TGI Friday in Astana,with Anna,Irina&her Mum. Birthday meal is delicious so far. Custom cocktail slipped down well http://twitpic.com/1h1dha
Apr 20 2010
TGI Friday in Astana,with Anna…
Comments Off on TGI Friday in Astana,with Anna…
Apr 17 2010
Books And Turkish Planes
This picture was taken on the 19th of February (a couple of days before Anna’s first birthday!), when Anna decided to sort her toy box. By sorting, I mean removing most of the contents, and playing with them, before we came along and decided to put them back in. Anyway, Anna was already seemed very happy with the selection of toys that Mum and John had bought for her in advance, and her presents a few days later simply added to the things for her to press, rattle, shake, hug and investigate.
Feel free to be nosey and check out the books you can find in the living room bookcase, and the Turkish plane reference? Turkish Airlines handed out a pack of things to keep a child occupied on the last leg of our trip back home, and the plane seemed to hold Anna’s interest for a while.
Anna Sorting Her Toybox
Comments Off on Books And Turkish Planes
Apr 17 2010
These Boots Are(n’t) Made For Eating
Alternative title might be “The introduction of Zimmer Framer to the Russian language”…
This clip was shot on the 18th of February 2010, when we had just got back to Britain. Anna was (and to a point, still is) at the stage where most items of interest need to be tasted at least once. When they are new food items, this isn’t a problem. When they are Anna’s own shoes, this can cause a little concern. Anyway check the video to see Anna tottering around in the kitchen, and the soon to be classic phrase (in Russian) of “Anna, where is your zimmer frame?”.
Just to explain quickly, although Anna quickly found herself happily walking and running around Mum and John’s house, she would sometimes find a large (just about) movable object to push or drag around with her on her travels. In this case, it was a stool that she liked to direct around the kitchen when she was walking. The noise wasn’t exactly the most pleasant to encounter, but the look of joy on her face when she found she could reorder the places of furniture was certainly something to behold…
Comments Off on These Boots Are(n’t) Made For Eating
Apr 16 2010
Smaller Screens And Burgers!
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.
Comments Off on Smaller Screens And Burgers!
Apr 06 2010
ROTFTD
These were shot on the 15th of February, and show a cuddly donkey that Anna spotted, and John bought, on the way back from Heathrow airport to Clydach.
-
- Anna, A Donkey And Chris On The Floor
-
- Anna Resting After Tackling A Donkey
ROTFTD? A bastardization of ROTFL – (Rolling On The Floor Laughing becomes Rolling On The Floor Tackling Donkeys). Anna took a couple of days to become comfortable walking around Mum’s house in Wales (as she had only just started walking unaided back in the more familiar landscape of our flat in Astana). When she had had enough of walking around, she would sometimes totter up to the poor donkey and literally dive onto it…
Comments Off on ROTFTD
Mar 14 2010
Happy Mother’s Day Mums!
Mum (mine) – hope you have a great day, and once the day has progressed into a more socialable time, I’ll give you a call 🙂
Irina (Anna’s Mum) – Happy Mother’s Day from Anna. Next year she’ll hopefully be able to say it herself directly, and a few more years after that, be able to write her own post congratulating you 🙂
Comments Off on Happy Mother’s Day Mums!
Feb 19 2010
Ravioli Gets The Thumbs Up
As with most pasta based dishes, pelmeni is always met with a smiling face, and finished with a certain amount of mess on Anna’s face. As it is reasonably similar to the Italian dish of ravioli (being little packets of meat in a pasta envelope), Mum and Irina decided to see how Anna liked it. The main difference is that ravioli (at least the tinned variety) normally comes in a tomato sauce – not normally an issue for Anna. The short story is that Anna loved it, and you can see it being consumed with Anna in her high chair in a picture below. John took the photo sometime after the 14th February I think.
Comments Off on Ravioli Gets The Thumbs Up
Feb 19 2010
Anna In The Garden
I haven’t got around to finding our camera yet, so these pictures of Anna may well be out of sync, if we still have Kazakh photos to post.
Anyway, these were shot on the 13th or 14th of February – I think it may have been the latter (Valentine’s Day)? You can see the original Anna And Her Entourage post at John’s blog, but in case you haven’t got around to checking it recently, here are a few of the shots…
Head on over to John’s blog to catch the recent posts on their holiday, and don’t forget his gallery.
Comments Off on Anna In The Garden
Feb 17 2010
Quiet Arrivals
Almost a week with no posts! As you may have guessed, I, Irina and Anna all arrived in Britain safely last Friday. Our car is back on the road, various gadgets have been fixed/sorted at Mum’s, and we are starting to arrange seeing people across the country. It is Anna’s first birthday this Sunday, so we also need to sort a card and some presents. Speaking of presents, I’m looking at getting a Seagate 500gb Portable Hard Drive
Feb 10 2010
Lowering Standards
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.
Comments Off on Lowering Standards
« Previous Page — Next Page »