The Buckingham Blog

Today James is 31, yay!

We got up and the kids gave their presents to him.  Krystal sounded like she had a sore throat and was a bit hoarse.  I took Kory down to nursery.  We all went back down to collect him later then headed out for lunch.  We went to Frankie & Benny's down the beach.  It was nice, although Krystal wasn't very happy throughout. 

Once we were done, she seemed ok and we decided to head to Asda for a few bits 'n' bobs.  Mistake!  She started really crying, we left with nothing and she coughed till she was sick in the car.  We came home and she crashed out which she never does. 

We did manage to get her to eat a sandwich and some grapes for her tea, didn't even want to try with a proper meal.  She's gone to bed ok, but been awake already, poor baby.

Anyway, James did well for pressies, I got him a pair of Oakley glasses, he got money from lots of people, a remote control helicopter which him and Kory have had fun with, Guitar Hero (Aerosmith) and a book on Lost.  Not bad for someone who doesn't like birthday's I reckon! 

All in all with me not being 100% able yet and Krystal being ill, it wasn't the birthday I/we expected.  Happy Birthday Jamesy!

Julie.xx

P.S.  Walking back to the car today the kids were peering in these doors for a while.  I decided to take a photo for Jenni's benefit.  The doors are that of an old haunt from the good old student days, Amadeus.  Inside looks like no-one has been in since the doors closed several years ago. 

Last Saturday morning Krystal and me took the early flight down to London. Krystal's nearly two now ( where has the time gone ?) and has never been down so the trip has been well overdue for her to meet some of her family and visit her  Nana and Grandad's.

So we arrived in Luton around 11am where we met up with my parents. Krystal was a bit shy at first but nothing an offer of food and drink didn't get out of her soon :-). We took the train back to their flat and stopped off for an hour or so for Krystal to have a sleep before we headed out again to pull a surprise visit on my Nan (Kids' Great-Nan).

She's not been very well recently so it was good to walk in an see a big smile on her face at seeing us both. Krystal didn't seem as shy at this introduction and insisted on chasing the cat around the place for the hour or so we were there.

 Here's a rare photo of 4 generations of Buckingham's together

And that was really Saturday! By the we got back and had some dinner it was getting late for Krystal and she was quite tired from the long day.

Next morning we had a bit of a chill out. Krystal spent the morning playing with mine and Kelly's old toys from when we were kids. She loved the toy house and elephant rings.

We all headed out after that with the plan of going to the O2 Arena for a bit of a nosey and some brunch.

We decided to go via Westminster to get some piccies and onto the Thames boat trip to the "front door" of the Arena.

O2 was HUGE. I've only ever seen it on the TV but I didn't realise that there was so much going on inside it. Krystal got in the front door saw the large reception and just legged it. She'd been couped up in the buggy, train and boat for most of the trip so wasn't waiting to take advantage of the situation and have a run around.

We stopped at one of the Steak and Grill Bars for some "all you can eat" lunch. It was really nice although I felt like I had to roll out after finishing the full rack of ribs, coleslaw and chips I had. Even with Krystal's help I was still stuffed stupid.

We finished off looking around the Arena and after that headed for the train and onto Hamley's the Toy Store. It was about an hour to get there and just as we walked in the door Krystal decided to have a kip. So there was us, 3 adults, all standing around wondering what to do with ourselves.

I had a quick look at the Transformers (couldn't help a nosey) before going back to the flat. The rest of the day was really spent there, being over exposed to "In the Night Garden" recordings (Thanks Dad)  Krystal had great funplaying with Mu's ducks too.

.

 
And that was it really! My Mum took the Monday morning off to spend some time with us. We had a quick play before packing up, saying our good byes and heading off to get our flight back home in the afternoon.

Krystal was really good on both the trip there and back. Even had some compliments from the people we were sitting next to on the flight about her behaviour.

She was very tired when we did arrive back at the house and we didn't hear a single noise from her at all. Quite rare as we usually get singing, she obviously had a great time.

Thanks again Mum and Dad for having us. Hope you've recovered from the chaos.

