Tales From Little Bennett End

September has been pretty hectic for us. Joe had quite a lengthy trip to the US. First of all to a conference he'd organised on "Major Disclocation Planning" in San Francisco and then off to Redmond near Seattle to Microsoft Research for a meeting he'd arranged with their top research guys to look at all their latest thoughts and future tools. When he got back we had a lovely visit to our friend Chris and Kate (and their dog Ollie of course) in Essex. Although poor Ollie had to be locked away as Callum kept chasing him. We also had Sally's old school friend's annual get together at our house where 10 adults and 10 kids create bedlam for the cats and bunnies for a few hours and everyone eats way too much pizza and cake. The other highlight was that Joe was lucky enough to pick-up the CNET UK Technology award for his team in London. The first chance Joe had to wear his kilt since he got married in it....time to hit that diet again.

Holiday time at last. This year with the little guy being so small we decided hiking up the Amazon was probably out so instead we stayed not too far afield. The first week we spent with Sally's family at Center Parcs courtesy of Sally's dad who'd been saving for some years in his "secret Swiss bank account" for us all to go on holiday when they reached their golden wedding anniversary. Instead Sally, June, Nigel, Callum, Alice, Harry and Joe had a fabulous time playing crazy golf, eating, doing dangerous things on ropes and clambering over water falls. Callum really loved playing with his cousins and his god father and it was the kind of break we all think we needed. The following week we headed off to Ilfracombe where so many of the Bennett family holidays were. We had lots of lovely days out including Woolecombe beach where Callum built his first sandcastle (with some help from dad), lots of trips to castles and stately homes and a trip to the worst theme park ever at Coombe Martin. Its Dinosaur and Wild life park was built on the side of a steep hill so pretty useless if you have a pram and even worse if you were disabled. Added to that most of the attractions looked like they were stolen from other parks and thrown together. Our days were great but the nights were hard work. So we came home a day early and vowed never to share a room with the little guy again.