friends

here is tony teaching liz how to use a little computer game. he was telling her in a very simple way as we all know how silly girls go when they try to deal with technology.

actually, that’s not what’s happening here, and tony has only the utmost respect for ladies of all genders.

after playing in the snow we went to visit ian and carolyn.
here is ian:

and here is carolyn:

our friend and regular commenter alan (he of the amazing insect knowledge) has been in hospital for a fortnight with inside badness. he’s making a good recovery and is in good spirits, although still in a lot of discomfort.
part of his treatment involved him measuring all his liquids in and out on a little (wee) chart. he even had a tiny spitoon which needed to be measured.
anyway, all our funkypancake best wishes go to alan – hopefully he’ll be out soon !

here is richard with his camera, which is better than mine. i took this photo whilst learning how to take better, sharper photos. i like how i completely failed on this particular picture.

here’s a picture of richard from the summer using his fancy 20D with its equally fancy lense

our friends invited us over for dinner last night and we had a lovely time.
here are the pink puddings:

kezia and alice

simeon at the end of the long table

we were invited to Tim’s 40th birthday party last night and had a great time.
here is the glitter ball in the outside marquee

and here is the cake (it’s tim fishing)

paul and liz came for tea last night and we had a lovely time, but i forgot to take their photo before they left. so i ran down the street and paparatzi’d them through their car door (which is why they are looking a bit worried)

they call him davey-drum-stool-leg (but we don’t know why)

yesterday we went to the rather lovely dyrham house with my old housemate jeremy and liz.

here is us and jeremy and liz in a ring of flowers

yesterday was olivia’s dedication.

As i described in the comments here, a dedication is a bit like a baptism – it’s a chance to say thank you to God for the child and to welcome them in to the wider church family.

Prayer parents are like god-parents and it’s their duty to pray for the child and generally support them as they grow up.
when they are old enough they can then make their own decision about the Christian faith, which they believe is true.
richard and julia (below), and jane and i are olivia’s prayer parents.

The prayer we said included this phrase “May we be patient and understanding, ready to guide and to forgive, so that through our love she may come to know your love, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

(can you spot esther and kezia in the picture above ?)

here is steve waiting by a petrol pump which ate his credit card. it turned out the petrol pump wasn’t ‘online’ so a man came and pulled the power to reboot it. it still failed but steve got his credit card back.
our 20 minute midnight pit stop allowed me to take some trolley photos in the supermarket carpark though !

as regular readers of funkypancake will know, i’m rubbish at sleeping and sitting still. on holiday i got up at 4.30 a couple of days and went to bed around midnight most nights. there’s just so much to do in life isn’t there ?
anyway, if my mornings were all about taking photos, my evenings were all about chewing the cud whilst supping the crud with john. we even found a secret passage which brought us out in to the basement of a pub !