FIZZ

I went to the Fizz Forum with work for the past few days. This was an inaugural sort of internal conference about digital innovation in my company. I had entered a sort of competition a few months ago with a colleague of mine from Madrid and our idea was selected to be presented at this forum in San Francisco! We were really surprised and excited - the primary reason for entering was to try and win a trip to California and we did it!

Laura and I answering tough questions at the end of our talk

An action shot with the whole scene during our presentation

Grand finale - all the 37 presenters + the 5 organizers

It was 2 full days of presentations, each one 20 minutes long + 10 minutes of questions, then a final day devoted to guest speakers from outside the company talking about interesting stuff! We had speakers from Google, Stanford, Frog Design and Palo Alto Security Systems (or something like that). Anyway, all really cool and it was very exciting to be part of this. I normally don't get excited about "work stuff", but this was something quite different. Plus it was fun to be so ad-hoc and spontaneous with the idea that we presented.

Tonight as soon as this last photo was taken, I said my goodbyes and raced off to the airport to fly back to SB and get the kids so we can fly back tomorrow.

Boy talk

During the family event, Tryfan really bonded with Dawson, who is his 2nd cousin (Holly's youngest son who is 14). Holly's boyfriend Craig also hung out as did Rhiannon. Craig and Dawson were totally taken with T & R's accents and tales of their lives in England, so kept them entertained for most of the gathering.

Dawson holding Savannah, and Tryfan

Dawson also brought his segway, which Tryfan and Rhiannon were both eager to try. Tryfs ended up getting to go on it a bit more than Rhiannon, probably mainly because of his persistence.

Playing on Dawson's segway

It was great to see my kids bonding with their cousins. I think cousins are absolutely wonderful in general, and I feel so lucky to have a whole bunch of great ones scattered around the planet!

Pinata party

After everyone left this afternoon, we had a little birthday party celebration for Ingrid (turning 1 on Oct 3rd), Jordan (turning 2 on Oct 4th), Rebecca (Sept 25th) and also a shout out to Rhodri (Sept 20th). We bought a sweet donkey pinata from Santa Cruz Market for the occasion. It took a lot of bats with the broom to get the candy out of it, but it was pretty fun!

John and Jordan with Tryfs, and Jackie & Carol in the background

Someone got a bubble blower gadget as a present!

Rhiannon and Luke

Rhiannon was just completely in her element this whole time looking after all these little people! She seemed to cherish every moment with her younger cousins and spread her time equally between all of them. Aunt Heidi ended up even paying Rhiannon $40 for her work, she was so grateful.

Family photos

We didn't take many photos during the day, but we did all stand for some photos on the front porch

Front: Tryfan, Grandpa Don, Carol, Rhiannon, Eric, Kristin.
Middle: Steve, Lisl, Kim, Jana, Michael, Holly, Dawnie, Mom, Phoebe, Ingrid and Rebecca
Back: Rebekka, Danny, Heidi, John, Dawson, Ben, and Will
Missing: Jordan, Luke, Billy and Jackie (all napping) + Rhodri, Ryan, Matt, Guiselle, Elisanne, Rachel

Jana, Mom, Kim and Dawn with Grandpa Don

Cousins with Grandpa Don: Will, Eric, Heidi, Danny, Holly and me

Tryfan photo-bombing us!

Cousins: Ingrid, Rhiannon with Luke, Jordan, Tryfan with Billy, and Phoebe

Looooooove our family!

Grandma Linda's memorial

Today was the big day, with relations arriving from about 10 am. It was a hot day but very, very special.

John, Jordan, Ingrid, Grandpa Don, Luke, Rhiannon, Phoebe, Will and Tryfan with Rebecca passing like a ghost behind

Tryfs and Rhiannon with Ingrid and the party scene in the background

 My cousin Holly brought her baby "mini pig" named Savannah, who seemed quite pleasant and funny and was wearing a tutu that had "I love Mommy" written on it. Classic Holly!

 We had lunch first, then gathered in the living room for the memorial service hosted by Mom.

Michael, Jana, Heidi, Rhiannon, Danny, Rebekka, Steve and Mom.

Ben, Carol, Dawnie, Kim and Holly

Grandpa Don and a classic family photo from the 1960's

California bound!

In a lucky and blessed (though not completely happy) turn of events, the kids and I traveled to California yesterday for a week's visit. When my Grandma Linda passed away this summer, a date was set for her memorial to be Saturday 26 September. I was planning to come on my own all this time, but it was only a couple of weeks ago that I was able to also book the kids to come.

