John and Andrea Udberg

We’ve had a busy and enjoyable holidays so far!  Photos up for the month start with the Christmas party up at Powburn.  This year I volunteered Andrea and myself to cook the feast…

One Jamie Oliver DVD later and a 9.4kg Turkey in the boot we headed up a good 7 hours before everyone else were due to arrive and had a great time!  The food was well received and the night went well, Andrea was not sick for the first Christmas in ages and outlasted me by a long way.

Christmas day was quiet with Dave, Mary and Laura all being in different stages of illness.  We had a nice chilled out day and I did some of the cooking to compliment a Turkey crown and lump of Beef cooked by Dave!

On the 27th we headed off to the Lakes with Graham and Beth.  Two nights in Ambleside have been well spent with much beer, merriment and walking.  Our first evening we were entertained by the one and only (I do hope so…) “Julio Geordio”.  He played a great mix of old classics and modern anthems.  Looking at the 200 dark and blurry photo’s we took I’d say we really enjoyed ourselves.

Those big on geography will know Windemere town is not 3 miles from Ambleside.  We were blissfully ignorant of this fact after seeing a misleading sign and attempted to walk it.  About 2 and a half hours and 4-5 miles later we realised something was wrong and called a cab from a pub… no point in wearing ourselves out before dinner.

Thinking of the family back in NZ as they remember Catherine one year on.

There’s two lonely pictures in the November gallery, both from our recent trip to Edinburgh to see the All Blacks v Scotland with Simon, Shona and her family.

We were walking through a shopping centre before the match and saw the two players above, Rodney So’oialo and Jerome Kaino.  They didn’t seem too impressed to be accosted for a photo, even Andrea’s opening line of “Hi, I’m Andrea from Putaruru” generated little response.  I was pretending I didn’t know her after that but had to drop that pretense after being asked by her to take a photograph of them together.

We are looking forward to Christmas!  The tree has been retrieved from Dave and Mary’s loft and it has new baubles from Asda adorning it.

We sent off the NZ pressies last weekend after being gouged charged a fair and reasonable amount by the post office and two of the four packages arrived in under a week!  A new record!  Who knows where the other half are but hopefully they aren’t far behind.

Ofsted were at Andrea’s school two weeks ago.  They are still waiting for the official report but the outcome seems to have been positive… its a relief to have it over and done with.

Andrea is taking the ‘Life in the UK’ test on Wednesday as part of her new visa… she has failed 6 practice tests on the computer so far!

We’re home from our 3 night holiday in Barcelona.  We had glorious sunshine for over a day and a half… then rain for the next day and a bit.

I was in charge of picking the hotel… so I went for the new one!  It had only been open a few weeks when we arrived and was impressively swanky.  Lots of modern touches such as and an iPod dock, plasma TV, fancy coloured lighting and slidy doors.

The hotel was in an ‘urban’ area.  That, we found out quite quickly, means rough.  We didn’t have any problems but that may have been down to the increased police presence in the area since the hotel opened.  Protect those rich tourists at all costs.

We explored the city mostly by foot but the metro system was impressively efficient.  Two and a half minutes was our longest wait.

Highlights of the trip included Gaudis architecture such as Park Guell, Casa Mila, Casa Battlo and La Sagrada Familia.  Also impressive was Newcastle’s first win in ages watched from a Irish bar with two Israeli’s and two Australians.

The food and beer were much enjoyed, the tapas was tasty if not a bit similar between venues.  Las Ramblers was interesting and we managed to avoid the pick pockets.

So our brief but relaxing holiday has ended.  I am back to work tomorrow and Andrea has another three days to prepare for the next half term… roll on Christmas

Click on the piccy of us above to see the photographs.

We stayed in a cottage in Beadnell last weekend with Jen, Ryan, Max and Hazel.  It was a really nice holiday cottage on a farm right next to the dunes and beach.

On the Saturday morning we headed for the sand armed with Ryan’s kites and land board.  Unfortunately the gusty conditions, wet kite and my lack of co-ordination meant I didn’t quite get the hang of the kite flying.

The hard ground making contact with Ryan’s knee resulted in another injury and early finish to one of his kite sessions.  He’s making a habit of that.

In the afternoon Max, Ryan and Andrea did a spot of Kayaking and then we all went for a walk around the rocks and pools.

Saturday night we walked to the local pub for some drinks and fine cuisine.  The drinks were nice… the food was OK but it was more like a fish and chip shop than good country pub food.  After we were well fed we headed off back to the cottage for a few more drinks as Andrea, Jen and Hazel watched x-factor and the lads played cards.

Photographs start here.