Merry Christmas and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So here I am sitting on the sofa once again, giving an update of the latest shinaniganz of us here Devonshire Hodges!

Christmas Day

One of the many decorations Naomi made to decorate our flat!

Some of you quicker off the mark might have noticed that just over a week ago (I'm writing this on Jan 2nd) it was Christmas day.... So happy late christmas! Well this Christmas was the first one me and Naomi have spent together as a married couple and I think the whole excitement of it all got to Naomi as I was FORCED to wake up at 5.30 on Christmas morning to open our sockings. After this initial annoyance the rest of the day was rather pleasant me and Naomi offered to baby sit for Jo Brown as she was working Christmas day so we fed Luke at lunch time, which consisted of lots of lovely picnic style foods including my favourite of Cheese & Pineapples on sticks YUM! After lunch however we made the short trip up to Barnstable to visit Naomi's Parents at her Grannies Farm were we got our Christmas Turkey fix!

Boxing Day

Not only is Boxing day my Mother's Birthday it is also the home of one of my favorite traditions the Cardiff Boxing Day ride. These two things enabled me to have enough will power and actual power to get up and drag Naomi out of bed at 7am to drive up to Cardiff for the 10am bike ride! Fun times, the bike ride itself was rather entertaining where I'd decided to test out a new technique of Beer only Hydration, its effects were negative... the ride also allowed me to test out my amazing bodge:

(all you non cyclists skip this paragraph) Basically what had happened, I rode my bike on Christmas Eve, realised my hub was playing up, took it to bits realised all the springs on my free hub had snapped me realising this at 6pm, and knowing I'd need my bike for boxing day had to come up with some kind of temporary fix).

We stayed in Cardiff for a couple more days maxing and relaxing, and then we went back down to Barnstable to see Naomi's family for a couple days, these days were nice and educational since due to Naomi's brothers experimental tendencies we discovered that a salt shaker has adverse effects upon the appearance of my wife:

(Naomi's gonna kill me for uploading that image)

Although it was nice spending time with our Families I was very much looking forward to getting back to Plymouth as the Christmas break had lined up a new opportunity to show of my DIY skills:

Ikea had gotten the better of us and forced us to buy a new TV cabinet and some wall mounted CD racks.. and yes they are still attached to the walls!

The final bit of update hot off the press and happily sitting in my stomach's is our first "proper" roast. Last updates roast was more of a off the cuff slap up roast, this was a pre mediated roast, and with the help of Jamie Oliver's perfect roast potatoe guide, it was the best darn roast I've ever had (Obviously your's are really the best mum, but for a home made roast does gets extra satisfaction points!)

Moments later normal Naomi magically transformed into a fat and full Naomi

That is all for now!

I'm dreaming of a White Chris...... Birthday!

I'm currently writing this from the comfort of my sofa waiting whilst Naomi makes me some lovely steak and chips for my birthday meal.... today being my birthday by the way! Well I shall start by saying what us Devonshire Hodges have been up to this week!

Sunday was Mutley Baptists Chris-tingle service the Chris-tingle being a symbolic object used to show advent. Well basically the end product is a Orange, wrapped in a ribbon, with a candle on it and some sweeties attached... well from the following two Christ-tingles belonging to me and Naomi... which do you think belongs to who?

(note one with sweets and one without!)

The next major event of the week (yes we lead very exciting lives) which occurred the very same evening... me and Naomi made our first roast as a married couple! I know shock horror its actually taken us over 4 months to get around to making our first roast! Well the roast was really a slap up meal consisting of the same ingredients that a roast is made out of (chicken, potatoes, carrots etc). The end product was tasty tasty tasty so that's all that mattered!

Well the rest of the week consisted of me having work Christmas doo's! Ooooh and Naomi got offered a job! Which was nice!

This leading nicely up to the second most important birthday in December... MY BIRTHDAY! Today it decided to snow, which was nice so we were obviously forced into going for a walk on Dartmoor:

The rest of today is going to consist of me and Naomi getting fat and full on some tasty food and watching ELF to get us all Christmassy! Fun times!

It's Christmas in the Hodge house hold!

So the 9th of December has marked a magical moment in our marriage and both of our lives... we bought our first Christmas Tree! GASP!

We decided that we'd go for a small tree, and Naomi created and added her home made decorations... so its a classic team Hodge DIY job. Some could say it looks tacky, but we say its made from love!

We also went for another walk this weekend but we didn't get wet... SCORE!

Other than the Christmas Tree and the Walk we haven't actually done much since the last update... well obviously we have actually done stuff like we've eaten food, gone to work and gone food shopping etc, but other than that we're just looking forward to the Christmas break. I think I've set a personal record for my Christmas shopping this year of getting all mine done within 30min... all credit goes to Amazon!

That is all thanks for reading! 

A WET walk on Dartmoor

Well if you haven't heard on the news or been outside for a while, you might have noticed that its been a TAD wet of late! Well this didn't seem to deter Naomi insisting upon us going for a walk this weekend! However I sneakily decided this would be a good excuse to scope out some new routs to cycle on.

