15 April 2010

Mike's 8!!!

While The Tiny Paper should be a priority for me, I am afraid of late it has not. It's not that I have lost interest, it is just that there literally, are not enough hours in the day.

Still, a short update is due, so hang on for a brief summary of the past month.

Michael and I travelled back to the States for his twice yearly visit with his dad.

I flew back to the UK so that I wouldn't miss 3 weeks of work, and brought back a large amount of games for review for the magazine. We are played some of those games to add reviews for the next issue of www-thru-the-portal.com, which has managed to come together within the deadline despite Neil's laptop being held hostage by the Sony service center.

While Michael was away we got the chance to attend some of the gaming meetups in London and Brighton, and we met some fabulous people there. This inspired us to find a babysitter, and we now have a number of one of the Kidco employees who is available for occasional babysitting in the evenings and weekends. Last Friday we took the leap, and called the sitter for a night out in London. We saw Watershed and got a signed copy of their lastest album "A Million Faces", which, if you look hard enough you can see a photo of us on.

We also have started on a rather ambitious calendar project, and we are recieving the needed support of the publishers to move forward with it in time for it's release at Essen in October.

On the trip to collect Mike from the states, Mike and I had several days to spend with the Grandparents in New Jersey, and a nice get together with the extended family to catch up and celebrate Michaels birthday. Mike was very happy to see his cousins, and we enjoyed the time spent.

In karate, they recently held grading, but we didn't let Michael grade this time, because he had missed about 6 classes between his trip and sickness since he had obtained his red belt, and while he probably would have passed the test, it didn't seem fair to all of the kids who did attend all of the classes and worked hard to earn it. No worries though! An additional grading will be held in a few weeks, and Michael will be able to grade at that session, where he will surely earn his yellow belt.

It's nice to have spring finally upon us, and we are getting out as much as possible. Last weekend we went to Brighton for the day, and it was nice to finally have the opportunity to enjoy the nice weather after the long chilly months.

Currently all UK flights are grounded due to volcanic ash from Iceland, and the election is looming.

That's the news, til next time!

6 February 2010

The big news!!!

thru-the-portal has been launched, and after only one week it has been downloaded all over the world! We are quite excited about this, and Neil worked very hard to put together the magazine. I was very impressed with the quality and content, and I am sure the readers are as well. We already have some great content lined up for the next quarterly, so it will be fun to watch it take off as more people become aware of it.




Happy Belated New Year!

Sorry to say, this blog is going to take a bit of a hit in regards to timely posts. Between work, the magazine (which you should definately check out at www.thru-the-portal.com, if you haven't already) and the beginning of my law studies, well, there just isn't a whole lot of time left to keep up with posting.

The good news is that we have still managed to get out and have fun times together. :)

Several weeks ago we went bowling with one of Michael's classmates and his mother, who is also from America. It was Michaels first time bowling, and he did wonderfully, beating us all, though his friend came in close second.











We have been snowed in for part of January. Basically as soon as I got my permanant offer in the office, it became nearly impossible to actually get to work with all the snow we had. The trains are pretty horrendous, as there is not an accurate website or phone line to call that will tell you what the trains are REALLY doing. So if you manage to make it into the station (ha ha, they don't plow the roads, or even salt the secondary roads in our area)...then you are likely to find there are no trains even running through the station. Still, it doesn't snow here that often, so one can't complain too much about the lack of infastructure in place...it's just that it has snowed this year more than it has in the previous 100....

We did get out though, and took a walk to the pub for some lunch, posing with snowmen along the way. We were lucky to find these guys before they were beheaded by the local gang of decapitating snowman thugs. :)



Michael has been taking his vitamins, and he is getting big muscles...don't you think?




Michael designed this Bionicle. He is quite proud of it, and rightfully so. We need to send it into the Lego club website for him.









We had a wonderful Christmas. I got this fabulous game, Pandemic. Each player takes the role of a member of the Centers for Disease Control and...well..if you really want to know more about it then you can read the review in thru-the-portal! :)



It is a testament to what a great job I have that my boss got me the game Logo! How fabulous is it that she picked up on my hobby, and actually went through the trouble to get something so nice when I had only been working there for two months? I was thrilled.


From our BoardGameGeek secret santa, we got Dominion and a Ticket to Ride expansion. We really enjoy Dominion, and it has become one of the favorites around our house.



My mother, ever the EXCELLENT present buyer, managed to pick up this Bobbi Brown Lip Pallette, which was a limited edition Nordstoms item, really not easy to find, and has an amazing 7 colors (all usably attractive). I don't like the lipstick in the UK, and Bobbi Brown is my favorite line of makeup. Thanks mom!



Over Christmas break we decided that Mike's legos needed to be custom painted, as one of his gifts were custom face decals for the Lego batman line. He wanted the characters to have the correct colored bodies for the faces (understandably). We also had some figures from a few of our games that needed some painting. We killed a few afternoons playing around with paint.



We had Lobster and tomato soup for our Christmas dinner, though we technically had it on boxing day. It was really delicious .




Here are the Lego guy's customized. I know it would make more sense to have them above the lobster, but Blogger doesn't feel like allowing me to move pictures today, so I am just going to go along with this so that I actually publish the post rather than put it off yet ANOTHER month or so. I hope you understand!



Neil and Michael got bath robes from Santa, and they look smashing in them. I got one a few weeks later because I was pouting and jealous :)



Michael got power miners from grandma and grandpa, and he was very excited to get them. He put all of his lego sets together within 24 hours of receiving them.




Finally,

Happy Birthday Neil! He is 35 now!

We treated him to dinner, a night out to see Wicked (again)..though it was Mike's first show, and Neil was very pleased to be with Michael for it. We had a chocolaty chocolate cake and he got BattleLore for his present, along with a few extra cards for Monty Python Fluxx.

Til next time.