A week in France.

We have just come back from a lovely week in a Villa near Carcassone in France. It was a wonderful week with lots of good friends, food and fun. Here are a few pics of the week.

 The pool and the house above it.

Pizza night.

One of the many amazing meals cooked for us. Yummo.

 Roast Chicken in the Pizza oven. Mmmmm.

Butterflies in the garden.

Before we went away we had our great friends Ben, Cat and Max to stay. It was so lovely to spend some time with them before they headed back to New Zealand for good. We are really going to miss them.

Don was away filming an adventure race in Morecambe Bay and the Lake District during some of the Biddingtons stay. Lots of early mornings but they make for great photos.

We got home on Sunday and had a very very excited dog to pick up. He had a few days with a dog sitter and a few days at the kennel. He's grown a bit.

As has Smudge in my belly. I'm finally starting to look pregnant instead of just fat!

That's all for now. Love from us all xo

Super 8 Wedding Video

Here's just the super8 footage edited together... cool!

Our Wedding Video

Here it is... !

It's been a long eight weeks...

But it's official. Baby Rutherford - or Smudge as I have taken to calling her - is due on the 25th of February 2010.

The longest eight weeks, of my life anyway, began on June the 24th with this...

 

You can imagine the excitement! I of course wanted to scream it from the rooftops but we decided that we would tell our family only and wait till we had our first scan.

Which happened a bit early at 8 weeks. This is what the Smudge looked like then...

 

And four weeks later see how much she has grown (I'm convinced its a girl while Don is sitting on the fence calling him he).

While its been a long 8 weeks its also been a really special time and today topped it off. It was amazing to see this little person swimming around in my tummy. We could see her brain, spine, arms, legs. It was incredible. 

So we are looking forward to the next 6 months, to see how my body changes and how the baby grows inside me. And then we get to meet her. What a wonderful miracle. 

We hope you are all well and happy and look forward to sharing our journey into parenthood with you.

Love Anna, Don, Baxter and Smudge.

Things have been growing...

Its been a quiet couple of weeks for Baxter and me. Don has been away working hard so we've just been taking it easy and not doing too much at all.

Our veggies have been busy growing though and we pulled the potatoes up the other day, our first carrot which was very yummy and I think our first tomato is nearly ready...

The other tomato's are looking pretty good too, as are the two plums and the chillies.

Baxter has been growing too. Although not too much as Don didn't seem to think he was much bigger when he got home. He is still very cute though!

On the 30th of July we had been married for 6 months. Man that went quickly... Don sent me these beautiful flowers. Very spoilt.

 

Finally here are a couple more photos from our honeymoon in Greece.

 

Honeymoon

The other week Ping and I decided at the last minute that we should go on our Honeymoon.  We went to Lipsi, a Greek Island, for 7 days.

To get there we had to take an overnight ferry from the airport.

We stayed in a cool little 2 bedroom villa on a remote part of the island.

It had a little deck out each side for sunbathing, fantastic views...

 

 

 

and a herd of local goats that came by every day.

We watched the world cup final in the local town...

  

The whole island only has about 600 residents so it was a very quiet little place.

 

We went to several different beaches and made the most of the clear blue water.

 

 

 

We spent a lot of time reading and sleeping - it was a totally relaxing holiday!

Catch you soon,

Ping, Don and Baxter.

Tennis, Cousins, Festivals, Birthdays and a Honeymoon.

It has been a couple of weeks and lots has happened. Baxter is as cute and as silly as ever.

He loved it when Mark came and visited a couple of weeks ago. Mark came to see Georgie who stayed with us for a few days before heading home to NZ. It was lovely to spend some time with her before she left.

We tested Baxter's ball retrieving skills with a game of tennis - he wasn't very good...

He met his brother outside the house. They had lots of fun fooling around - it was pretty cool seeing them together - they were so similar.

He has been reasonably well behaved with only a few hiccups. It seems he has developed a taste for strawberries - he ate these ones just after we took this picture. Not very happy.

He also managed to get into the laundry cupboard one day while we were out. This is what we came home too...

Don has been working hard, often away and when he has been home he has been trying to get our short film The Last Duel finished. It is finally complete which is a great feeling. One of the last things needing to be done was the colour grade... he found a great guy in Soho called Jack who did a wonderful job.

We are loving summer and as Don's birthday was approaching he decided a new BBQ was a good pressie. So we have had lots of yummy dinners and our friends Mo and Jeremy came out to join in on one of them.

On Saturday we went to Hop Farm music festival. It went all day and we saw some great artists. Bob Dylan headlined and our favourite was Seasick Steve.

Sunday was the big day and Don turned 32. He opened his pressies in the morning where he got some great tee shirts, chocolates, a hat, a sausage maker + kit, BBQ utensils, and lots of other lovely things.

We decided we would have a family sausage making competition. Hannah and Orla came.

Toby, Mark and Sarah were here too.

We made lots of yummy sausages - recipes included chicken and thai green curry, lamb, pancetta, redcurrant, mint, coriander and red wine, lamb, feta, sun-dried tomato and basil, squash, quinoa, sweet potato, and mushroom  and chicken, apricot, bacon, thyme and mixed herbs.

Toby was the chief cook.

And after a diplomatic vote the winning sausage was awarded to the chicken, apricot, bacon and herb sausage designed by Anna. Yay!

 Don had a yummy carrot cake with candles to blow out.

Happy Birthday Don!

Before we go - this is Baxter's new house and his new toy from Fiona which he loves very much.

P.S. We are finally off on our Honeymoon this week. We are going to Greece for 8 days on Wednesday to stay on a little island called Lipsi and staying in this awesome house. We'll let you know how it goes.
http://www.lipsibookings.com/mair-house.php