stuartandnicola.com

Happy New Year to everyone!

2006 is going to be a very exciting year for us - our new arrival is due at the end of May! We'd got used to the idea that the baby was arriving NEXT year but now it's THIS year!

Watch this space for updates :-)

Hope 2006 is a good year for everyone!

Best wishes from
Stuart and Nicola (and Podgkin)

We saw the New Year in at Mark and Helen's house, and it was a great way to end 2005 and start 2006. Helen said (and I think these were her words at the time) "I'll do a bit of food..." Three courses (soup, lamb shank, and chocolate sorbet) definitely counts as "some food" - it was superb! And we didn't even have to wash up for them!

Geoff and Heather were there (Geoff actually managing to escape from Russia for the Christmas break!), as were Zac and Rachel, with Gabriel and Caitlin.

It was slightly strange at midnight when me and Nikki suddenly realised that we were no longer having a baby next year but this year! The party poppers also seemed to shock junior a bit as he (or is it she?) started kicking! Sorry bump!

It's really exciting - we get another go on the ultrasound machine. We're not going to ask if it's a boy or a girl. Someone told us we should just look at the head when the picture comes up on the screen as we might find out accidentally if we see "something". I wonder what they mean lol.

Fingers crossed it will all be ok - it seems ok so far - we can both feel kicks now :-)

This was me at my twenty week scan! You can find out more about me and what happened next by clicking here.

The twenty week scan went really well - everything looks fine (although Podgkin decided to have an afternoon nap and refused to move around so made the sonographers life really hard!)

Apparently Podgkin has a medium sized head (which Nikki was very pleased to hear!) and they have very long legs which the sonographer thought were so nice she took a picture of them for us!

We've put the scan pictures into our on-line album.

You might have noticed that there hasn't been much new stuff appearing on the website recently. We've been a little bit busy with a few things, but watch this space for some exciting news...

I'm not usually a huge fan of mother-in-law jokes, but this one made me laugh... (Paulene - if you read this don't kill me!)

A man, his wife, and annoying mother-in-law went on vacation to Jerusalem.
While they were there the mother-in-law passed away.
The undertaker told them "You can have her shipped home for £5,000, or you can bury her here in the Holy Land for £150."
The man thought about it and told him he would just have her shipped home.
The undertaker asked "Why would you spend £5,000 to ship your mother-in-law home, when it would be wonderful to be buried here and you would spend only £150?"
The man replied, "Long ago a man died here, was buried here, and three days later he rose from the dead. I just can't take that chance."

We went to the Manchester Beer Festival last weekend (well, Stuart went to the beer festival, Nicola went for chocolate cake in Starbucks with Helen!) Then we went to a couple of pubs, and then a Chinese meal - Woo Sang - set banquet - very nice!

We've put the photos that we took in the web album...

Darren and Sarah got a surprise at a recent scan... They had their due date brought forward by nine days - so Billy might be here slightly sooner than they were expecting. Luckily they've started buying nursery things so they'll be organised when s/he arrives (we thought Billy meant they knew it was a boy, but they don't, so it will be a surprise for everyone - perhaps it will be Billie The Kid??!!)

We've updated their countdown timer with their new date...