Emily the first two weeks

Its been two weeks since the birth of my second daughter, and I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to post a pictorial diary of her first fortnight as part of our world.

The pictures are all in chronological order, starting with a slightly grey just born baby, and ending with a picture taken a couple of days ago.

One of the really interesting things for me, is how quickly the facial features change, she has gone from being a strange grey creature, to looking just like her sister did, and now she is beginning to look more like an individual.

New arrivals in the garden!

My Daughter and her Nan, went to the local plant nursery after school yesterday, to pick up a couple of new additions to the garden.
Luckily Nan has very green fingers, and also planted them, leaving me free to take some snaps of them.

Below are a Columbine, Bleeding Heart, Rhododendron and a Lilac (in that order).

Childhood memories

For some reason that I am not sure I can explain, I became very interested in my daughters toy windmill today. I think the main reasons might be the simplicity of the toy combined with fond childhood memories, of running around the countryside with my own one.

so below are a few pictures of it.

Change of direction for this blog

Apologies to you all for the lack of posts recently.

This is mainly due to not being sure if I wanted to continue writing this blog, and also the birth of my second child!

After a great deal of thinking, I have decided to continue with the blog, only instead of a written blog, its primarily going to be a photography blog (with the odd rant!).

Reason for this change in ethos, is mostly because, I have found inspiration very hard to come by. Equally I find myself more and more interested in photography, particularly Flowers and landscapes (might expand this to other areas), So without further ado this will be my first photographic offering.

Above is a picture of the latest member of the family, and below are pictures of some of the flowers sent to us by friends. and a couple of shots taken in the garden.

Any thoughts and comments gratefully received.

The butterfly above was stalked by me for ages, before it slowed down enough for me to get this shot.

This shot is actually of a bush in our garden, this was taken from a pretty much horizontal position.

The rest of the flowers below, were from a flowers sent to us by friends.

Spring photo blog

A right pain in the appraisal!

April usually means many thing to many people, some of the more romantic amongst you, will probably be thinking about the start of spring, or April showers.

To me sadly its that time of the year, when I have to justify my work performance for the last year. In a normal company, this would probably entail, sitting down with my manager, and discussing how things went, probably looking over some targets, and setting some new ones.

However I work for a pseudo public sector company, by that I mean, that although to all intents and purposes we are a private company, we tend to have quite a few public sector mentality processes. The yearly appraisal is one of them!

Just so you don't think I am whingeing for no real reason let me break down some of the processes and procedures involved with our appraisal system.

Firstly I have at least 30 different targets that I must meet, within each target there are 4 or 5 sub targets, in order to achieve the highest grade in my appraisal (A) I must not only reach every target, but they must also be exceeded, oh and then I have to demonstrate what else I have done, that is over and above my job.

The appraisal document that I have to fill in is over 20 pages long (honest), which I have to fill in, and then give myself a mark for each target, and provide evidence of how I achieved this target, its no wonder they give us 10 days notice to complete the blasted form!

So once the thing has been filled in, all evidence researched and gathered, Grades duly apportioned, its time to have a meeting with my manager to discuss, what I have put in my appraisal.

After much haggling and argument, an agreement is sort of reached, whereby we meet somewhere in the middle.

Here comes the best part, after all the blood sweat tears and general stress, the company will most likely announce that due to the current economic climate, all pay will be frozen!

Thus rendering the entire process an absolute waste of every ones time and resources.

I reckon that if they calculated the man hours lost to our appraisal system, and how much it cost the company, it would probably be enough to give most people a small pay rise.

Sometimes the world is a truly Ironic place!

Family days can be fun....honest!

Its going to be more of a picture blog today, as I am pooped after a really lovely sunny family day.

We had lots of family come and visit today, from my side aunt, uncle, cousin & granny, from the wife's side dad +partner & little brother. So as you can imagine the house was quite crowded (forgot to add that my aunt & uncle brought their two Spaniels).

But I have to say, it was one of those completely idyllic family days, we had a lovely lunch, and some good conversation + lots of playing in the back garden, then a few of us decided to walk of the considerable lunch we had just consumed!

So we packed the dogs & children into the car, and went for a walk near Chenies Manor, which is a very picturesque village with a lovely church and a manor house

The walk had the added bonus of a nice wood, and nice views of the surrounding countryside.

We even met a some horses, the friendliest of which is pictured below, one minor down point, was that one the Spaniels, managed to catch and kill a rabbit, luckily my 4 year old, did not see him trotting over with the rabbits head in its mouth!

not sure how I would have explained that one!