James

Even Mummy's and Daddy's need a break sometimes so Kory and Krystal took over with the Sunday jobs for the day ;-)

Last week Julie bought some Christmas paint stamp things and Kory asked if I would do them with him.  I'm not really into doing craft things with them (that's Julie's department) but we did it on Sunday and Kory enjoyed it.  Krystal made a right mess and then got fed up. 

This morning Kory, Krystal & I made cookies.  Though they had more fun running their fingers round the bowl and licking them than they did making them though.

 James

No this isn't a sales pitch. I got sent this interesting link the other day which I thought I'd blog about.....

 "Don’t use the 0870 premium rate numbers when calling customer services at big companies This database has lists of alternative numbers – some geographical (cheaper), or even Freephone numbers.

http://www.saynoto0870.com/search.php

So for example I was on to Scottish Power yesterday (and nPower the other day) using their freephone numbers (rather than the 0870 numbers on their correspondence) – surprisingly enough they tend to go through to exactly the same call handling system – just free!"

So there you go :-). Save yourself a bit of cash.

James

Is it just me or has the world of communication just gone completely mad? Thinking aloud I can now be contacted via my home phone, mobile, text, email (5 addresses on last count), this blog, Bebo, Facebook and Messenger. Oh and by letter - can't remember the last time I got one of those though!

In terms of online, I'm finding myself spending more and more time checking each site to get the latest news and goss' from friends and family as well as trying to put my snippets of news in each as well. It's just getting daft how much time I'm wasting in these things. So if that wasn't enough I just got an email from Jill last night inviting me to join Twitter . Now this is something I could get addicted to :-). 

I've actually had an account there for a while but completely forgot about it. Essentially though the site wants you to answer one simple question - What are you doing right now?

I see this as a lazy man/woman's blog but in 125 characters you place entries in of what you're doing or thinking at that exact time. Being an era of online networking and friend requests Twitter follows all that by allowing others to "follow" your entries and you can do the same with them if they have an account.

"Sounds a bit dull" you might say but come on people how many of you like to know what other people are up to? That's why all these websites are popping up and driving us all mad - anyone else getting fed up with App requests from Bebo and Facebook??

So anyway you can find me here and I'm going to see how I get on with this. So if you're ever thinking "I wonder what James is doing right now" you know where to look  :-). Oh it's accessible on mobile phones as well so no you don't need to be at a desk.

James.

P.S. Be warned I have some really geeky thoughts something :-)

Sorry for not getting this on sooner. What with me trying to sort out pictures and a spell of illness over the past couple of days I'm just not as efficient as everyone else at getting these entries on the blog.

Anyway, excuses aside, better tell you all about my (our) birthday weekend to Aviemore last week. Like Julie said my birthday surprise from her and my parents was a relaxing weekend in the Hilton hotel. We headed off on Saturday morning, the car packed like we were going for a fortnight rather than one night,  around 10.

The drive wasn't bad actually and the kids behaved the whole way. We got there about 12:30 but as check-in wasn't till 15:00 we decided to do a bit of a driving around first to see what had changed in the 15+ yrs since I was last there (not a lot!) and try and get our bearings.
 

We found this nice little Italian just down the road from the hotel. Stupidly, and I have no idea what we were thinking, we decided to have the "all you can eat" buffet they had on. It was really nice actually, all the food was homemade and was being replaced with new stuff every few minutes - Yes Krystal does eat that much!! :-)

After rolling out all full-up we headed to the hotel. It's really grown since I last saw it and the place is now full of things for the kids to do. Kory had a field day the moment we got out the car.

After checking in we headed up to the room. The hotel had laid out a nice little surprise for me as well in the form of chocolates, shortbread, sparkling wine and balloons. Woo hoo!!!

The kids loved the surprise as well :-) 

We never really got time to have a drink as we headed straight down to the swimming pool to let the kids have a splash around. Krystal has never been to a pool so this was her first time and, being so long, Kory was a wee bit rusty as well. Both were in tears pretty much the moment we got in but it didn't take them that long to get used to it. A few milestones for Kory as well - he managed to doggy paddle for the first time with his arm bands and a float and got to try his first jacuzzi.

