The McKenzies' Blog…

We started out a weeks camping by leaving the house about noon on Sunday. The drive to the camp site, Brickyard Farm Camp site (Banham, Norfolk, NR16 2HQ), was only about an hour or so from home. Even at the reduced speed we had to travel at because of towing the trailer. After a stop at Sainsbury in Thetford for a few last minute supplies and lunch as well, we arrived at the camp site at about 1400hrs, plenty of daylight left so we could take our time getting everything set up.

Lisa and Emma immediately found the horses in the fields to go and see plus a swing set to play on as well. I was a bit worried for a while, there were no other kids around. Then, a family came trooping back into camp. They’d been out to the Banham Zoo. It’s about 1/2 mile down the road. Anyhow, Lisa and Emma quickly became acquainted with Hanna, 7yrs old. They spent the next 3 or so hours playing all sorts of games and running around the farm.

The camp site itself is a small family run business. It’s run the brother of our neighbour, very nice folks. They popped around to check on us and see how we were settling in. Quite layed back, they haven’t asked for money as yet. The site is, as I mentioned, small. Only about 6 or so pitches, most with electric. We didn’t bother with that, I’d brought the 120amp battery with us. More then enough power for the week to run a laptop if needed and charge the phones. I brought a 12v florescent lamp as well but likely won’t need it.

The kids are knackered. They’ve had a busy afternoon that’s for sure. Tomorrow we’ll be walking to the zoo and checking out the animals and whatever else they have there.

Well that’s about it from here tonight I think. the big people are knackered too and ready for bed now as well.

Watch this space for the day 2 report. I won’t be posting pics on the blog, but check on facebook, flickr and mobypictures and of course Twitter.com/m1xzg for updates.

Btw, this is all from my phone, there are likely spelling errors, I will fix them later. Don’t think I have a spell check on here.

Posted by Wordmobi

Camping Trip – Day 1

We started out a weeks camping by leaving the house about noon on Sunday.
The drive to the camp site, Brickyard Farm Camp site (Banham, Norfolk,
NR16 2HQ), was only about an hour or so from home. Even at the reduced
speed we had to travel at because of towing the trailer. After a stop at
Sainsbury in Thetford for a few last minute supplies and lunch as well, we
arrived at the camp site at about 1400hrs, plenty of daylight left so we
could take our time getting everything set up.

Lisa and Emma immediately found the horses in the fields to go and see
plus a swing set to play on as well. I was a bit worried for a while,
there were no other kids around. Then, a family came trooping back into
camp. They’d been out to the Banham Zoo. It’s about 1/2 mile down the
road. Anyhow, Lisa and Emma quickly became acquainted with Hanna, 7yrs
old. They spent the next 3 or so hours playing all sorts of games and
running around the farm.

The camp site itself is a small family run business. It’s run the brother
of our neighbour, very nice folks. They popped around to check on us and
see how we were settling in. Quite layed back, they haven’t asked for
money as yet. The site is, as I mentioned, small. Only about 6 or so
pitches, most with electric. We didn’t bother with that, I’d brought the
120amp battery with us. More then enough power for the week to run a
laptop if needed and charge the phones. I brought a 12v florescent lamp as
well but likely won’t need it.

The kids are knackered. They’ve had a busy afternoon that’s for sure.
Tomorrow we’ll be walking to the zoo and checking out the animals and
whatever else they have there.

Well that’s about it from here tonight I think. the big people are
knackered too and ready for bed now as well.

Watch this space for the day 2 report. I won’t be posting pics on the blog,
but check on facebook, flickr and mobypictures and of course
Twitter.com/m1xzg for updates.

Btw, this is all from my phone, there are likely spelling errors, I will
fix them later. Don’t think I have a spell check on here.

One of the apps I’ve bought off the Nokia OVI store (£1.00) was PhotoTwister.  I don’t see me spending much at all on apps, but as the built in photo tools are very limited and don’t let you be very creative at all with the 5MP camera in the Nokia N97, I figured for £1 this was a bargain.  Lisa was a willing model for some test shots hehe she got quite a kick out of the results.

View Full Album

Click on the pics to see the full versions.

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged about anything meaningful. It’s not for the lack of anything to blog about, just more about my lack of ambition really.

In July I attended WordCampUK 2009 held in Caerdydd, Cymru (Cardiff, Wales). I was going to blog about this, but having read the huge number of postings by others that attended the event (A decent search), I figured there was nothing more that I could write to equal or better what others had already said. I will say that it was an awesome weekend though! Met loads of great people and even participated in the #Wordhack – Mobile Kubrick Theme project.

In July I also got a new phone, the Nokia N97. While it’s a very slick phone, it’s far from being without faults and bugs. To be completely honest, I’ve not been surprised by this, Nokia has made it a business mission it seems to release stunning devices that were only half thought out and loosely hacked up and released, clearly done late on a Friday afternoon after everyone had been out for a pub lunch lunch earlier in the day. For it’s flag ship phone it’s a pretty piss poor showing. Think I’m being too hard on it? See here “N97 Sucks”, “N97 Bugs”, “N97 is crap”. To contrast this however, “N97 is great”. Over all I really really love the device and it’s huge potential, but that is overshadowed by Nokia’s classic lackadaisical approach to building phones of late.

What else is new… I blogged recently about Lisa losing her first tooth… well it looks like another one is fixing to fall out soon. This is also the bottom one next to the one that fell out last month. Hehe poor kid will have a big hole in her smile for a while I think. There’s no sign yet of the new tooth showing up either.

Holiday’s… not really planned much this summer due the appalling weather we’ve been having this year. Typically British is the common phrase you’ll hear people mention. Loads of rain and grey/black skies. I have however booked a week off in August and we’re hoping to get out and do at least a couple days of camping. I’ve found a place in Suffolk that looks nice. Loads of woods to go walking through and they allow camp fire, which is very rare here. That would be nice for the kids to sit by the fire and we’ll take some marshmallows for them to roast over the fire too. We’ve done that before but it was over the BBQ, lets face it, there’s no competition between marshmallows over a BBQ or a camp fire!.

Not really much else to blog about right now. I’ll close off this posting for the time being. I hope to do more frequent blog postings, but then I’ve said that several times in the past and #failed at it