Champagne Anniversary

Today marks my 4 years living abroad and being that it is March 4th, it is also my champagne anniversary! I never really understood why champagne was the drink of choice to mark such events. I mean, my birthday is the 1st and technically that means I would have had to have a swig of the bubbly when I was 1. Peter would have to when he was 7. At least Ethan has an appropriate age of 30.

Anyway, Happy Anniversary to me! Ps - Mother's Day is also this month in the UK...Present planning commences now.

Giggle bum

Shaena and Ethan to Canada

You may have figured it out already by watching our mysterious, riddling video below but mommy and Ethan are heading back to the prairielands of Canada in just over a week to visit family and friends. At first we were planning on keeping it a secret and Shaena, wild and crazy as she is, would fly over there and simply go knock on her mother’s door, but then decided that it would probably be a better idea to be a bit more organized about it. Either way, it is going to be a great trip for them and I know that Shaena is really looking forward to it, even though she might not be looking forward to the long flight over and back, but that is the price you have to pay for being an expat I guess.

Ethan on the other hand probably won’t mind at all. As long as he’ll get his playtime, his food and his naps on fairly set intervals, it doesn’t seem to matter to him that he’ll sometimes fall asleep in one country and wake up in a completely different one.

One of many things I admire about my wife is how she can get so many things organized in such a short period of time when she sets her mind to it. As this trip came up kind of last minute, in the last few days Shaena has been researching flight routes, prices, durations, been phoning around booking things like travel cots for Ethan, organizing dates and timing with family, borrowed a travel-friendly stroller and at the same time managed to do all our normal admin here at home, even to the point where she phoned up our broadband provider and questioned a £1.25 fee for paper invoicing, even though we have e-invoicing, and got the money refunded!

What about me then? Well, this time around I won't be joining them on the trip as I have to stay behind and work. I am actually heading down to London on a quick trip of my own shortly after they head off to Canada as my company has kindly invited me to a leadership training session. Should be very interesting of course, but other than that, I will probably take it relatively easy, hang out at home and Skype chat with my little family in the evenings. I will miss them dearly, that is for sure!

Seriously, what would we do without Skype? For one, we would be broke because of all the overseas phone bills, but most importantly, it would be quite hard to stay in contact with so many people and know when people are available etc without modern day technology like internet telephony. There! I said it! I plugged Skype once again. If we had a penny for every time…

Wait for it!

GOLD FOR CANADA!!!

Well that was fun!

Yesterday was a blast! The day started with pampering as Shaena had booked appointments at the spa across the street for the both of us. I got a wonderful full back massage and Shaena had a pedicure. Her toenails are now turquoise. Afterwards, when I was all relaxed, Ethan and I went out on the town to stock up on party snacks for the evening. Ethan wasn’t much help though; he slept through the whole walk. Typical.

In the afternoon we went on to prepare for the party and to our surprise, Piers and Lesley stopped by and dropped off a case of wine! 15 bottles for everyone to enjoy later in the evening! They are just too good to us!

The party was great fun; about 10 people graced us with their presence and Shaena had sneakily asked our friends to bring a birthday cake with them and I got to blow out the one candle on the cake and make a wish as my birthday is coming up. My wife is just too lovely for words! When we all had built up the courage to do so, we played a few rounds of twister and then danced the night away. I on my part put up a magnificent dance performance for everyone’s enjoyment and concocted a new rendition of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ music video and also attempted the lift from ‘Dirty Dancing’! Apparently this whole performance was caught on video as well, but hopefully the clip will never see daylight.

Today we are spending the day recharging our batteries and tomorrow and Tuesday I have taken days off from work so we can just chill and have a nice extended weekend.

Ye olde photographer darkroom trunk

Since my dear wife is out dancing the night away, my lovely son is sleeping like a little snoring log, and my brother ran into Ryan-issues, I suddenly have a bit of time to kill this evening. I am chatting to my brother online just now and we are both cursing and planning a boycott of that awful cheap-o airline. Earlier tonight we were exchanging funny photos over MSN and just for laughs I wanted to change my profile picture. When I tried to figure out how, I stumbled upon my old photos from years back. First of all, I don't even remember some of these, but it also got me thinking; I wonder how many old photos from trips, parties, etc that are floating around the internet? Scary thought!

Anywho, I thought I'd share some of my old photo albums with you. Didn't actually know that I could include nifty photo albums like this, but this should keep you busy for a while! ;)

2 for 2!

Fingers crossed, but Ethan has slept through the night for two nights in a row now! It is amazing and a bit strange at the same time. It is great that both Ethan and Shaena and I can get a full nights sleep, but also a bit odd that he is not waking up for food in his normal intervals. It almost gets you worrying and you start thinking: ”What is wrong? What happened? Is he ok?” and then when we walk into his room at 7am, he is still sleeping like a baby, no pun intended. Hopefully this will stick, but as someone said on Facebook yesterday: “Beware of the pysch out...sleep 3 nights in a row and the 4th night is utter hell :)”

Tonight Uncle John is coming to visit and the boys will have a relaxed night at home, catching up. Maybe we’ll venture out to the kebab shop across the street for some grub, but no further than that. -Scratch that! John's Ryanair-flight got cancelled! What a total bummer! This time it was due to weather, but Ryanair had the option to put him on another flight to London but chose not to. Are we surprised? Not really. Still got me a kebab though, but instead of being a festive kebab it turned into a sob kebab. Sob kebabs are, as we all know, not nearly as yummy as festive kebabs!

