Seventh anniversary overnight trip: Exmoor.

This year, Mark and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary. Because there's some other stuff going on, we wanted to take a least a little bit of time for just the two of us. But we didn't want to go far, so we ended up on an overnight stay in Exmoor.

It's only a couple of hours from Bristol, and since one of the traditional 'themes' for year seven is wool, we thought it was an appropriate destination:


We visited Tarr Steps, which is a medieval (or earlier) stone bridge.





There's a nice walk along the river, along both sides, and there are some other, smaller stone bridges along the way. We stopped and took a picture which ends up showing how round I'm becoming:



After the walk, we stopped at a hotel/cafe overlooking the steps.



There we had the joy of a cream tea, a tradition in both Devon and Cornwall (scones, jam, clotted cream, tea) - the main difference between the two types of cream tea apparently being what order you apply the jam and clotted cream. But whichever order, it's really good, so I of course was pleased.


We stayed overnight at the Exmoor Forest Inn in Simonsbath, inland from The Hunter's Inn, which is where we usually stay when we go to Devon/Exmoor (which Mom and Dad have also experienced). It was OK - the food wasn't as good as all the reviewers suggested, but it wasn't bad and the room was comfortable. (And they had satellite TV - woo woo - which we don't have at home).

The next day we visited Lynmouth - again, which Mom and Dad should recognize!



The weather was pretty bad, with a lot of rain, so we didn't hang around too much. It really felt more like autumn than the end of summer. It was still nice to visit, though, especially since Lynmouth was one of the places Mark took me on our first visit to England, when we were both still living in Slovakia.

Here's to a great seven years and looking forward to the next!

Vallentiny update number two: 20 weeks (aka alien dinosaur baby)

So it seems like Vallentiny had a bit of a growth spurt recently because, to me at least, the bump is looking a bit bigger.



On Wednesday I had my 20 week ultrasound. It went really well - brain, heart, kidneys, bladder, spine, hands, legs, stomach and everything else all looked good. We were very, very pleased, despite the fact that of course we couldn't really "see" much of anything our very nice ultrasound lady (nurse? doctor? technician?) was pointing out. We could see/understand the brain and heart (it was pretty cool to see the four chambers clearly), and of course the skeletal structure. Everything else was blobs and grey patches. She did a color overlay at a couple of angles to look at blood flow; to me it just looked like some kind of 70s experimental film. But she was pleased with what she saw, which is the important thing. She was really pleased with Vallentiny's feet. So get the baby sandals ready, people.

At the end, we did find out the gender, but we've decided to keep that information to ourselves. Our plan is to use both pronouns interchangeably, so if I refer to Vallentiny as "he" or "she," know that it's all part of the plan to try to keep that bit a surprise for everyone. I'll probably also keep using "it" for a time as well - "it" just still kind of fits. Especially while Vallentiny still looks like an alien.








I'm next booked in for an ultrasound at 32 weeks, on November 16th. We may still do one of those "4D" scans - we haven't really talked about it - but I guess that's typically done around 28-30 weeks.

I'm still not feeling any movement (that I can distinguish) and the ultrasound lady explained why. Apparently, the placenta is at the back, which means that it's in-between Vallentiny and my tummy, which of course is where you start to feel any movement. So Vallentiny's going to need to be a bit bigger (or really rambunctious) before I really start to feel anything. I wasn't concerned about it, but it was interesting to hear the explanation.

All's well with Team Vallentine!