Rebecca, Ingrid, Will, Phoebe, Jordan, John, Heidi, Luke, Kristin, Rhiannon, Billy, Tryfan, Eric and me.

The reason for this is because I ended up winning a spot at a company innovation forum in San Francisco this week, so was able to put our personal funds into the kids' plane tickets since mine was covered by my employer! That is the lucky and blessed part.
Anyway, we flew with Norwegian Air from Gatwick to LAX on Thursday 24th Sept, rented a car and drove up to Santa Barbara that night, arriving at 9:15pm. We briefly reunited with Heidi & John, and also with Will & Rebecca before turning in for the night.  The next morning we all headed downtown at various times but ended up actually being all in the same place for the first time ever inside the REI store (hence the photo above). We split up in different directions around lunch time/ nap time, and the kids and I took Heidi, John, Jordan and Luke to the fabulous Backyard Bowls cafe. It felt like a tropical paradise inside because of the warm temperatures, palm trees and flowers blooming in the background.

Heidi and John inside Backyard Bowls

After lunch, we all headed back to the house and then us Sista's (Rebecca, Kristin, Heidi and I) nipped out while the babies were napping and had a foot and body combination special massage at Little Rainbow Foot Spa in the Kmart shopping center to celebrate Rebecca's birthday today. That was an amazing and wonderful (though not relaxing) hour, and we did a bit of grocery shopping on the way home.
In the late afternoon, a bunch of us went to Haskell's Beach to boogie board and play in the sea.

We got home and showered, and soon the house was full of party people! The herd of us were enough for a party anyway, but added to the mix was Carol & Jackie, Butch & Dorothy, Libby, Phil, Ruby & Molly, Dawnie & Ben, and probably some other friends and relations as well. Mom put on a good spread and it was all very happy and wonderful.

New car!

We've had a bit of a saga with Hans. He is a blue BMW 520d estate, and we've had a good handful of years with him. However, a few weeks ago we learned that we were not driving this car the way it is designed to be driven. Since Hans is a diesel, he is meant to be driven for long journeys. But the reality is that he is used to do the school run, which is about 2 miles round trip, and also the run to the post office in Forest Row, which is about 6 miles round trip. All these short journey were contributing to the early decline of the health of poor Hans. So Rhodri put him up for sale on the internet and meanwhile investigate the BMW i3, which is a fully electric car. Originally he hoped to be able to trade in Hans and get credit towards the i3, but the price that the dealership offered was so low that Rhodri decided to sell on his own. (Notice that I stayed completely out of it...)

Finally we had an eager buyer who drove here from Cambridge (a good 2-3 hours away) and Rhodri / James negotiated a price they were both happy with. James came back with his wife yesterday and they drove Hans away! Meanwhile we had picked up the i3 ("Bobby") a few days ago and breathed a huge sigh of relief to have all this car drama over with.

I will say it is SUCH a fun car to drive. It is the fastest car that BMW make for 0-30 mph - its like a rocket! So fun out of intersections or driving around cyclists or other cars. Really fun! I actually had a huge smile on my face as I drove it to work one day. That doesn't normally happen.

Welcoming back

The troops busted out the sidewalk chalk that Fran had given them and decorated the driveway ahead of Rhodri and Huw returning on Monday night.

They returned around 7:30pm and we all had a nice dinner together hearing stories of their cycling weekend. Then they stayed on for another day so that Huw could work remotely today and they could drive at night to miss out on the traffic getting back to Bristol. It all worked out really well and we were glad they could stay all this time.

Mellow times

We had some mellow and lovely times this weekend with Fran and Gwil.
We also did some sourdough bread baking with Fran, who had brought with her a little bit of sourdough starter. It was fun to have this project going on intermittently through the weekend.

We had a sweet little picnic on Sunday at the Jubilee Green. It turned out to be such a lovely afternoon that more and more of our neighbors and friends ended up congregating here. Soon there was a whole herd of kids aged 6-11 playing in the woods together and the adults lazed in the sunny patch of grass on the green. It was all very impromptu and lovely.

First day of school 2015-2016

Our school has introduced new uniforms this year and boy are they smarter!

Baby in the house!

We've had a frantic couple of days - Rhods and I got back on Tuesday night and we had Wednesday to regroup (sort of), say goodbye to Nain and Taid, and say hello to Huw, Fran and baby Gwilym who arrived Wed evening to stay for a week. Actually, Huw and Rhodri left at 6am the next morning and Fran & Gwilym will stay with us for a week while the boys were riding bikes in the Alps.