Unruffled cheese wheel

OK, I know I said I wasn't going to fill up the blog with amusing spam email titles I received, but I couldn't resist that one. Perhaps I'll make a column in my sidebar...

Crazy boy

This is one of the kids' favourite dressing up items - you can see why, it's very funky.

Another one of those kind of days

A couple of glam girls - new dresses, and amazingly they actually are willing to wear dresses that match. Different colours, not suprisingly, but still. Someday I might actually be able to take a photo of them not posing quite so much but frankly, the fact that neither was pulling a face or trying to obscure the other was enough for the moment.

Oh and, in case you are interested, it takes less than 2/3 of a roll of toilet paper to block up our new toilet to the point it won't flush and instead fills with water until it overflows. Ask me how I know...

Not our cat...

This is Dave, our adoptive cat - he (actually, she, but I can never remember to refer to a cat called "Dave" as "she") lives next door, but likes to hang out in our garden. And sometimes in the house, when the French Doors are open. Works for me - all the pleasures of having a cat without any of the vet bills, scratched furniture, cleaning litter trays and so on. And so decorative looking!

My new baby

Well, here it is. Finally, I got a new bike. I've been thinking I'd like one for a long time, and for the past 6-8 months, I've been using an old one that a neighbour who was moving had in her shed and gave me for free. It had the advantage of being free, but it was stuck in second gear, was quite rusty and of course, was ancient. Today, it also decided to have the front wheel out of alignment which meant the wheel rubbed when I tried to ride it, so I decided to take the plunge and get a new bike.

Having the free one has as least shown me that I will use the bike - I've been riding it quite a bit, especially since the weather got better, so it's worth investing in. I expect I'll ride it even more once Alex is in school full time - great for small errands, to go to yoga or swimming, local visits, etc. And I bought these lovely panniers, so I can actually run errands without having to keep everything in a backpack, which is fine when it's small stuff, but less good for milk and other heavy grocery items.

Rode the bike home from the shop today when I collected it and it's a joy to ride - unlike the old one, which was really hard work to get moving at any speed, this actually goes quickly when you pedal hard. Not sure what I will do with 24 gears (!) but they all seem to have that these days. I'm really looking forward to getting out and about on it - just hope the weather holds...

Strawberry sorbet song

Strawberry sorbet

Lots of strawberries in the house - we picked over a kilo, so even with the kids nibbling at them every time they pass, there were still plenty to make some sorbet with, and still have leftovers for dessert. The sorbet involved mashing the strawberries up and pushing them through a seive - as these were freshly picked and quite ripe, we were able to do this without having to cook them, which means the resulting sorbet tastes fresher and less jammy, which I think is a good thing. It was messy, though, so next time I might try whizzing them in the food processor and leaving them to drain a while. I will also adjust the recipe as I thought it was a bit sweet. But we tend to like our fruit sorbets on the tart side.

Here's Alex helping to mash the berries - he was singing a really cute strawberry mashing song, which I will put a clip of up tomorrow or whenever you tube finishes processing it...

Some highlights from Grandma Lucy's house

Some highlights from our trip up to see Grandma Lucy over the half term holiday. On the way up we stopped at Cadbury World - or rather, attempted to stop there - it was packed, and there was a 3 hour wait to get in to the exhibition, so we decided to bypass it with the possibility of trying again on the way home, having pre-booked tickets. So we stopped for some lunch, then stopped to see the exhibit at the Bosworth Field Battleground (apparently, Richard III only said "a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" in Shakespeare) - only to find that they are redoing their main exhibit and it is closed until August. Unlucky day for us! But the kids had fun trying on some armour and we had a little walk around the fields to run off some energy. The stocks were just wishful thinking on my part :)

One of the highlights of a trip to Grandma Lucy's is this cool swing in the local playground - there is always a cluster of children waiting to go on it... And the photo to the left shows Alex with his name written in liquid chocolate (we did make it to Cadbury in the end). More photos from the trip can be found here, on Flickr (I am going to put all my photos on flickr in future, as yahoo will apparently be stopping their photo site in future) - someday, I may actually get them all labelled!