2009 – The Year in Review

Overseas holidays

• We kicked things off with a week of skiing in Morzine at the end of January
• We flew back to Australia in March. That flight never gets old.
• From there, we flew to Tassie for Stacey and Wes’ wedding, as well as a fantastic week of touring with Team BaM and Mel
• Nick became our first overseas friend to come and visit in Australia! We gave him a local tour, but given how busy our trip was, we didn’t get to do too much with him. Hopefully he’ll come back once we’ve moved home for a more extensive site-seeing trip.
• Nick, Kristy and I spent a few days in Singapore on our way back to London
• Jason and Susan came to visit us in London, and the four of us took a three day trip to Amsterdam.
• We flew to Jamaica for Uncle Martyn’s 70th birthday party.
• We booked a last minute trip to New York to spend a wonderful few days there with Mom and Dad, the cousins, and my Uncles. Ah, Chipotle, how I miss you…
• We spent a weekend trying to stay warm and avoid the rain in Bruges and Brussels
• We froze our butts off in Düsseldorf to celebrate Kirsty’s 30th birthday, and we got stuck there overnight due to the snow

Touring around the UK

We’re trying to see as much of the UK as we can while we’re here, and we did quite well this year with a number of local trips!

• We joined Nick and Suzie for a long weekend in Devon over one of the bank holidays in May
• Al and Becca gave us the highlights tour of Cambridge
• We spent a weekend in a super old house in Bedfordshire to celebrate Nick’s 30th
• Kristy and I spent the last long weekend of the year in Caerphilly, Wales
• Dean and Leanne joined us for a weekend on The Isle of Wight. It was windy!
• Matthew and Emily were nice enough to give us a tour of Canterbury
• We flew up to Aberdeen to spend Christmas with Racey and Wes, and even managed to squeeze in a day of skiing

Music, Culture, and Theatre

• We saw the Lost and Found Orchestra play at Southbank, and it was amazing!
• Kristy saw A Little Night Music and loved it
• We saw The Butterfly Effect play an awesome, intimate gig at The University of London in May
• Al and I saw Faith No More play their first show in donkies, at my favourite venue – Brixton Academy
• We saw Pearl Jam play at O2 Arena (even though I mistakenly bought tickets to the Manchester show originally)
• Ariella convinced us to see Insane in the Brain – a hip-hop dance interpretation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• For Kristy’s Birthday, I got us tickets to see The Mousetrap, the longest running show in the world.
• We saw another Aussie band – Karnivool – play at a very intimate venue at Angel.

The highs and lows…

…and all the creamy middles. You can decide which is which.

• It snowed so heavily in February that all of the public transport shut down
• We got to meet our second nephew, Reuben! Now we’re waiting on the arrival of number three…
• I built my first ever computer from scratch. That’s a high, just for the record.
• I survived an apparent swine flu infection.
• I got my UK drivers licence and we bought a car, which we named “Gazpacho”
• We solved the biggest hedge maze ever with Julian and Shelley
• Mel and Ben popped in to the country for Mel’s brother’s wedding, and stayed a night with us at Hotel BBQ Chicken
• We started Geocaching!
• Hotel BBQ Chicken was disbanded in October, and Kristy and I moved back to Chiswick.