Apr 23 2010

Anna’s Birthday!

Category: Anna's PhotosChrisM @ 5:24 pm

OK, so the next few posts will be of photos (and once YouTube behaves, videos) taken on the 21st February 2010, which was Anna’s 1st birthday. Unless you count the day she was born on. Which would be her birth day.
Anyway, As there are a lot of photos, and I wanted to publish them all, they have been split across posts.

Party Hats And Pears

Party Hats And Pears

Only One Of Us Kept The Hat On All Day!

Only One Of Us Kept The Hat On All Day!

Smoking Smiling Seb

Smoking Smiling Seb (Check Out The Smiley Socks)

Irina And Anna In The Kitchen

Irina And Anna In The Kitchen

Mum And Anna

Mum And Anna

Dad And Anna

Dad And Anna

Anna's Birthday Presents Before...

Anna's Birthday Presents Before...

That is it for now, as we have guests arriving soon.

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Apr 16 2010

Smaller Screens And Burgers!

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 11:31 pm

On the evening of my upcoming 31st birthday (20th April), I am hoping to head out TGI Friday (Thank God Its Friday) with Irina, Anna and Ira’s Mum – (her Dad will be away on business). At the end of the week, when our friends here in Astana are more likely to be able to meet up and not worry about work the next day, we are planning to invite them around to ours for hamburgers, baked beans and potato wedges/roast potatoes. As some of our friends have children, we wanted to ensure they could bring them along and so hope to keep some sort of entertainment going for them in Anna’s room, as the living room & kitchen/dining room may be filled with “adults”.
Quotations marks, as I’m hoping most won’t want to drive themselves, and so have a drink or three. Does this mean we will be filling Anna’s room with home theater seating? Not necessarily, however I’m hoping to either use this computer’s third monitor, or Irina’s laptop to stream childrens’ cartoon and movies into Anna’s room. This would require the eldest child of one friend of ours to be the nominated supervisor/monitor of children, but she has been an absolute star when required to fill this role in the past, and I’m hoping the menu on offer will go some way to persuading her that the situation would be to everyones’ liking.
Anyway, once I have cleared the backlog of Anna’s photos and videos from our UK trip, I’ll hopefully be able to post some clips of the little angels from that night. Alternatively I may just remember to stream a few clips up onto Qik.com, and have them automatically imported to this site. Whatever the case, I want to say thank you to Irina for her time and effort in organising a Chris/child-friendly menu for the evening.

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Mar 15 2010

Antique Owning Hoodie Wearers!

Category: Friends,PersonalChrisM @ 7:21 pm

Whilst waiting for Anna to wake from her lunch time nap, Irina, Dad and I were all watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow on the Yesterday channel. It seems to have moved on a little since I remember it (Sunday evenings when I was a child, with crumpets or savoury muffins for tea!).
Gone were the experts with bow ties on, and in are… well the same experts, but the antique owners seem to be from a wider background now, with hoodie wearing young adults bringing in RAF memorobilia from their Grandad, to a builder who scans the car boot sales at weekends.
The builder did quite well bringing in a hold-all containing lots of things he had bought for less than a fiver – some were worth close to a thousand pounds! Anyway, Anna woke up, so attention switched to feeding her. I’m also arranging meeting up with friends in Cheltenham tonight; it will be great to see them as some I’ve not crossed paths with them in a couple of years…

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Mar 13 2010

Went 4 walk earlier, fed the d…

Category: Anna's Photos,TweetsChrisM @ 1:45 am

Went 4 walk earlier, fed the ducks with Anna, Ira and Dad. Nick has since arrived – good luck to him for tomorrow! http://twitpic.com/185dey

Anna Feeding The Ducks

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Mar 12 2010

Arrived in Evesham (Dad’s) fin…

Category: TweetsChrisM @ 1:22 am

Arrived in Evesham (Dad’s) fine. Hope to see Chelt people over the coming days. Two & a half weeks left in Britain. Back to Clydach Tuesday.

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Feb 19 2010

Chomp, Gulp & Brrrrm!

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 5:17 am

As the time drew closer and closer for our trip to Britain, my mind automatically started fixating on those things I missed from home. So what have I crossed off the list already, since returning to Britain?
A nice Chinese takeaway – I’ve slowly discovered that there are normally a few dishes I can enjoy, and Irina loves them.
Shreddies and Weetabix (not simultaneously) with milk that tastes like it is supposed to 🙂
Coke Zero (I love Coke, but want to have some teeth left – Coke Zero isn’t yet sold in Kazakhstan). I still try to be sensible, but knowing that I’m not destroying my teeth quite so quickly is a relief 🙂
Tinned steamed chocolate pudding (the two minutes and you’re done type – apparently not yet a recognised treatment for depression, I suppose not enough peer reviewed research papers have been written???)
Marmite on toasted tiger bread (white bread with some sort of coating on top, no felines harmed, I promise).
Orange squash (for non-UK readers, this is a concentrated fruit based drink that you dilute to taste)
and, of course, driving our car again.
We still need to see Dad, visit friends in Cheltenham, have proper fish’n’chip shop chips and a battered burger, a bacon double cheese burger from Burger King and buy a few things for Anna, but given that we’ve been here less than a week, I think the amount of ticks in the To Do list is more than satisfactory 🙂