Well the start of the walk was a sign of things to come with us discovering Paul to be sitting in a pool of water... great!

So clearly I had to do the manly thing of walking out into the deep pool and drive Paul to a drier spot, I surprisingly did this without actually getting wet socks! We then drove out to the Moors successfully without driving into the back of anyone after Paul's brakes failed after the wetness, luckily they sorted themselves out after a quick spin!

We.... I'd decided we'd go for a little walk around this spot here on Dartmoor:

View Larger Map

The walk started off with a rather amusing comment from Naomi of (not a direct quote) "You don't need those Waterproof trousers".... oooh how wrong she was! The heaven's emptied I stayed bone dry Naomi's top half stayed dry... this said rain ran off onto her trousers and she got soaked... mehehehe! We walked up to one of the tours here was the view:

The view behind wasn't to bad either ;-)

The walk back to the car was rather amusing with the decision of the boring walk along the road or the walk down the vally over moor land.... for some odd reason we decided to walk down the vally.... vally's being known for the small bit of water flowing down the middle... which wasn't tooo small! Lets just say our feet got rather wet!

Well that is all for now.... thanks for reading!

PS Snuffles... for all those who were at our wedding is doing just fine living with us in our flat:

Lots of Cycling, and some amendments to our house!

Well according to Naomi we've not done much exciting stuff since our last update but I think we've done a fair amount... first off two weeks ago me and Naomi went our seporate ways and visited our home towns as we both had friends emegrating to different countries. I took this time to spend some quality time with my dad and our bikes:



The following weekend consisted of me and Naomi going on a crazy spending spree and got a new sofa and some tables and chairs! Fun times:

The Sunday then consisted of me giving myself lots of abuse by racing against a number of like minded fools in the first round of the Soggy Bottom series:

Here's also a little video of me crossing the above video, check me Shredding it up on the exit:

The race went really well and I came home in 5th which I was rather chuffed with! Well that about raps up the past 2 weeks of events.

Looking back on this post I can see what Nay was referring to it does seem a little bit bland... so sorry for this! We'll try and do something exciting for you to read in the next update!

St Ives and Guy Forks

I'm currently writing this as Naomi's fallen asleep next to me and I've just finished cooking Sweet and Sour Chicken and I'm rather exhausted myself... yet for some reason I feel compelled to write this post... odd that! Well the past weekend consisted of my Brother and Sister in Law calling past on their way down to St Ives so as well as the pleasantries of seeing them we also hitched a free lift down to Cornwall's finest sea side resort!

First things first we had to get our pasty on:

Those in the know will realise that, I'm actually eating some crazy assed pasty, since I purchased the pasty which was made in Cornwall its Crib is actually along the top (which normally defines a devonshire pasty) as opposed to along the side (traditional cornish). This almost concerned me a little bit until i realised that I was holding something which could be eaten and after a minute or so of chomping the item of confusion was no more!

The rest of our time in St Ives consisted of a lot of wondering around and enjoying the local facilities (highly recommend the Sloop Inn and their Mexican Restaurant! oh and yeah St Ives beaches aren't too bad either!

Oh and one final thing from our trip to St Ives which was quite amusing at the time but watching it back, its not quite as amusing one Giant dog barking at a little dog which isn't bothered at all!



It kinda resembles this highly amusing comic strip I've found on Lucy Lou's Art Journal:

Well after our lovely weekend, we both have had to go back to work, which isn't actuallly that bad a thing since we both enjoy our jobs! This week however contains the most magical day of the 5th November! Where for some reason controlled explosions are no longer throwned upon and are accepted as common practice! FIREWORKS night! The city of Plymouth gets it community spirit on when it comes to Fireworks night by putting on a huge free display on the Hoe its actually really nice how the City all turns up at one place like that! I did try my best to try and capture the feeling of the place in this clip but was quite distracted by the Huge fire and explosions to really put that much effort into it:



We rounded the evening off with a visit to Captain Jaspers for some Fat filled Burgers but darn they were tasty! So that leaves me to were I am now about 50min later I think I shall let sleep do its thing!

Naomi's birthday and Naomi's parents visiting...

Well last week was Naomi's birthday and my huge elaborate plans of going to disney land on the back of a elephant were put on hold as she got called in for supply work... booo! So with that plan changed we decided to go for a curry after work instead! Fun times!

My weekend consisted of a bike ride over the Dewstone, After which I thought hmm I should take Naomi for a walk over here... so 5 hours later we did.

Our walk was very pleasant I even took some nice photos with my SLR:

The rest can be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/splodge360/4040560002/

Later that evening we had a lovely time watching You've Been Framed and Harry Hills TV - Burp was magic I tell you... we then had a nice time watching a number of films with Luke and Jo!

The next major event.... when I say major I really mean just non standard activity... occurred today... Naomi's parents came to visit and we had a nice picnic down on Wembry beach:



And that's about it for the most recent updates... my brother and sister in law are calling past here on the weekend as they're on holiday in St Ives so we shall most probably take the opportunity to visit it ourselves! Fun times!