Merry Christmas!!

A very Merry Christmas to anyone who reads this blog post!
An early start after a late-ish night of seeing the local pubs with another of my uncles and meeting some people that he knew. I went to the Raglan and got to throw and land a dart on the same board that my dad did when he played at home. Got to play some pool with my uncle and had a nice looking English lad give me some tips for both pool and darts [he was my age too, his dad kept on trying to set us up too... awkward]. We also bumped into some friends of my dads that hadn't seen me in almost 16 years, when they came over to Australia. It was really nice to hear from them and to give them my dads contact details so that they can send some photo's over and generally keep in contact.

Christmas went well, we headed over to Colin's mother-in-laws place for Christmas lunch. Paul and Heather dropped us off on their way to their daughters in-laws. It was really good seeing Lyndsey and Mia (I've got photo's and I'll take more tomorrow). Colin cooked lunch, we had a Turkey breast for the meat eaters, Quorn for the vegetarians. Carrots, sprouts, potatoes, swede, parsnips, broccoli and cheese as well as gravy and bread sauce. Very well cooked with flaming brandy pudding for dessert. We moved into the sitting room and had some tea/coffee/remaining alcohol from our glasses as well as some after dinner chocolate mints. More people came over and we proceeded to exchange gifts; Colin, Lyndsey and Mia gave me a matching amber earring set to go with the necklace and Lyndseys mum gave me some bracelets as well as Heather rapping up the tops we chosen in Canterbury. Julie had also gotten me a black roll neck top as well. My bag is now very close to being full, I could close it without opening the extra space, I'll need it though for when I do leave. Boxing day will be at Pauls from the afternoon onwards.

3 Days till Christmas!!!

Christmas is getting really close now, even though you wouldn't think it with the weather we've been having. It double digits today and nice and sunny.

Well getting back from Leicester was a pain, I was supposed to leave there at 12:30 and arrive back in Folkestone at 3:10pm, but for some stupid reason; a gass pipe in Essex had an issue and all the highspeed trains had been 'suspended until further notice' so I got told to go to Victoria station and get a national rail from there. So I ended up on a train to Dover Priory that took 2hrs and then had to get a connection to Folkestone Central. So instead of getting back at 3:10 I got back at 5:30. Not happy.

But I had a successful shopping trip with Heather yesterday, we headed into Canterbury and had a wander through the markets and had a browse through the main shopping precinct. We looked through Next and found some really nice tops, stored them on our internal shopping list and headed out through the town, found some nice shops, tried on some nice shoes. Found a really nice turquoise jumper in M&S (might get it tomorrow or saturday in Dover) but we headed back to Next and tried on the tops we'd found. We chose two of them, one a magenta 3/4 sleeved top with lace detail on the neck line and the other a navy top, loose styled and with split sleeves with a butterfly pattern on the front.
In the markets there was a shop that was selling gemstone jewellery, so I had a look and found some wonderful Amber necklaces all set in sterling silver. I found a red one that I really liked and got it as a Christmas present to myself (it was under £40 too) but most of the time was spent looking for critters that might've been caught in the amber.

Funniest thing though, I got home and found that Colin and the family had been over and had left my birthday present for me... they'd gotten me a smaller amber pendant as well. An orange cube of amber also in silver. So now I have two to choose from :D I'm very happy with all the purchases as well as all that I got some souvenir-y stuff for people. Nothing that's going to push my baggage limit; I've started to pack all ready.

National Space Centre (with a dusting of snow)!

Well today was a late-ish wake up for breakfast and then a mild rush to get ready to go and pick up Toop, Lauren and Tim to go and see the National Space Centre. The space centre is one of the UK's largest attractions that is purely devoted to space exploration and space in general, the building itself is and interesting 'bubble' design [which turns out is bullet proof, for some odd reason] and stands at an impressive 42m tall. It was built as a joint project by the University of Leicester and the government's millennium commission and is currently used by post doctoral researchers at the uni's space research centre.

 When we had eventually gotten to the centre and had left the packed lunch there. We first wandered around the ground floor, this is aimed at a 11-15 age group and includes interactive displays. Like a reaction test to see 'if you have what it takes to be in space' and a remote controlled mini-rover to move around a Martian surface.
It also includes fact panels on all the planets and all the little neutron stars, black holes, worm holes and other strange aspects of space; some of which we still can't explain.

In the tower the first thing that you see is the bottom of some booster rockets and a large red button that says 'DO NOT TOUCH' [of course we pushed it] and set off a loud but funny launch sequence of dry ice and lighting effects. As you move up the tower you can learn all about the space race of the 50s-70s between the USSR [aka Russia] and the USA during the Cold War. It starts with the Russian side of things [including some rockets and missiles] then moves to the American side and their eventual development of a space program. You can read about the history of the Apollo missions and even 'land' a module on the moon. You can access the tower by either lifts or a staircase, the lifts I cannot guarantee that they will be working so I would recommend the stairs for ensuring that your kids sleep well when they get home.

We had an indoors picnic, prepared by Toop that consisted of Vegan scones, cous cous, carrots, Pringles and drinks. Overall the day was really fun, even though we missed the theatre viewing [which you really should see if you get the chance to visit]. I'll put the link in for you to see the centres homepage. But a very good day out.

http://www.spacecentre.co.uk/Page.aspx/1/HOME/