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Feb 10 2010

Lowering Standards

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 11:49 pm

This afternoon I have been resizing videos and ripping audio streams from DVDs for Anna. The Wheels On The Bus DVD is definitely a good distraction to have up our sleeves when Anna gets a little bored, tired or in need of temporary distraction. As we don’t have a portable DVD player (and could do without the extra weight anyway), I decided to put whatever I could on our mobile phones. This way, during the plane journeys, overnight stay at the Istanbul hotel, and car journey into Wales (BIG thanks in advance John!) if Anna simply would be settled by games, toys, books or Mummy and Daddy talking, we’ll have something to try. My main phone has been broken for the last seven or eight months, which is a shame as it has the best speakers and screen. However my backup phone (the C550/HTC Hurricane) had enough space left on its memory card (once I had resized and lowered the bitrate on the videos) to fit on both the video and audio-only version. The C500 (HTC Typhoon) and Sony Ericsson K700 (Irina’s old phone, and my old-old backup phone respectively) didn’t have much storage space available, but after lowering the bitrate on the MP3s, they fitted on perfectly. I’m hoping that by duplicating the content across multiple devices, that we will be able to have at least one device with enough battery power left to both play Anna’s favourite songs, and also make and receive phone calls.

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Feb 09 2010

Cleaner And Faster

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 6:40 pm

Another PC fixed and out the door! Part of the problem with viruses, trojans and other related malware in this country is the lack of awareness when it comes to understanding the need for protection. Luckily, Ira’s Dad’s driver knew that since his daughter’s antivirus software had expired, no new updates would be possible. So he dropped it off with a couple of accessories (a headset and webcam) that weren’t working, and asked if I could sort things out. After a sort out for the computer (cleaning out old and broken references from the registry), I removed the old anitvirus application, and installed a new one. Eleven instances of malware were found and eventually removed, though luckily this didn’t involve anything more involved than repeated scans, attempts at partial removals, and rebooting. The drivers originally installed for the onboard sound weren’t correct, which explained why the microphone sockets weren’t working, and after testing the webcam was happily performing as expected, and a final defrag, we gained a little more space on the computer desk here.

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Jan 21 2010

Take Cover…

Category: Anna's PhotosChrisM @ 12:55 am

Or at least wear something that hides stains really well the next time you are around Anna when she is about to enjoy some pasta and sauce. Regular readers will remember the previous photos of Anna’s mildly inaccurate food placement photos before, but I really think this one catches the moment pretty well. Namely her happiness with having sauce, pasta and meat to eat by hand, without silly Mum or Dad slowing her down, the wide area which such food normally leaves its mark, and also further proof that, despite Anna’s occasional very vocal protests, she really does still need to wear a bib when eating some foods 🙂

Do NOT Get In Between This Cutie And Her Pasta!

Do NOT Get In Between This Cutie And Her Pasta!

Oh, the photo was shot on the 10th of January. Another four or five posts and we’ll have once more caught up to real time posting of Anna’s pictures. I’ll wait a few days though, as the last 1/2 week’s posts take up the entire front page, and I know some friends and family don’t always get around to clicking the Previous Entries link to check out the second page.

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Dec 14 2009

No Travel, A Lot Of Food And Drink

Category: Friends,PersonalChrisM @ 4:45 pm

So Christmas is drawing near, and this will be the first year we won’t be back in Britain for the celebrations. Although I have mixed feelings on the subject, our finances meant that a trip home to Anna’s Nana, Dad (Welsh word) Kav, Grandad, Nick and Roz etc. will have to wait for a few more months. On the plus side, we’re hoping to meet up with some friends over here, both at the crossover point of Christmas Eve into Christmas Day, and also for Christmas Day itself, where Anna can play with (or at least alongside 🙂 ) some other children.
Irina is planning to bake a couple more Death By Chocolate cakes, so we have no need to try importing some Mr Kipling treats. There are apparently some vodka bottles in the freezer that need finishing off, I’ve recently managed to convince myself that beer isn’t so bad after all, and Inessa seems to have a lovely meal planned. Despite the fact that three families with children will be combining forces for Christmas Day dinner, I think we’re all relaxed enough to fit in with each other’s plans and/or traditions, and as one of the men already put it, “relax, get drunk and eat too much” seems to be the order of the day anyway 🙂

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