared I ended up having to improvise an icing bag out of greese proof paper and everything. You may have noticed from the picture that I have some little creatures that should not be there - my little family of marzipan hedghogs - these are special hedghogs who have awoken for the Snow Ball and it has nother NOTHING to do with the fact my brother loves marzipan and hedghogs - I didnt then refused to let anyone else have a hedghog honest!

Cooking wise we also roped peeps who'd come for mulled wine - namely Clair into helping us prepare the leopard pie which is Alarics traditional veggi christmas dinner as we where going to be spending christmas day at my perants we where preparing the pie to take with us and cook once there. I have only one thing to say at this juncture - 'Mmmmm Pie!'

Of corse the Christmas clock made an earlier appearance and after about three hours had everybody wanting to kill me or the clock or both - I still think its cute with its flashing lights and five minutes of tinny out of tune christmas carols, Jean loves it too with its riendeer going rouw rouw - tick tock rouw rouw mummy! Snowman! Snowman! Daddy lookit Snowman!

As the day progressed there where lightsaber fights with bits of cardboard!

Mucho mucho playing with the remote control darleck I got Al an eon or three ago!

There might also have been some dancing but I have acidently forgotton to upload the photos with this one being the least embaressing 🙂

We finished the day off by watching Jack's (whos office we're currently in) friend doing the christmas lectures which included inflatible real lungs on a resirator etc... It was fun 🙂