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!

A day in the rain

Bodiam Castle

& some very big fish

Sarah on the top of the tower

Merlin with a big umbrella & his dad - Alex and Geoff bringing up the rear.

Spent the day yesterday with friends - Miranda and her two kids, Joseph (who lives in the US) and Hannah (Australia) and their respective families. As you might imagine, it's rare they all get together at once, especially when we can get there, too. Also our friends Nigel and Ann came along. Although we spent a good chunk of time at the cottage they are all staying in, in Kent, we did make a brief foray out to Bodiam Castle, just down the road, so the kids (big Sarah, age 14; Duncan, 12; our Sarah, 9; Olivia, 7, Alex, 4; Merlin, 3) could have a run around. Despite the rain, they all seemed to have fun - or who knows, maybe because of it. Once we got back to the cottage, the grownups all went inside for tea and other refreshments, while a good contigent of the kiddies continued to play out in the rain, exploring and whatnot. .. More photos of the day here... Most of them fairly out of focus - I think I was trying to snap them too quickly because of the rain. But you get the idea.

"Forts Day"

...or for those of you more readily able to pronounce "sp" - "sports day". Here's Alex catching a ball in one of his little activities. No photos of the girls, as those are all video - I'll probably YouTube some later, so there may be some to come, but not right now. Luckily, it was a gorgeous day - sunny, not too hot, really nice. They got lucky. And everyone seemed to have fun. None of my kids fell over in their races, which is good - Sarah came third in her running race (this is not surprising, she ran against the two fastest girls in her class - those two came first and second last year as well); Olivia did a sack race and an egg & spoon race and came second in both - she nearly won the sack race but tripped at the last minute. Luckily, although they do competitive races for the older kids, they are fairly casual about it, and the emphasis is on completing your race and supporting your teams. The littles aren't marked for places at all - everyone gets a well done sticker in every race.

[The school is divided into four teams or houses, with kids in different years in each team; through the year they are awarded team points for lots of things - good behaviour, homework, sports, good artwork and so on - so all the children have a chance to help their team earn points. The idea is to encourage interaction and cooperation across the entire school, rather than just within your own class or year. The younger students are assigned to teams, but don't really earn much in the way of team points. Each house is called after a big cat (lions, tigers, leopards, panthers) and has a colour (yellow, red, green, blue). Siblings are always in the same team/house. We're panthers.]

Anyway, an enjoyable day, and I've come back with rather browner shoulders than I started the day with. Luckily, I did put some sunscreen on just after lunch, so I'm not burnt.

Bunch of flowers

I'm a fairly busy person. Some would say very busy. So why is it that I never feel I have anything to blog about here? There's plenty to blog on my quilting blog, because you don't have to think of anything interesting, you just talk about the sewing you did that day, but when I try to apply that principle to this blog, it always seems kind of boring!

So. Here's a bunch of tulips, which I received yesterday from our lunch guest, Katya, who is sort of a colleague of Geoff's (she works in Boston - edits Neuron - but she's in London for a month or so). She brought me these lovely flowers, which have opened up really nicely, and a bottle of wine (which opened nicely, too!). We often (well, maybe often isn't quite right - regularly, let's say) have colleagues of Geoff's around when they are visiting from the US (or wherever) - this time, it was nice to have another American, especially a female East-Coaster who is my age and was born in Germany (yes, I know, sounds like me!). Anyway, we had a nice day, good lunch if I do say so myself (rack of lamb, pommes dauphinnoise, stuffed courgettes; forest fruit ice-cream to finish) and good enough weather for a nice walk afterwards (the girls on their bikes) - but of course, having a guest for lunch pretty much takes up the whole day. Which is fine, but often leaves me feeling I haven't accomplished much.

I guess we compensated for that today - Geoff mowed the grass, we cleaned out the gutter on the front of the house, Geoff took a trip to the tip, I did three loads of wash, and so on. See how exciting my life is? No wonder I don't blog it all the time!

On a funnier note (sort of) - the girls have been playing elaborate games today involving pretending to have broken a limb. So it was a bit like a triage area in the hallway and kitchen... This unfortunately was prompted by Olivia's friend Eliza having broken her elbow, poor thing. She did it falling over at the school disco, but is either very stoical, or just managed to do it in an unusually painless way - even the doctor at the hospital when her mum took her to have an x-ray just to be on the safe side, didn't think it was broken because Eliza wasn't in enough pain. Which is good, of course, but lucky that they went to have the x-ray "just in case". At the moment, she's not in plaster because apparently they prefer not to do plaster for elbows, but I think when she goes back later in the week, she'll come out with a cast - just too hard for a six-year old not to move her elbow. Or have it moved accidentally.

Alex driving on the carousel

Went to the May Fair at Morden Hall Park today - here's Alex on the carousel. I didn't take many photos, as I kept getting distracted, and although I did take two short videos, I took them sideways, and don't know if there's a way to flip them or not - must work on that, as I keep forgetting I can't take video that way...

The cutest boy

A photographer came into WrapAround (where Alex goes after nursery two days a week) recently to take photos of the kids - I happened to be there (I came to collect him, but the photographer was late, so I was there when the photos were taken, unlike most of the parents). Anyway, at one point when he was taking the photos, Alex wanted me to be in some too, so I agreed - we don't have many photos of me, as I tend to take most of them, or else they are taken by the kids (or my mother) and have part of my head chopped off (equally likely, whether taken by the kids or my mother, I'm afraid!). Anyway. There were more proofs, but I think these are the best four - we'll be ordering some, but I just wanted to share the proofs with everyone!

