Snack for Santa

Michael and Emma with a snack for Santa. Emma struggling to muster a smile.

Nobel peace prize

Emma and Michael used to fight over who would get to sit in the middle of the table in our kitchen. My ingenious solution was to rotate the table by 45 degrees so that there were now two middle seats!
Show me the kroner!

Strange relaxation

A couple of pictures illustrating the weird positions in which Michael and Emma get comfortable.

Emma enjoyed being wrapped up like a burrito in Sarah's sofa blanket. Sarah and I were both surprised to see that Michael had slipped into a Santa hat to fall asleep.

Teatime with Emma

Emma got a tea set from the primary Christmas party. She'd wear this type of dress everyday if we'd let her away with it.

The first tooth to fall

The wobbly tooth finally comes out

Emma with the sparkler

Michael with the sparkler

All wrapped up warm

The quest to build a tower taller than Emma is complete

Michael's first tooth came out, with a little self-dentistry work. He was really excited, and thought that the tooth fairy was going to leave him a chocolate coin. We were pleasantly find that he left a proper coin under the pillow.

Sarah picked up a couple of sparklers for Guy Fawkes night. After a brief health and safety lesson from me, we lit the sparklers. It was great fun until someone let off a big loud firework somewhere close, and Emma got a little spooked and wanted to go back inside. No first-degree burns, so everyone was happy.

We had an incident where Michael came clean about misleading us regarding his behaviour status at school. They have a green-amber-red system, and Michael had been on red a couple of times a few weeks ago, so we were worried. Since then he'd said he'd always been on red, but when Sarah was talking to him about parents night he came clean and said he'd been lying and had been on amber a couple of times. Sarah was more upset because he was able to lie to both of us than that he'd actually lied. We banned him from TV, video games or the iPad for a couple of days, and that seems to have helped get the message across. When Sarah got to parents night, Michael got a glowing (if hurried) report, and it turned out that the only times he'd been on amber recently were when the whole group had been put on amber, which we wouldn't have been worried about.

Emma's still having toilet accidents about once a week. She does really well, then just wets herself randomly once in a while, usually in the house within a few feet of the bathroom. She did it the other day in the kitchen just after Sarah had asked her if she needed to go. Sarah was very upset.

Emma also refuses to wear anything other than dresses.

Cruise 2012 - Videos

Shark teeth

An update on Michael's wobbly tooth - he's got a shark tooth growing in behind his wobbly one. You might need to click on the photo to enlarge it, but it's behind his left front tooth.

Halloween 2012

Emma gets devil-eyed thinking about Mandy's spider cakes

 Modelling with the pumpkins

Getting ready to go out

Lighter picture with the pumpkins

We've had a nice halloween. Michael and Emma were excited to design their pumpkins using an iPad app! How modern is that!

They went out with Joseph and Liam. Michael had a couple of jokes, but Emma kept spoiling the punchlines by shouting "Stinky Pants!". She found it very funny.

Cruise 2012 - Athens - The Edinburgh of the South

The full compliment of Adams

Enjoying the metro

Relaxing after the stairs

Enjoying the fenicular railway

Emma and Roz take some time out to discuss the greek financial crisis (with food pilfered from the cruise buffet)

Black Family portrait

Enjoying the acropolis

Emma adopting her new favourite mode of transport - on Neil

Michael posing

Emma finds a new favourite mode of transport (they confiscated our buggy)

Some random dog - there were many of them in Athens

The journey down with Jamie and Grandma

I'd always planned to limit myself to one excursion on the cruise. I freely admit that I hadn't paid any attention to the planning, so when I found out what was involved in our Greece expedition I decided it'd be better if I didn't go - until Sarah vetoed that and convinced me that wasn't the correct choice. I'm kind of glad she did. It took two bottles of energy drinks, a lot of rests and 3 naps to get over it, but it didn't trigger a major relapse (worse case scenario) and made some good memories. It was great for me to be onshore with the kids as well.

Uncle Neil served his mission in Greece, so it was really great for him to get a chance to show us around. He tried to teach Michael some essential greek. This consisted of -

• "oki" - no
• "po po po" (with side to side hand gesture) - i'm not bothered/i don't care/whatever
• tutting with raised eyebrows and tilting head back - saying no (which seems really rude but apparently isn't)

He tried to teach him the word for dog, but that didn't stick. There were a lot of stray dogs roaming about.

We'd had our date changed for going to Athens as there had been a general strike. I'm glad it was changed, as it was a lovely place. 

Michael and Emma had a great time, but the place isn't designed with buggies in mind, so Emma had to do a lot of walking. 

We had a bit of a trek to get to the Metro, as the boat had dropped us off not near the middle of the harbour. We here heading towards a church on a hill in the middle of Athens which gave great views. This did involve going up a lot of steps then a fenicular train, which Emma and Michael loved. We came across a street market on our travels which was fantastic. The views from the church at the top of the hill were absolutely fantastic.

Following that, we got into some taxis and headed over to the Acropolis. Greek driving, like italian driving, isn't for the faint hearted, but it seems to work. 

