An Irish tribute to Ryanair

Melody and Heather have left the building... and the country!

That was that. Our first visitors in our current digs have come and gone. The lovely Melody and Heather left early this morning to head back home to The Peg after a few days of fun, fun, fun. As with all our visitors, before they leave we lock them up, shackle their feet and twist their arms until they have all signed our guest book, no exception with these ladies. When we started looking through who our last guest was, we soon realized that we have not had any guests coming to see us since Christmas Eve 2009! Not cool!

Anyways; Melody and Heather arrived on Tuesday by train from London after a few sightseeing-packed days. As they had not had the best sleeping/jet lag combo in their hostel in London, Tuesday was dedicated to sofa surfing and relaxation. On Wednesday however, they were back in full form and had a full day of out-and-abouting which culminated in a night out with dinner at our favourite Greek restaurant, a Fringe comedy show (Brendon Bourns) and a visit to the local pub around the corner. I believe the quote of the week after that was: “But the children; they love it! They love it! They don’t know!”

Edinburgh’s shops all made their annual targets on Thursday when the girls hit the streets for some serious major league shopping and yesterday the girls and Shaena and Ethan rented a car and headed over to Glasgow for even more shopping(!) and also a quick stop by the beautiful Loch Lomond.

In the evening we looked at a slideshow of all their photos from the trip and quickly realized that the girls had not actually gone into or paid admission to pretty much any tourist attractions neither her nor in London! For every castle or landmark attraction they showed us photos of we asked: “So, did you go inside?” and they responded: “No, we just looked at it from the outside”. That’s the way to travel! Get your touristy photos, don’t spend too much time reading historical signs and plaques and swiftly move on to the next item on the list! Well done girls! ;)

We hope you’ve enjoyed your trip across the pond and we'll see you both next time we are in town!

Shaena, Ethan and Jimmy Carr!

Team building with CB: Archery!

Team building with CB: Gladiator games (Or: "It's like beating each other up with giant Q-tips!")

Team building with CB: Sumo wrestling (Or: I'm not fat, I'm big boned!)

On the agenda for the day was also a game of traditional Japanese sumo wrestling. We all know the rules; once the rice has been thrown, all you have to do is get the other guy in the man-sized diaper out of the ring and you have won. So we battled it out in those super heavy and hot costumes, however I have a feeling we took the game a bit too far as we kind of we resorted to prison rules and introduced a few WWE Smackdown moves after a while. Outside the ring. I blame it in poor referees! They should have stopped us before it got out of hand! ;)

"Want a piece of me!?"

Fight, fight, fight!

A fallen sumo

Not entirely sure if this move is approved by the International Sumo Wrestling Association?

Every once in a while even a sumo can use a helping hand from a fellow sumo

Team building with CB: Sphering (Or: Rolling with the homies!)

The first event of the day in for our teambuilding day with CareerBuilder’s Swedish team was ‘Sphering’. Otherwise known as rolling-down-a-hill-in-a-giant-soap-bubble. As per usual with activities like these, we were all asked to sign our lives away by signing personal injury waiver. Always a feel-good thing to do just before putting your life in the hands of the Action Sport Gods! After that, we got strapped up against the wall in the sphering ball in pairs of two and Anders and I were given instructions to sit in a brace position at all times until the ball stops.

For anyone in their right minds, this should have been an obvious sign that this was a bad idea. Instead we laughed our heads off even before takeoff and I laughed all the way down the hill whilst bouncing so much I thought my head would fall off! For the record; my neck is still sore, but it was so worth it!

Refuelling the ball before the next launch.

Moi and Anders

Strap me up, Scotty!

Rolling, rolling, rolling!

Antonia and Linus getting kitted out with the necessary gear

Alex and Antonia bursting with excitement!

Linus just likes to be on camera

Ethan 13 months and oot and aboot

Ethan's new coat is here! We ♥ Blue Peach!

Finally Friday!

This week has been a long one, I tell ya! Business is picking up at work which means oodles of talk time for yours truly and Ethan has been his normal whirlwind self for the first half of the week and felt a bit under the weather for the second half. Looks like he is having another huge chopper coming through, which of course explains him not feeling 100%. Business is also picking up for peterhelin.com, which is really cool! Got quite a bit of work lined up and hopefully more to come!

Shaena has also found herself a part time job this week. She is now calling herself a ‘Professional Pet Rescuer’ and is rescuing pets for money on king.com. For those of you who are not all that into online gaming, this is like playing a game of good old fashioned poker… but on the internet… and instead of people there are cats and dogs… and instead of cards there are colorful boxes… and instead of bluffing there are fires to extinguish… and instead of excitement there is… nothing! :) So far so good though! Today I had a message at work saying that her £1 that she initially invested had now grown to £25!

