Its been 11 years since Rachel and I went on our first date and to celebrate we got each other a little gift. Rachel got me a Lego Brickheadz.
Aug
22
Today we went to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park to see Rachels friend Katie as it has been over a year and a half since they have seen each other. The wildlife park was lovely, so much open space for the animals to roam around. We got to get close up with some little monkeys and even see 2 polar bears. We had fun on the many play areas around the park.
Aug
20
We got into the part early the next day and went straight onto the Adventure Tree Carousel and then onto The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure again as we enjoyed it so much yesterday. I then went on the Vampire ride which was great, it lasted quite a while and was a good feeling having your legs dangling. We then went on the Zufari Ride Into Africa and got to see a giraffe really close up. On the way out of that ride we went on the Tomb Blaster, which was my favourite ride of the 2 days. I went on the Kobra and then onto Tiger Rock which was a really good log flume and i didnt get as wet as the day before. Ethan then went on Elmers Flying Jumbos twice before we went on the Tiny Truckers. We then went to the gift shop before heading home, which given it was a Friday evening took us 4.5 hours.
Aug
19
It was our first day at Chessington World of Adventures today and after a bit of a drive we arrived about 11. We headed into the park and picked a direction to go in. We 1st had a quick play on the Amazu Treetop Adventure. Ethan then wanted to go on The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure, so we queued up for that. The ride was really fun, we didnt expect to get wet but it was enjoyable. Ethan and I then went on the Tuk Tuk Turmoil bumper cars which was good before heading over to go on the Jungle Rangers. Ethan then wanted to go on the log flume, so we got in the 80 min queue for the River Rafts. The ride was good but was over really quickly and we got soaked! On the way out of the park we went into the Sea Life Centre. We stayed in the resort hotel which was really nice, we had a monkey themed room which Ethan loved.
Today we went to Rufford Abbey to go on the Totally Roarsome walk. We got there early and had a picnic in the grounds. We then went to the adventure park within Rufford Abbey which was great. The walk was great, they had a dinosaur, superheros and an animal sections. We did a quiz while walking around and it lasted about an hour.
Aug
09
We made it to Legoland just after 10 and then headed straight for The Dragon, I enjoyed the ride but Ethan wasnt a fan. Next we went to the LEGO City Driving School. Ethan had fun driving the car around the mini road system. We went on the Haunted House Monster Party ride afterwards which was not what we were expecting at all! We had lunch at the Castaway Camp and played for a while before heading to the Fairy Tale Brook ride. We had a look around Miniland before the rain came down hard and we decided to call it a day. We had a look around the shop and Ethan got some new Lego before heading home.
Aug
08
My parents took the Warner family to Legoland. As we had been before we knew what rides we wanted to go on and how best to navigate to them. We started with the LEGO NINJAGO The Ride as this is something we didnt get to go on last time. The ride was so much fun! We then went on the Coastguard HQ which was fun, having Ethan steering the boat. After some lunch we went on the LEGO City Deep Sea Adventure ride and then onto the Laser Raiders, which is one of my favourites. Before we left for the day we went on the Viking River Splash which Ethan really liked. In the evening we had a McDonalds for dinner and then went back to the hotel for a rest.
We went to Wistow maze today with Tom and Claire. I had never been before and really enjoyed it. While we were going round we did the quiz which involved answering questions. After the maze we played on the lawn games which everyone really enjoyed.
I thought it would be good to have a shoe rack as we were just chucking the shoes in a pile in the garage. I had some oak left over from when i added the worktops to the garage. Dad made me the shoe rack with some painted ply and then we fixed it to the wall with some anchor bolts.
I needed some extra storage and i looked at putting that in the garage, but i had some left over wood and decided that i add the extra storage to the shed. The wood i used was a bit overkill for what i needed but i do like the chunky look. It took less than 2 hours to build it all and fits everything i needed with some space to spare.
I had never been to Croft hill and we live quite close. Rachel, Ethan, Joy and I decided we would walk up and around. There was a great view of the quarry and the area around. We walked all the way round the quarry, had a climb on the rocks and took in the view.
I have been working at Vehicle Vision for over a year now and i had only met 2 members of the team in person. Today the company decided it would be nice if we all went to Bradgate Park. We spent the afternoon walking and talking to the coffee shop, had a hot drink and then walked and talked back. It was lovely to meet everyone.
We had a great day at Ryton Pools today, we took a picnic and sat under some trees on a picnic blanket. We played on the park, had lots of fun on the zip line, we had an ice lolly and then went and fed the ducks before finishing off at another park.
It was soo hot today, so we decided that we would spend the day in the paddling pool. It was lovely, we had lots of fun playing.