Emma did her bit to help with the rebuilding that was going on by chucking some stones about herself. Michael seemed to enjoy climbing about on the big chunks of marble polished by centuries of people walking over them.

The general consensus was that it was a lovely day, and that the British should give back the Elgin Marbles.

Cruise 2012 - Day trip to Crete

Uncle Alan helps out with a very tired Emma

Both Michael.......

.....and Emma get a shot at driving the boat

Unwinding with Auntie Alyson

Emma seems unfazed by her mum's stormtrooper outfit

Emma gently gets lowered into the Sea

Swimming with mummy

Michael with the starfish and urchins

Maggie and Emma

Neil, Maggie, Emma and Michael on the way to the lighthouse

The lighthouse - Emma discovers an even better mode of transport

Emma in the sun

Relaxing

Emma and Michael's evening wear

Luxury food - Michael and Emma style

The extended family had booked a glass-bottomed boat for when we got to Crete. Emma and Michael enjoyed seeing all the underwater creatures through the glass, and even got to handle an octopus. 

Michael didn't want to go swimming the in sea, but Emma was quite keen. They both got a shot of driving the boat, which I'm pretty sure wasn't a good idea, but they were supervised. Luckily they didn't expect the same opportunity once they got back onto the cruise ship.

Michael's got a project at school where he's got to make a model of a lighthouse. There was one where they were on Crete, so they decided to walk to it. Sarah reported that it took a long time to get there, but Maggie and Neil were great at helping out with Michael and Emma.

Cruise 2012 - On the Boat

Sarah, Jamie and Michael enjoy the ice skating

Emma watching a film on the iPad

Sarah has a go at the climbing wall

The towel dog!

Michael and Emma at one of their favourite places - the lifts

View of the boat's promenade

Rare sight of my legs

Sarah holds onto kids beside a 10-story drop on the other side

Emma, Michael and I do our best to avoid a Norovirus outbreak

Emma and Michael loved that dog

Food! Emma demonstrates where it goes.

Basketball

Golf

Sarah smiles through Emma's preferred transport arrangement - being carried

Emma plays on the tables......

......whilst Michael shoots dinosaurs

That's the closest to a motorbike we'll ever let her get

The Dining room

Michael demonstrates his breadroll icebreaker

Emma enjoys a cocktail whilst Michael helps our team in the Beatles quiz (a perfect 20/20!)

Towel Bunny!

Emma shares her food

Alan and Alyson match the surroundings

Emma enjoys the crocodile outside the casino

Sarah has her second go on the climbing wall

Michael and Emma take some time to relax by taking on daddy at some games

Sarah tries out rollerblading

An active volcano with smoke coming out of it. Nothing to worry about apparently

The Towel Monkey

Neil, Maggie, Alan and Alyson take Emma to the golf....

...and the basketball whilst Sarah explores Sicily

The ship itself was really something. It was like a floating hotel, and had lots to do (and eat!).

Our room had a balcony and a door through to Grandma and Granddad's room. The plan had been to use pull-out beds for Emma and Michael, but it turned out we had bunk beds that came down from the ceiling over the top of the beds. There was no way that was working out, so we got a couple of mattresses and put them on the floor. It worked out really well.

There was a lot to explore. Michael and Emma really enjoyed the golf and basketball. The Black genes seem to be strong in Emma, as she would walk down the fairway of the crazy golf, plonk her ball right next to the hole then tap it in! 

There was lots of food. There was a buffet for breakfast and lunch, then we usually had our evening meal in the more formal dining room. Emma seemed to like running around the big thing of flowers at the entrance. Michael and Emma got some great food off the children's menu, and especially liked it when the waiters would give them some tomato sauce in the shape of a smiley face.

The jacuzzis were great, but the main pool itself was unheated. I'm finding that often with Emma, when she's really insistent that she wants to do something unadvisable, just letting her do it seems to be the best plan to help her realise why it's unadvisable. She went on for a while about wanting to go into the main pool (which I knew was freezing at the time). Eventually I went over with her and let her lower herself into the pool. She soon learned why I'd been trying to convince her not to do it and came out of the pool with a panic-stricken face. 

Michael and Emma seemed to really love going up and down in the lifts. Michael was desperate to push the buttons. We managed to avoid losing one of them in the lifts, but had a couple of close calls.

They enjoyed the kids club, but Michael was too young by a few months for the aged 6-9 club which had games consoles. That was for the best, as he would have played them all day, but it was hard for him to bear. 

There weren't that many kids on board, and lots of people seemed quite drawn to Emma. Sarah got asked by a stranger at the buffet one night where her beautiful blonde baby was. Everyone seemed to want to talk to her in the lifts, and Emma got better at talking back as the week went on. She often was wearing slightly over-the-top outfits (e.g. tutus) to dinner.

Michael helped us win two quizes. The first was a movie music quiz, and he recognised Batman and Harry Potter straight away from playing the lego games with me on the wii. He was also really good at the Name the Beatles song quiz, where we got a perfect 20 out of 20! We sent him up after the music quiz to collect the prize.