What else? Well, this weekend will be a fairly short one for me as I am off up to Perth for a work thing on Sunday morning. Our Managing Director from Sweden, the lovely Anders, is coming over to take our Swedish team out for a teambuilding day consisting of, get this, activities like: Gladiator games, Archery, Sumo Wrestling and Sphering (which in other words is to roll down a hill in a giant plastic bubble)! We are also doing a bit of more traditional teambuilding stuff like ‘3 truths and a lie’ and ‘Let me tell you about one of my passions’ kind of exercises.

This whole Swede-palooza will be rounded off with a nice dinner at ‘The Woodoo Rooms’ back in Edinburgh. Very much looking forward to this outing and I can promise that there will be picture to follow of me getting beaten up with a stick, me rolling down a hill, me in a fat suit, but hopefully no pictures of me getting impaled by an arrow during archery!

Captured!

Danger Mouse, our nightly (and sometimes daily) visitor in the kitchen was finally captured yesterday after a skillfully planned Tupperware-operation. Don't worry though! He is alive and well and is now living behind the parking lot around the corner from us.

Another First: Ethan's first drawing

Baby Loves Disco – Daddy loves cleaning!

Not entirely accurate, but let me explain. This afternoon, Shaena and Ethan are off to the Fringe festival with Ethan’s girlfriend Matilda and her mom Sarah for a kids event called ‘Baby Loves Disco’ where toddlers get to shake it like a Polaroid picture at a...you guessed it: baby disco! Apparently, there is also a baby dance competition at each of these discos, so hopefully we've taught him well and he'll come out of there crowned Edinburgh's toddler dance champion of 2010!

In the meantime, I am at home getting the flat spick and span. Not that I love staying at home cleaning but getting Ethan out of the apartment for a few hours really is the best way to get the flat scrubbed. Once he is back, he’ll obviously turn the living room upside down again in a matter of minutes but at least it’ll get to shine for a few moments!

I am sure footage/video of Ethan's groovy dance moves will follow, so stay tuned!

Photos please!

We thought it would be a cool idea to create a collage of photos of friends and family in his new photo frame and hang it on the door to his room. We have, as you can imagine, about 44 gazillion photos, snap happy as we are, so we could just print a few and stick ‘em in the frame but to jazz it up a bit, we thought it would be nice to have photos of you from you, our family and friends around the world, in the frame.

There are 7 slots in the frame so if you know that you are sitting on an amazing cute/funny/beautiful/in-the-moment photo, we would really appreciate if you could email it to us so we can get it printed and framed. Ethan will love it for sure! Ethan loves looking at photos and whenever he is a bit sad we sometimes stand in front of our huge collage of family photos and point and smile, which makes it all better.

"Ooooo! Thank you!" :)

The latest from Camp Harrison-Helin

As per usual, it’s been busy days in the Harrison-Helin household. We have spent our nights planning, researching, reading for Ethan, working on various projects and ‘The Shaena 9 o’clock Movie Club’ is back!

Thought we’d give you a little update on the latest happenings:

The battle is won!
After many, many hours of endless searching, comparing and price matching, we have finally booked our holiday to the sun! It sounds like, and probably is, the world's worst luxury problem we have (barely) lived through, but it sure isn't easy finding something that is just right! If the resort is perfect, the flight departures are during ungodly hours and if the flights are decent, most of the time the hotels look pretty dodgy or are located on some remote mountainside. If everything fits and looks really good, chances are, the country you want to go spend your holiday in will not grant Canadians with less than 3 months left on their passport entry!

We finally decided on Menorca, Majorca’s baby-sister island off the Mediterranean coast of Spain and the ‘Talayot hotel resort'. We found some decent flights (which, believe you me, is easier said than done when it comes to charter trips!) and the resort is designed for families with kiddie-pools, kids club, soft play, playground… and Margaritas nearby for mama and papa! We are very excited about rounding off our tour of Europe with this 6 day stop on a Mediterranean island! Life is good!

“Hiya! Ooooo!”
Ethan is becoming more and more vocal and has now started to wave to people passing by whilst greeting them with a cheerful “Hiya!”. He has also started putting on a really funny ‘excited face’ by pouting his lips whilst saying “Ooooo!”. He is also getting more and more interested in reading books now and this past week around sleepy-time he has not gone down without a fight! Wilful and stubborn as he is, he is now demanding that we read one or two of his books over, and over, and over, again. "Dot wants to eat his dinner but Dash does not....*sigh*... Dot wants to eat his dinner but Dash does not..."

