1 Year Old and Still Going…

Gareth’s Blog has been going for a year now.

I’ve been quite surprised by how I’ve kept adding to it, I didn’t think that I would have lasted this long. It has been good to tell people about what’s been going on in my life.

In that time there has been:

• 148 posts (including this one)

• Over 9000 visits to my blog

• Over 130 comments - I’m quite surprised at this that people have wanted to leave comments.

• 2361 spam comments have been caught

• May 2008 was the best month: 2057 views.

• Tuesday 20th May 2008 was best day : 142 views

Thanks to everyone who has contributed and taken a look at what goes on in my life.

Here’s to the next 12 months.

A New Bed For Ellie

Ellie was very excited today.

After weeks of waiting her new bed arrived this morning. All afternoon Ellie was waiting for me to get home so that we could put it together, so as soon as I got home, Ellie was dragging me upstairs to get the job done.

First job though was to dismantle the cot-bed so that we could move it into the nursery ready for the arrival of the new baby. Reassembling the cot will be tomorrow night’s job.

The process of putting the new bed together was much easier than anticipated and the whole thing was put together in about an hour. To finish it all off we out on Ellie’s new duvet set. It is “Dora the Explorer”, and Ellie couldn’t wait to try it out:

 

The bed must be pretty comfy, as she has gone straight off to sleep tonight.

Sleep tight Ellie.

Love Dad.

Kids Do Some Funny Things

Yesterday Ellie had Gemma and I laughing.

Gemma was talking to her Mum on the phone when Ellie asked to speak to Nana Mandy. Ellie wanted to tell her about her holiday, and to show her the photos that were taken at the holiday.

All excited, Ellie took the phone off Gemma and headed upstairs to her bedroom where the photos were to show Nana. Gemma and I remained downstairs where we listened to Ellie saying to Nana Mandy,

“Look Nana, photos.”

We just knew that she was then holding up the phone for Nana to have a look, as Nana kept saying to Ellie,

“I can’t see them”

As Ellie gets older there are going to be some more treats to savour.

Its Been A Busy Few Weeks

I must apologise that there hasn’t been much activity on my blog recently. Its been a busy few weeks that I’ve not had too much time to update things.

With starting my new job I’ve actually been doing some proper work so I’ve not had the same opportunities to update my blog with new stuff. So hopefully I’ll get into a better routine in the coming weeks and get posting on the blog.

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 32

There are only 8 weeks left until our new baby boy is born.

Everything is progressing as it should be, as we had confirmed today with an ultrasound scan. It was a growth scan to check that baby was growing as he should be, after a “soft marker” showed up at an earlier scan.

The scan showed that he showed no sign of the hypoechogenic bowel that was previously present, and also that he was on target for the size that he should be at this stage of the pregnancy.

Gemma is getting really uncomfortable with each passing day, having to carry all the extra weight around. It does make things a little difficult, especially sleeping at night. Not long to go now babe. It will all be worth it in the end.

If the extra weight wasn’t enough to stop Gemma sleeping properly, then the leg cramps certainly are. They strike at all hours of the night, which disturbs Gemma’s sleep even more than usual.

Each passing day makes me more and more nervous. It makes me nervous because within the next few weeks labour could start at any time. It’s in the back of my mind that I hope that the labour is not too quick, especially as I work about an hour from home.

You wouldn’t think that we’d done this before.

Till next time …

Previous Pregnancy Posts:

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 27

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 25

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 22

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 21

Baby Kicked Last Night

It’s a…

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 18

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 16

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 15

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 12

Gemma’s Pregnant - The Official Announcement

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 10

Gemma’s Pregnancy - Week 9

Baby Number 2 is on the Way

Stopped by the Police!

Gemma had a bit of an exciting day on Monday. Having been out in the morning with Ellie they were on their way home when they were stopped by the police.

The police were out in force doing their usual vehicle checks. Gemma was spotted by the lead police car, who radioed his mate to stop her to check the tinted windows in the car.

Gemma stopped as requested and the nice policeman (he was genuinely nice according to Gemma!) He checked the windows to see how much light was being let in, and it was found that the windows were letting in a lot less than they should be.

The policeman was quite surprised that we’d not been stopped about it before. We’ve had the car for 3 years now and its never been an issue before.

The limit for the front side windows is min 70% light, but they were actually only letting in 40% light. He also checked the windscreen which has a limit of 75%, and it scraped in at 77%.

Because of that he had to issue Gemma with a ticket. Luckily it was only a non-endorsable fixed penalty, which meant no points for Gemma, but a £30 fine. We’ve got 28 days to cough up.

There was a little bit of humour from Ellie as the policeman gave Gemma the ticket:

“Look Mum, a ticket” said Ellie.

“Yes darling it is a ticket,” replied Gemma. “But not one that we want!”

So when I got home I had the job of taking the film off the inside of the windows. This was not an easy job. Getting the film to start peeling off was the hardest part, but once it got started it pretty much came off in one go. Once the film was off, the next job was to get all of the adhesive off.

A lot of elbow grease and white spirit was required, but eventually most of it has come off.

So all we’ve got to do now is to send off a cheque

My First Day as a Contractor

Monday saw me start my new career as a Contract Design Engineer.

As first days go it was a pretty quiet affair. I arrived nice and early and met up with my new boss. After a few formalities, I then had the obligatory Health and Safety induction which is pretty much the same wherever you go. This lasted about an hour and then it was back to the office to get accustomed to the workstations.

Once I had about an hour getting settled in and getting access to the correct CAD systems it was time to break for lunch. For my first day I decided that I’d try out the canteen. Its the first place that I’ve worked that has had a full canteen. There was a few choices of meals, and I decided that I’d have Toad in the Hole, with Potatoes and Veg. All things considering it wasn’t too bad. I’m not planning to eat there everyday, but it gives me another option.

Anyway, after lunch it was back to my desk to get some familiarity with the new products that I’ll be designing. The new company are in the business of designing exhaust systems, so a bit of familiarity would be beneficial as I don’t have a great deal of experience of these systems. I soon realised that there is a lot more to an exhaust system than meets to eye. It’s going to be a good challenge, really looking forward to it.

The afternoon passed pretty quickly, and soon it was time to head home. It felt good to get home, feeling revitalised and looking forward to going back the next day.

PS: My second day was spent with a 2.5 hour training session on the company’s product data management system before being let loose on re-designing some parts. Looking good so far.

Finished…

Today was my last day as a permanent employee. I have now finished as a Design Engineer, and from Monday I will be a Contract Design Engineer.

Ever since I handed in my notice 5 weeks ago, I’ve been itching to get out of there and into a job where I can actually do some proper designing. For a few months now I have had little to do in the way of designing and so I have been getting extremely bored, so now I am going to have something to get my teeth into. I am really looking forward to that.

I’ll let you know how things go on Monday.