Rachel has been working hard on the garden, buying and planting pots and arranging them in nice displays. Ethan and I have mowed the lawn and dug a big hole for a tree to be planted. I added some hanging baskets to the back which have grass and ivy in them. Its looking really nice out there now.
I have now finished bag 4 of the Lego digger and up to step 767. Its been really interesting building up the detail.
Finally after having the UP! for over 3 years now i thought it was time to get the H7MLX numberplate put on the car. It is a lot easier now and can all be done online, so i ordered the plates and when they arrived i filled out all the forms online, got confirmation emailed to me and then put them on the car. So glad to see it being used again.
Rachel seen a sign advertising strawberry picking at Whetstone Pastures Farm, so as it was a nice day we thought we would go and pick some strawberries. There was quite a lot of rows of strawberry plants, so we hunted for the best ones and ended up collecting a punnet full of them. They were very tasty.
When we came out of swimming we normally have a play on the park before heading home. Today after we had finished on the park they were setting up some old army vehicles. Ethan had a sit in a nice Land Rover and then on a bike.
Jun
23
I was down to GB left on the server, so it was time to get the new hard disks in. I installed the new 5 drive bay, put the 4 new 12TB hard disks inside it, added the hardware RAID card in and then when i came to power it up the power supply wasnt large enough to power 9 hard disks, so i had to bring a 2nd power supply in to power the new disks. I used robocopy to migrate all of the files from the old software RAID to the new hardware RAID, which worked really well. Once that was done i updated all of the shares and symlinks before shutting the server down, removing all of the old hard drives and adding in a new SSD just for Plex metadata. I now have 37TB of useable space when the drives are in RAID5. While i had the server out i also removed some old cables and drives from the rack to tidy it up before putting the server back in the rack.
Happy Fathers day! Today Ethan woke me up early as he was excited about giving me my present. He got me a top banana monkey, a Lego clock and then a Ducktails Brickheadz Lego set. Ethan and I went into the loft and started building that which was fun.
The loft hatch needed a trim round it on the outside as it looked a bit of a mess, we cut some skirting board down into architrave and nailed it round the hatch. My Dad made a cover to go inside the loft to stop anyone falling down when people are in the loft. There is a bar clip to hold the cover to the wall so that the ladder can still be used eaily.
Jun
12
I started early this morning to make sure i could get as many jobs done as i could. I started off before 8am by cutting the hedges, i use garden shears so i didnt make too much noise. After clearing up all of the leaves i moved onto cutting up all of the left over wood to fit into my log burner, i used the table saw for this as i could set the size i was cutting and then just push the wood through. When all the wood was cut i cleared out the log store and then restacked it with all the new wood. Once the garage was clear, i hovered it and mopped it to get rid of all the dirt that had built up. I finished off the day by mowing the front and back lawns.
I got Ethan and I an Xbox controller each, installed Steam and Launchbox on the Media PC to act as a frontend to all of my games. I have setup the Media PC to use the optical out into the amplifier and configured it to use DTS for 5.1 gaming. I tried it out with Portal 2 and it sounds great.
Rachel got Ethan and I some gifts for the Lego side of the loft, some storage boxes and 2 shelves.
Dad and I had a goal to get the loft complete today. I started off by giving the walls a 2nd coat of paint, while Dad started building the shelves and desk. I then moved over to wiring up and fitting the speakers, TV and subwoofer before moving onto getting power into the loft. We framed the feature wall, shelf area and amp rack with wood to tie it all together which turned out great. We then fitted the gripper rods, laid the underlay and finally fitted the carpet. The finishing touch was to put in the stools for the desk and the beanbag seats for the TV space. The loft turned out even better than i thought it was going to!
I had left the bottom of the walls and the bottom of the trusses when painting, so i masking taped off the wood and then with a brush painted all of the bare plaster and wood. While i had some paint left over i also gave another coat of paint to all of the trusses.
It was really warm out today and Joy had got Ethan a new paddling pool, so we went over to see her and Ethan and I had fun in the paddling pool and with some water balloons.
Ethan helped me in the loft today painting all of the walls. He had his own paint tray, roller and brush and got to work. I had a big roller and got most of the walls and ceiling. After getting the walls painted, i decided to paint all of the trusses, as being wood they stood out to much and i wanted them to blend in with the walls and not be a feature.
With the weather being so lovely, we decided to go to the park, so Ethan and I went on our bikes and Rachel walked. We went over the fields to Cosby. We had great fun on the park and it was quite quiet considering how nice it was outside. It was nice getting back out on the bike and lovely to be out in the nice weather.