New sofa secured
Today we’ve spent the afternoon in Swede-away-from-Sweden-heaven and finally ordered an ‘L-couch’ that we’ve had our eyes on for a while. The sofa we ordered is a really cool piece of furniture as it is, first and foremost, a very comfy couch but it also easily turns into a sofa bed and it has a really handy storage compartment! Besides the awesome sofa, we also scored some Swedish specialities in the food store, another moose for Ethan, a photo frame, bedding, crockery, and more. Good loot all in all.

Here's our resort in Menorca... not too shabby, eh!

"Ethan! Put it on your head!" - Ethan's breakfast workout regimen

A day in the life of Shaena

Saturday was my long awaited "girls night out" with Jen and Orlaith. They so kindly asked me to join them to the show "Celebrity Autobiography" which is part of the Edinburgh Fringe's various line ups of shows. The shows producers and cast are staying at a flat that the girls manage and low and behold, emergency in flat averted and tickets are offered for their speediness and stellar customer service!

The show's premise is various actors read aloud from celebrity's autobiographies. Very interesting concept and well executed I must say. It boasted from the books of David Hasselhoff's "Don't mess with the Hoff" and his telling of his life story through the 3rd person, Tiger Woods book and how to set up your putting shot which held many euphemisms for his recent encounters and the infamous story of Debbie Reynolds and her marriage to Eddie Fisher and his affair with Elizabeth Taylor plus much more. I do recommend it if you are looking for an inexpensive night during the Fringe. The only problem is finding the venue. This is a common issue with E4's layout as they have the Underbelly, Udderbelly, The upside down cow, The Otherbelly and so on. Orlaith did think we were at the right show only to find out 5 minutes before last call that we weren't! So we scurried down and luckily were in time.

After the show the cast and crew were out in the garden having drinks and I finagled my way over to Michael Urie or as we had been referring to him all night, "The gay guy from Ugly Betty" and kindly asked to have a photo taken with him. Now when it comes to celebrity photo taking, I do not believe in handing my camera off to some stranger to take some terrible photo. No! You only have 1 chance to get this thing done the right way and that is the "self photo" way. Out of all the photos he took with the others, mine actually looks like we're best friends on a night out. So beat that fans! HA!

Our next show didn't start till 1am! So we decided to go get some drinks. Viv, who was meant to come to the show with us but had a mix up of a day starting with her Dad leaving her stranded and not enough time to come meet us as a bus was the preferred choice of transportation in a situation as that, was waiting for us at the infamous Bobby statue in the Old Town. From here we went to "Under the Stairs", a popular yet sort of hippy place to have drinks only to find that it was jammed packed full of people so the seat that was so kindly offered to me was the stump of a tree. Thanks guys (don't worry, I still love you)

After my legs fell asleep, it was off to our next destination, "The Grosvenor" and Karaoke with Karen! This place is in the heart of the city centre and is crying out for a make over but seats are easy to find and the drinks are as cheap as chips. We got our selves settled, liquored up and decided to make an attempt at singing Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" As I expected, we were terrible but the song is such a motivator that people from the streets decided to come and check out what was happening! We made a few friends and were purchased some beverages and before we knew it, it was time to head to the next show.

The Ghillie Dhu is a newer venue in town and I absolutely love it here. Every Friday night they hold a free Celidgh (which is like square dancing Scottish style) and it is nicely done up and drinks are reasonably priced. We were here for the Pleasance Kickoff Party and it was great. A great DJ (who is now my favourite all time DJ as he played my requests) played awesome music and we cut up the dance floor all night. I poured into bed at 3am only to find someone in my spot...yep, you guessed it. Ethan! And he was ready to play.

Unfortunately my prediction was not correct. I did not get my photo with George Wendt. It's okay, I'll live!

Another First: Ethan's first car boot sale!

There is a first for everything. And for some things, the first is also the last. This may be one of those things. Orlaith, Jen and Tara invited us out to the car park behind ASDA, behind the Corn Exchange, behind a soccer field – well, let’s just call it a bus ride in the wrong direction, to hang out with them whilst they were hawking their old stuff in a car boot sale(!) Supportive (read: gullible) friends as we are, we headed out there.

The first thing the girls told us when we walked up to their borrowed taxi cab that they had used to transport their goods in was that people had instantly approached them and asked if they had any gold to sell and that a lady had also stolen a top right in front of Tara’s eyes. When Tara politely said: “Excuse me”, the lady assassinated Tara with a crazy look, whereby Tara said: “Keep it!”

We said hi, took a quick look around the other stalls, found nothing of course, chatted for a bit, tasted Jen’s divine banana bread that she was giving out to whoever wanted to buy from them, and said our swift goodbyes. Ethan, as you can see below, still had time to be passed around for cuddles and try on a very fetching feather boa!