This week I spent the first night away from Laura and Abi, since Abi was born. I went up to London for the Carson Workshops In Depth CSS XHTML Techniques by Eric Meyer. I was quite nervous beforehand - as well as being away, the first day of the course was also when Abi had her first set of immunisations.

I'm glad I went as the workshop was brilliant. It was run in a very interactive way with Eric encouraging questions throughout. He only used slides for setting the scene for the 2 days, and the rest of the time was spent looking at source code and how it appeared in a web browser. We covered quite a few things that I'd already seen before, but there were lots of bits and pieces that were different or I hadn't done before. The main thing that got me thinking was to first think about the document source order and the best markup to describe the content, without thinking about the design. I've done a bit of this before, but always wanted to get onto adding the design, so probably rushed this stage more than I possibly should have - and resulted in a lot more divs and classes in my document source than was necessary!

The other thing that was good about the course for me was the opportunity to meet people

Firstly I'll set the scene, earlier in the evening we'd given Abigail a bath, and Laura had fed her, and since then she'd been sleeping. After we'd finished watching TV Laura was ready to feed her again before we went up to bed. Well when I say ready I mean dripping milk! Abi was still sleeping, and I noticed that she was a bit smelly, so I decided to change her to wake her up a bit so she was ready to catch the milk.

Ok, so I'd took Abigail's nappy off and got ready to clean her up, when she decided to wee all over the changing mat. Fortunately I'm used to this now and managed to catch it with kitchen roll before it got onto her clothes. However just as I was cleaning up the wee, something new happened that I'd not had before ... explosive poo. The poo just squirted from Abi's bottom across the changing mat, off the changing mat, onto my trousers and also onto the bag of cotton wool sitting on Laura's nursing chair (good job the bag was there!).

Announcing the birth of...

Abigail Ione Moorhouse

on Sunday 8th October 2006 at 21:01

Update...

She weighed 5 lb 12 oz and was born at home in the birthing pool, just as we'd hoped. This was a particular answer to prayer, as earlier the midwives had told us that there was a possibility we would have to go into the birthing centre, as the labour ward was short staffed.
However God provided us with 2 excellent midwives who were keen to ensure we had the home birth that we wanted, and they battled for us for it with the hospital.

Laura's contractions were advancing and she was keen to get into the pool, but worried about being told to get out again, I called the church prayer chain, to get them to pray for us.
Minutes later the midwives had a phone call from the hospital saying that they could stay.

Contractions are now 2 minutes apart and lasting between 60 and 90 seconds. The midwifes are here just assessing here...more later

Yesterday things were quite variable after the initial burst of activity.

While we were waiting for the midwife we had a surprise visit from Michael at the door, which threw us completely as he didn't look much like a midwife! By the time the midwife arrived the contractions had died down quite a bit, but she checked the usual stuff and Laura's temperature and all seemed fine.

Last night though, Laura had a very disturbed night and is now very tired, but the contractions are coming stronger. She's been finding it quite tough, but is doing really well. Thank you to those of you that are praying for us - it's greatly appreciated and I'm sure it makes a difference.

Hopefully the baby will arrive at some point today - and I'll keep you informed!

Laura has gone into labour - I think it all started about 1 o'clock in the morning. She woke me up at about 5 o'clock and told me that they were getting more regular. I was completely out of it and didn't understand what she was telling me until I'd got up and come downstairs! I thought we were supposed to be going somewhere!

Well she's now all wired up to her TENS machine and contractions seem to be about every 4 minutes. We've also got the birthing pool fully inflated and ready to fill.

She's just attempting to phone the midwife

More to follow...

See also Laura's earlier post

After seeing that one of the contestents on Masterchef this week had cooked butternut squash risotto, it made us fancy it ourselves. I had a look for a recipe in some of the usual places, and then decided to make one myself (with a little help from the example risotto on the back of the rice packet).

• 1 Onion (finely chopped)

• Handful of mushrooms (chopped)

• 1 litre of light vegetable stock

• 150g Risotto Rice

• Blob of Butter

• Butternut Squash (cubed)

• Couple of sprigs of fresh parsley

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C

2. Drizzle Butternut Squash with Olive Oil and roast for 30 minutes

3. Once the Butternut Squash has been roasting for about 15 minutes, heat the butter in a frying pan and add the onions - fry them until the are soft.

4. Add the mushrooms followed by the stock and rice and stir.

5. Leave the rice mixture to simmer until all the water has gone (should be about the same time as the butternut squash is finished)

6. Mix in the squash and the fresh parsley and serve.

After talking about different bible software with some people at life group on Sunday, I thought I'd do a bit more investigation into some of the free bible software available. The main software I've looked at so far is: In the beginning was the Word, The SWORD Project (for Windows). I also tried MyBible - but didn't get past the installation, as it failed to download the texts.

Here's my initial findings, I intend to investigate some others and post some more details as I use them a bit more later on...

In the beginning was the Word

Highlights

• Clipboard Monitor that pops up a verse when you copy a reference from anywhere

• Excellent Interface

• Personal Note storage

• Lots of texts available (including original languages)

Disadvantages

• Doesn't have footnotes to the text

• No cross references

SWORD Project (Windows)

Highlights

• Lots of texts available (including modern translations)

Disadvantages

• Difficult to use Interface

• Flashes a lot when you change passage or settings

This weekend Laura and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary by having a nice relaxing weekend away over at my parents caravan on Hayling Island (more on that to follow). It's amazing how time has flown by in these four years, but it's been wonderful and lots of different things in each one of them!

• 2002 - 2003 - My Graduation, preparing for Uruguay

• 2003 - 2004 - Mostly in Uruguay

• 2004 - 2005 - Laura's last year at Uni and lots of church stuff

• 2005 - 2006 - Pregnancy and moving House

...awaiting new content...

Matthew 18:5