The house of DDWT is fast becoming the equivalent of Ready Steady Cook on Sundays’ as the Mrs and I take it in turns to conjure up something new and by that I mean different in the kitchen.
This Sunday it was my turn and I decided to try and rustle up some sausage and mash fritters at lunchtime, and stuffed chicken breasts (herbs, cheese & carrots) with sliced green beans for dinner/tea/evening meal/supper – call it what you wish. The fritters were quite tasty but needed a little more cheese if I’m being hyper critical (which when it comes to cooking I am!). As for the chicken breasts, well they were a major disappointment as it were simply overcooked – the result being that they were very chewy. The panel of judges (well Mrs DDWT to be precise) gave the fritters a thumbs up and a “cook that again Sam”, but as for the chicken breast – forget it!
The rest of our day was spent down the beach overlooking Swansea Bay – which is always a great place to be when the sun is out, as you can see from the pictures below.
I also found a little bit of time to do some jobs around the house, such as re-assembling the rocking chair and putting up a new bike rack in the garage – to create some much needed room!
Oh yes indeed – I’m going to be a Daddy for the 2nd time and it’s a wonderful feeling. We’ve known for a couple of weeks, but today is the day that we’ve officially told everyone outside of the family (as they knew a few days ago). It’s soooo exciting and the thought of DDWT Junior 2 being around fills me with joy.
We decided not to tell DDWT Junior just yet – primarily because he’s obsessed with babies at the moment (you should see him with our friends babies!) and because we wouldn’t get a moments peace from him asking questions about it! I can see it now though when he does know, it’ll be like one of those kids in the car saying “Are we there yet?” only it would be “Is the baby here yet?”.
Mrs DDWT is due in June 2008 and ironically only a couple of days after our wedding anniversary. Now that’s what I call a wedding anniversary present!! I’ll be sure to keep everyone up to date with progress – so keep tabs on the blog for regular updates (including details of me and my phantom pregnancy symptoms!).
It’s been a day or revelation and upheaval all round actually, as I also moved office and team today – so it was like starting with a new family in work as well 
I’m now in amongst the ICT teams and after 3 years or so being on the periphery – I’m now back where I perhaps naturally belong, with other ICT techies.
So what better way to celebrate, say farewell and toast someones birthday than to go out for lunch and have a good old natter. After the success of our visit to ‘The Village’ in Swansea’s SA1 district the other week we opted to go there again and once again indulge in the steak and kidney pie dish (well I did anyway).
After a week in work which I’d officially call bonkers, I decided to work from home today in an attempt to free myself from office visitors and phonecalls. Having not worked from home for quite some time, I could immediately see why it is becoming increasingly more popular.
Not only did I get more done, but I had the freedom and peace to do it – so both my employer and I benefit. With the advent of high-speed broaband connections (8MB in my case) and VPN remote access, the need for me to be on-site is ever decreasing, in my line of work anyway (web development).
So after a hard day’s work at the home office (sounds posh that doesn’t it), we decided to get 2 large stuffed crust pizza’s (meat feast and hawaiian) from the Pizza Hut in Fforestfach. One thing that struck me though – being a pizza hut regular – is that the best Pizza Hut in these parts is the one on the Morfa retail park by the liberty stadium. There is a noticeable difference in the quality of the pizza’s there compared to Fforestfach. Me thinks the chef in Fforestfach likes lashings of tomato puree on the pizza!
Pizza time in the house of DDWT is also movie time, so we all (apart from DDWT Junior who was fast asleep in bed) settled down to watch ‘RV: Runaway Vacation‘ starring that loon Robin Williams. After a slow start it begins to pick up (a bit like the RV in the film actually) and at times had us laughing so much we had tears rolling down our eyes. Not one of Williams’ best movies, but a decent enough laugh.
As if missing the 10k wasn’t bad enough, the tale of today’s weighing scale hit me harder than a Ricky Hatton punch to the stomach (well ok perhaps not that hard). Seventeen bloody stone – I hadn’t been that heavy since July 16th 2006. My confidence and mood was already quite low, but this really hit me hard. I must now do something as despite all the talk, I have yet to reach my target weight of 16st (the closest I came was 16st 4lbs, way back in January). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not obsessed with my weight, I’m just determined to get it off.
I suppose when I look at things a little closer, my problem area is and perhaps always was – my food intake. So I’ve taken the advice of some of the experts on the Runners World website and have started a food diary. Training I have never found to be a problem – I love it, but I also love my food and hopefully the food diary will show just where I’m going wrong.
So with food high in my list of mental priorities, I decided to try and cook something a little different for our supper.
Fillet of chicken breast, filled with grated carrots, spinach and a sprinkling of grated cheese, served with some boiled mild curry rice. It was delicious and far more apertising that what we usually have for an evening meal! For once my dabbling in the kitchen paid off – a rarity indeed – and I will try this little dabble out once again that’s for sure.
We thought we’d check today to see how tall DDWT Junior actually was – as he’s seemed to have shot up lately and we weren’t wrong. He now stands 103cm tall, which means that he’s grown 5.5 cm since the beginning of April. I wonder what the average height of a 35 month old child should be?
My cold is lingering, but I’m still hoping to start final preparations for the Gower bike ride sooner rather than later this week. So I took the opportunity this afternoon to change the tyres on my bike back to the ‘Fat Boy’ (how appropriate!) slicks again and give the bike a darn good clean.
Awwww, today saw Mrs DDWT and I notch up our 7th wedding anniversary and to celebrate we went on a bike ride – with DDWT Junior of course. Ok, I’m joking about the celebrating bit – we’re off to Center Parcs Longleat for a week (starting tomorrow) for the that bit.
In fact ever since, we’ve been married we’ve always made a point of going somewhere to stay as a part of our wedding anniversary celebrations. Thus far we’ve been to New York, London, Paris and Center Parcs a few times (which pales into insignificance I know compared to the former) but we love it in CP’s and so does DDWT Junior!
Thinking about it, I’m quite glad to be off from work this week as I would no doubt be inundated with all of the ‘seven year itch’ – no not the play the old saying – jokes going.
As for our bike ride, well we did a 13 mile stretch along cycle route 43 goes from Swansea to Builth Wells, although we only went as far as Ystalyfera! The scenic canal and riverside route was in full bloom and it was a treat to see nature at its best, with birds and squirrels aplenty along the way. The warm sunny weather made it even more enjoyable, although we were glad to be back home by early afternoon as the temperature had began to soar by then. Here’s hoping for more of the same next week.
In terms of food, we opted to have a home made beef curry as our anniversary supper – and it weren’t have bloody hot!!
I’m not great shake when it comes to hot or indeed very spicy food, so the strawberry smoothies we’d made earlier came in very handy. A big shout out to Nanna DDWT at this point for providing us with an the abundance of home grown strawberries.
On a more mundane note, both DDWT Junior and I went for the weekly weigh-in this morning and we tipped the scales at 2st 10lbs and 16st 10lbs respectively. No doubt a few pounds *should* be shed by moi next week!
I also found a little bit of time to do some jobs around the house, such as re-assembling the rocking chair and putting up a new bike rack in the garage – to create some much needed room!