Time went past really quickly and by 18:00 we were in for dinner. Still bloated from the Italian the 3 course meal was nice but oh it was too much!!! I was still feeling the affects at 08:00 the next morning :-(.

We called it a night after that as Krystal was getting grumpy!!

Kory on the other hand saw this as an opportunity to party and was still going strong at 22:00. Well I say strong, this was him at 22:00 but his head hit the pillow like a lead balloon 10 minutes later :-)

 
Generally it was a good night sleep as well which was an another nice surprise.

The weather wasn't great the next morning but with an 11 o'clock checkout the time soon flew by. We went down for an early breakfast which basically had everything under the sun going ( and me still stuffed from the ngiht before - bulk!!). The kids stuffed themselves silly and Julie stuffed her face like she wasn't going to be eating breakfast for another week. It was yum though :-)

The hotel gave us one more present which was a complimentary pass for the kids to go into their fun house. So after we were all checked out we headed there. They both had a great time, unlike the ones in Aberdeen though, the adults aren't allow on with them (boo!!) so we had to sit and watch them from afar.

"The party man" Kory didn't last as long as he usually does and was knackered after about an hour. So cue our time to get in the car and head home.

Both of them slept pretty much the whole way so I think we can safely say that a good time was had by all.

And so ends my 30th birthday celebration. Well almost, my 33-inch Transformer just turned up today  - woo hoo!!! My parents birthday present to me. I'll get some photos of that on soon :-).

Finally, thanks everyone for all your presents and the effort you all made for my birthday. It's really appreciated! If you heard the problems they all had organising all this lot they'll be glad to see the back of this milestone.

 Anyway here's some more photos from the weekend. Talk soon.

 James

 

Today is James' 30th Birthday, what an old man!!  It's been a busy weekend.  Starting on Friday, I went and got James a huge 3 and a 0 balloon and blew up lots of normal balloons and banners.  It was meant to be a surprise, but when we collected James after Kindergym, Kory announced we were going home to Daddy's Party with balloons, so that was that!!  Kids!!

Today we got up and I made the kids toast to eat while James opened all his cards and presents (all 2 of them)    He got a silver miniature clock - which is a laptop and the clock is on what would be the screen - from the kids, engraved with "Happy 30th Birthday Daddy, Love Kory & Krystal" so that was his thing to keep.  Very apt for a geek!  His other actual present was from Jenni and is classic - an old mans cap, you know the proper yorkshire kind that Seth on Emmerdale wore or Last of the Summer Wine??

His main "present" from me and his parents is a night away for the 4 of us (nice present, I win too!) to Aviemore to stay in the Hilton dinner bed and breakfast as when I asked him what he wanted for his birthday he said he just wanted to spend time with his family...awww! 

So after he'd opened all that lot, Kory and I came down to make him a fry up (something I don't really like doing so it is a real treat!) and Kory had it too.  Krystal had her cereal and we all got dressed to go out.  I might add that this took till about 11:30pm, so a lot of time passed before we headed out for lunch. 

We went to Jimmy Chungs - the chinese buffet place down the beach.  As usual we all stuffed ourselves up and had to roll out.  And all for under a tenner, bargain!! 

Next we drove to a forest and went for a walk.  It started well, but Kory got sore legs, Krystal got fed up in the buggy so Kory ended up in it while James carried Krystal.  By the time we got back to the car Krystal was hysterical!

Anyway, we headed home after that, but went on a detaour to a park we keep seeing from the turning near our house that we didn't know was there!!  So we found a new area which was really nice and Kory loved it too.

We've had a lovely busy day and both Kory and Krystal are exhausted.  Mind you I think at his old age James is too!  Enjoy the following photos!!


It was all too much for Kory & Krystal!!

A Highland Cow we came across (I love them!)

The view from the park towards our house

And lastly a wee treat...photos of James in his childhood!!

Aww, a wee baby Jamesy

Cute Hat??!!

Kory thinks this is him, and just won't accept that it's James!

Don't think the musical talents went any further than this

Looking Good!!



Ginger James - he tried to dye his blonde hair to black,
it went disasterously wrong!!!
 

Here's a wee video we took of Kory tonight.... after we stopped laughing. He's a funny wee dude.

James