Nonno, Nanna, and the Nincompoop

A few more pics from our weekend in Kendal.

Nonno and Nonna spoiling the little one.














Brushing teeth/gums in the caravan, our home away from home.














A crisp morning walk/snooze.

Annual Pumpkin Carving Competition

This year's annual pumpkin carving competition was held at my parents in Kendal. Basically, the competition consists of who can carve the best pumpkin. I'm usually the only one to enter, but this year Ashley and few others entered. I'm judge so I decide who wins. This year, I won - again, with Savvy as a vampire.



Ashley came a respectable 2nd with Mysterio, her favourite WWF wrestler.



Savvy with her cousins at the pumpkin carving world championships.

True Recycling

I think my mom told me that the jumper Savvy is wearing was knit by my grandmother (correction GREAT grandmother). Lynn wore it when she was growing up over 30 years ago. The jumper is still in great nic, with an amazingly clever drawstring around the neck to make getting the jumper on and off a breeze. Why don't they make this style anymore!

Eco Blog Number 1 - Organic or Recycled Cotton

We are officially inspired by all the eco-blogging going on.

Blogspot is celebrating these efforts on the blogspot home page ("action week"), and we have just read about a few cool not-too-smug environmentally friendly blogs in Intelligent life, Autumn 07. This includes one individual's efforts to add a new eco-rule to her daily life each day of the year for one year. We can't quite go the full 365 day distance, so we are going to start with one new eco rule a month, finishing our year with 12 new rules that we aim to keep for life. Will it work? Will we cave? We'll see...

Rule number 1: When buying cotton, we're going for only organic or recycled. Pretty easy for trendy yoga gear, but what about for towels, sheets and work shirts? Turns out it's all out there. If anything, it'll force us to use the cotton we've got until it wears thin thin thin.

Why organic cotton? Apparently most cotton items are only actually 73% cotton with the rest being chemicals and resins used to grow the cotton. Can't be good for the skin. It seems that out of the world's total insecticide usage, 25% is used to farm cotton. Yowza. Can't be good for the environment.

Why recycled cotton? We've read that many clothing factories leave heaps of cotton trimmings on the floor, and these go straight to landfill. Some companies are sweeping up these leftovers and are using them for recycled cotton products. Makes sense.

Ok - that's October's eco blog.

Dad and Savvy Hit the Pool

A no hands shot, and swimming with Dad shot. All small and bad focus - phone camera at work.

Baby Jail

Savannah's upgraded from her bumbo seat to a proper high chair for meal times. We call it baby jail since she's nice and safe there, but also very "stuck" giving parental freedom for other things. Same with baby jail number two...the famous brown cardboard box.

You can see the hole in the box through which Savvy's dad tortures her.

6 Months and Counting

Savvy officially passed the 1/2 year mark this weekend gone.

She can boast of many achievements including under water swimming, eating mashed foods of all kinds like a pyggy at a trough, sitting unaided, and playing a mean game of peek-a-boo. She can also pull a 1000 faces. Unfortunately, she has yet to deliver on her sleep-through-the-night target and so her halloween bonus has been withheld.




After a posh black tie dinner on Saturday night (thanks for the dress cday!), we had a lovely warm outdoor Sunday lunch with Jon and Lizzie. Cept it was without Jon and Lizzie due to an email mix up.

At the Commonwealth Games awards dinner, Kirsty Balfour, our top swimmer, came second to Chris Hoy, cyclist. Maybe because Gregor, a swimmer, won it last year? Or maybe because Chris Hoy is a huge force winning world champs left right and centre... Pretty cool to have Savvy passed around the breakfast table of champions the following morning.
Also, pretty cool to be anticipating the 9th of November - will Glasgow win the bid to host the Games, or no?

We are looking forward to a couple of weekends off of work for some biking and hiking, followed by a Halloween journey to Kendal to hang with family and a whole bunch of goblins.

A few of Savvy's 1000 faces below.