Anyway, the girls are heading out for a few drinks and some dancing tonight. The dancing is also across the street if I am not mistaken. Our new location has everything across the street as it seems: Cuban dancing, Middle Eastern foods; including but not limited to kebab and halal meats, Turkish barber, Indian take-away shop, a Scottish pub and a Scottish steakhouse, and finally a newsagent with a friendly Eastern European shopkeeper in it!

Tomorrow is our housewarming partay! So far I think we have 15 confirmed guests so should be a really good time! We are very much looking forward to putting on our glad rags and to catch up with everyone tomorrow! For a guaranteed successful party, however, I think we will have to go hit up the ‘Pound Stretcher’ for some nibs and party paraphernalia. Good times!

Ethan the casanova

Today we decided to go to the baby cinema with Jennifer and Phoebe. Phoebe is 1 month younger than Ethan and has eyes to kill! Anyway, Ethan and Phoebe were watching "Invictus" and all of a sudden, Ethan grabbed Phoebe's hand! He was a smooooth operator! Phoebe was delighted and batted her eyelashes at him!

Last week he kissed Orlaith, twice!

He is a charmer and a romantic man at heart and wants to make sure that the ladies around him are appreciated!

For the rest of this week he has dates lined up with Alice, Isabel, and Piper.

Don't worry Danika, you are still number 1!

Who is in Glasgow?

I'm checking our analytics and see that Glasgow has come in as 6th place in our top cities so I wonder, who is in Glasgow? Ps - if you have or know of someone that has Lady Gaga tickets for Monday, I'd be most interested in purchasing some!!

Another fab weekend

It’s Monday again and once again I am typing away on the bus to work. Good old #25! We have had a really good weekend again and I think the fact that it is getting closer to spring helps. It is easier to gather the energy to step outside and go for a walk. We also think that our new location helps; there are more shops and cafés and restaurants around here.

On Friday after work I made a split second decision to go out for a few pints with a colleague of mine, so we hit up a bar at the Haymarket train station and just had a really good chat. After this I headed home and as soon as I walked through the door I heard a cry for food: “I’m huuungry!”. It was my lovely wife who had a growling tummy. I thought “Maybe I am a bit hungry too…” (even though I had had 5 slices of Domino’s pizza and chocolate cake at work earlier that afternoon) and offered to nip out to the kebab shop across the street. Did you notice how I just proved the point above? …Easier to gather the energy… …More restaurants… :)

On Saturday we did a bit more unpacking, almost there now, and then we ventured out for a nice long walk around Edinburgh town. Later in the evening, Jen & Mike came by for, I am sad to say this, more pizza, a glass of wine and a good chat.

On Sunday we continued with our unpacking and cleaning project and got quite a lot done before we decided to nip out for another walk and go see Orlaith in her flat. She has lived there for the longest time but I have never been. Shaena has, but I haven’t. Better late than never I guess!

Next weekend will without a doubt be a good one as well as my brother John is visiting, he will be our first guest from abroad in the new casa. Next Saturday we are also having a housewarming party! Should be a swell time! Yes, swell!

Out and about

adventures in el crib-o

If we would be a company...

...this could be our cheesy Company Overview:

‘Harrison-Helin’ was founded through a successful merge of ‘Harrison’ and ‘Helin’ in 2006. Before the merger, both parties had separate flourishing businesses in Canada and Sweden before their operations intersected in Dublin, Ireland one fateful summer and the two joined forces under the trading name ‘Harrison-Helin’.

Harrison-Helin soon discovered that their operation could expand further by relocation to Scotland where prosperous opportunities awaited them. After setting up shop in Edinburgh, the duo identified a need for a third partner and decided to expand their business and took on a junior partner less than a year ago. Recently, the trio also moved into new, modern premises in Edinburgh city centre.

Even though their base camp is Edinburgh, Harrison-Helin has always been considered a flexible and mobile operation that would offer on-site visits around the world, if the opportunity and timing is right for the business to do so.

What was the point of this? Nothing really, just letting you know that we now have our own page on Facebook!

Back to my roots designing websites

Recently I have taken on a few website / blog design projects just to help a few friends out with their band’s website or company website or whatever it may be. I have to say, I really enjoy it and it takes me back to when I took my first stumbling steps in the world of web design back when I was 16-17 years old. This was also around the time when people were chatting on mIRC, had not yet fully understood what hotmail was for and Altavista was the search engine of choice. Oh, and also back when everyone took a stab at creating their own free website on web portals like Fortunecity and the design philosophy was: colourful website + blinking-animations-all-over-the-page-just-because-I-can = nice!

At first when I started writing html code again it felt a bit rusty and there was a lot of trial and error, but I think I am getting the hang of it again! My latest project is to help our friend Les with a new website for her company ‘Moyes & Co’ and just this evening I sent off a draft to them to get their aye or nay on it. Partial as I am, I think it turned out pretty decent.

Coincidentally; we happen to be a bit short staffed at work at the moment, so this week I have helped out in our Swedish customer care team where I've spent a fair few hours working with various clients on developing Facebook pages (one of the products we sell) and that has also given me an opportunity to fiddle with my beloved html code. Is this a sign? Am I meant to revive my old company ‘WD Design’ that I started when I was still living in my mom and step dad’s attic?

Nah… just keep it simple. No need for those internet millions that are out there, just waiting to be found and collected!