Mar 05 2009
First we have a shot of the bouquet of flowers/clothes that Nick and Roz sent to us back in Wales, and then a shot of Anna’s feet with Ira’s my hands, back on the 5th of March. Again, the second shot was taken in John’s studio, but I don’t think I’m breaking a publishing embargo 🙂 , as looking at the different shots, I don’t think this one will be used in the book.
Mar 04 2009
The TyTnII/Kaiser car mount review is still waiting for some text to be entered, but to keep you going, here are my thoughts on the Jimi wallet so far.
To make things clear, this review isn’t paid for. However, after I mentioned a Jimi wallet in a separate review a while back, the owner contacted me, and offered to send one if I was prepared to give some honest thoughts on it.
The model I received was the classic design, without any memory card holders or external money clips (just the standard internal one). The idea of using a money clip has never really entered my head previously, for two reasons. Most of the time, I’m lucky to have more than a couple of notes on me, and I think it may be more of an American thing than British. Anyway, the wallet has a removable money clip, and despite being designed for US dollars (which are wider and shorter) does the job well. Depending on how many notes you are stuffing in, various folds seem to work best. The credit card holder on the other side most comfortably operates with one to three cards in it, though four is possible, if you don’t mind extraction time at a till taking longer. One of the models I received was a ‘clear’ one, which enables my driving license to been seen in the wallet, but I’d expect any official asking for ID to want it removed, so when it comes to choosing a colour, I’d not rate clear as having a specific advantage to the others.
I was highly sceptical about the main hinge on the wallet, combined with the clasp system – convinced one would snap or fail to click into place within a matter of weeks. I’ve been proven wrong… the wallet has been with me pretty much 24/7 since we arrived back in the UK – I didn’t want to be caught without the essentials on me should Ira go into labour early (how wrong could we have been there 🙂 ). The Jimi still closes correctly and clicks shut – no instances of it flying open and spraying the room with its contents.
What else can I mention? The size of the wallet is such that you can dump it in a pocket of most trousers at the front, leading to easier access when driving etc., and a little more reassurance should your stumble home from the pub go through any pick pocketing areas.
I’ll try and find the photos we took of the wallet, but for now head on over to the Jimi wallet site.
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Mar 04 2009
Here we have a continuation of the photos from our first of two St Nicholas boat club trips. As we approached this low bridge, we all assumed we were just going to use the area preceeding it as a turning circle. A few eyebrows were raised as we carried on in a straight line, not seeming to slow down at all…
Continue reading “Amsterdam 2008 Photos #7”
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Feb 28 2009
As I recently mentioned, we finally managed to get around to collecting all of Anna’s photos into one place, so I can now start posting them here for family and friends to see. Apologies for the three week delay in getting these up, but TBH I’ve not had a lot of spare time recently, for some reason 🙂
This shot was taken when the first batch of ‘Congratulations’-type cards arrived. I think this is one of the pictures that will make it into Anna’s book that John and Irina are producing.
Next we have a close up shot that was taken on the 28th of February
OK, that’s all for now as the food shopping needs to be put away downstairs.
Feb 28 2009
After YouTube banned my original account, (long story, the short version is I lost it due to short clips involving BBC material), I have finally got around to uploading some videos to my new account.
This post includes Anna’s first appearance in a movie (28th Febraury, on the sofa in Clydach, with Anna at just one week old), at least from Irina’s camera. I still need to hookup our proper camcorder and rip it to DVDs/YouTube etc. Anyway, enough of the text, onto the star 🙂
Click the link below to see: A higher quality version of the same video, parts 2-6 from the sofa, and also Irina in hospital a couple of days before the birth. (The ‘HQ’ embedded version appears to just be the same video enlarged, rather than the HQ version available from the video’s page on YouTube.com)
OK, just press the HQ button to watch a better quality version.
Continue reading “Anna’s First Video!”
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Feb 27 2009
Today we went to Swansea’s County Hall/Civic Centre, to see the Registrar and officially registered the birth of Anna Christina Merriman. Her middle name is a suitable mixture of Christopher and Irina, which is close to what her patrynomic name would be in Russian. Hopefully the Kazakh red tape guardians will accept this as a suitable choice, and won’t complain.
These photos were all taken around the time Mum showed Ira and I the best approach to bathing little Anna, and we’ve since done this solo without any major mishaps. Irina was a little apprehensive about full on bathing (as opposed to topping and tailing) and safety, so I explained that if the bath shifts around, or looks likely to shoot off the surface its laid on, hold the baby, and forget about trying to stop the bath from falling – as long as Anna is safe and secure, no is going to give a damn about a little spilt water. A case of not throwing the baby out with the bath water 🙂
Feb 27 2009
In an attempt to not scare off my readers who don’t particularly want to see baby posts all the time, I’ll try to continue the posts from before. Here we are back in Amsterdam 2008 again, when Ira and I went over for my birthday. This is the first boat trip we went on with the not for profit St Nicholas boat club organization. We later went on an evening tour, to get a feel for the city from the waterways whilst it was dark.
We had a great captain who took us around, and unlike the large plexiglass covered tourist boats, we were able to fit into much narrower canals, take a peek in areas not normally toured around and even… well, you’ll just have to wait until the next post for information on where we went that had us hitting the deck!
As ever, click the link below to see a lot more pictures – if I display them all on the front page, the site would take a long time for everyone to load up.
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Feb 23 2009
After spending a couple of months guarding/accompanying Irina, Gwen suddenly found there was a new baby in the house. She seemed to adjust very quickly (this photo was taken 23rd February 2009), realising that whatever/whoever this new arrival was, we were all obviously giving a lot of attention to it, and that she was being very closely monitored whenever she approached this strange smelling bundle of joy. Pretty soon, Gwen was alerting us if she heard Anna crying, and dutifully following Irina around and around the back yard when Anna was getting some fresh air in her pram.
John Anna Gwen on the sofa in Clydach
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Feb 21 2009
No, really, I think these are the last unpublished photos from Anna’s birth day, after this there will be a little more variety. If you are used to reading about Kazakhstan, WordPress info, Amsterdam and Conspiracy Theories, sorry, you’ll just have to have a little more patience…
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Feb 17 2009
Gone to Mothercare© to see if it places Ira in the mood for delivery 🙂
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