Spring has sprung

And with the spring, the first of the asparagus - Alex and I went down to the Pick your Own today, and picked lots of it (this is only a little). Dinner tonight was asparagus and roasted beetroot (for me - Geoff didn't have the beetroot and of the kids, only Olivia really likes asparagus, though Alex will eat it - but why waste it? Olivia had a plateful, though) and crusty bread. Yum, yum. The radishes, I ate for lunch (ok, not all of them, but a big handful).

And some freesias for the kitchen window. Lovely.

Sunny - or not

Great day this morning - sunny, no wind - perfect for sunprinting, which I wanted to do for a project of my own, so I thought I'd let the kids do some too. Of course, the moment we get the pieces painted and ready to go outside, there goes the sun for the duration of the afternoon. Sigh. Worked ok, but not with the kind of crisp, clear images that you get on a really good day. Still, it was fun for them - especially Alex, who has never been allowed to do it before. He thinks it's Magic. And so it is.

The ones above are Alex's on the left and Sarah's on the right. Below are Olivia's on the left and on the right, a group effort which was mainly an exercise in using up all the setacolours which had been poured out and thinned. The kids' pieces mainly use foam shapes and leaves as resists, the group piece uses rice, lentils and pasta (dried). I think the group piece in particular is a very nice piece. I shoudl say that the dark parts were there to start with - it was a piece I ruched before which didn't turn out very interesting so went into the "do something else with this later" box.

Portrait of the artist...

The small boy is obsessed with the camera. To the point I have to be careful where I leave it - not because I mind him taking pictures, but he's only four; I don't want him to drop it. Here's a photo he took today, of himself. I kinda like it, actually :)

Run, run, as fast as you can...

Alex was learning The Gingerbread Man in nursery, so we made these biscuits in honour - Allie did all the eyes and buttons himself. There's another, raisinless tray for those who don't like raisins (Sarah) as well. He insisted on having Rover in the picture as well - Rover is his favourite stuffed toy, most of the time. He has the honour of being the only stuffed toy who has an actual name (most are just called Panda, Bear, Cat (or Catty) and so on, unless they are a character that already has a name (Snoopy, Dora, Fimbo, etc))

It's alright ma, I'm only hoarse after shouting at a concert

Dylan last night at Wembley Arena. Good show - better than Kilkenny Festival last year, not the very best I've seen him, but I do really like the new album, so that helps, and he was obviously in a good mood (comparatively speaking). Played Blind Willie McTell, which I understand is unusual - I've certainly not heard it in concert before. Lots of stuff off the new album (Modern Times) though not Workingman's Blues, which I like. But he did do When the Deal Goes Down and Nettie Moore, both of which I like very much. Even Geoff really likes the new album, now that he's got used to it being very different from traditional Dylan, whatever that is.

Not sure why I always seem to end up having to sit next to guys who get a little drunk and elbow me in the side all night - maybe there's just something about me :)

Great comment in a review in one of the free London papers today: "...by singing in a voice so husky it was a miracle he didn't arrive on stage pulling a sled." Even better than the Guardian review of the Newcastle concert which said his voice these days was a "cross between Macy Gracy and Donald Duck" which is odd and slightly rude but remarkably accurate.

What a zoo!

Our friends Cathi and Dave are visiting this weekend from Ireland - on Friday, we took all the kids to the zoo. Here are Olivia and Aine (who is Alex's age) pretending to be flamingos, and Alex with his new gorilla toy, and Aine. They are looking at the Komodo Dragon - or rather, were before this photo was taken... The London Zoo has a new gorilla enclosure, which is nice - my friend Barbara would like it, I'm sure. It was a nice day - good weather (though nothing like today which is sunny and very warm) and we had a good time, despite the effort of taking small kids on public transport - both of the big girls were very helpful with the two 4 year olds, and Aisling, who is 2.5. More photos of the kids here - and lots of photos of animals, too.

Jesus just wants to say hi...

OK, I promise not to blog every time I get funny spam, but this one I couldn't resist - the subject line was "just want to say hi", which is common enough with spam, but the sender just said "Jesus". Had to laugh...

Easter Chicks (and boys)

So here are the kids on Juniper Top, with a couple of Easter chicks, which they have made a nest for. Unfortunately, not a good photo of Sarah, but pretty sweet of the other two... We had a lovely picnic on Juniper Top yesterday with our friend Miranda - beautiful day and great food.

Why we don't take up careers as handymen...

Here in the UK, this is a bank holiday weekend for Easter- both Friday and Monday are holidays. Some years we go up to see Geoff's mum over Easter, but because our friends Cathi and Dave are coming from Ireland next week, we decided to stay at home this weekend. And tackle some of the list of small jobs that have been waiting for us. One of these is repainting the back garden fence, which Geoff started last weekend. Of course we didn't have enough paint, so he could only do half until I made it down to B&Q to get more. That having been accomplished in the week, he duly finished the fence yesterday. That was the easy thing. The next task was to replace a hinge in the front door which keeps falling apart. You'd think this wouldn't be that hard. After all, how many different types and sizes of hinges can there be? We took the measurements, made a note of the number of screws, and off he went in search of one.

The first one, the hinge was too big for the door - it was a special strong type, but had a bigger diameter than the ones in there already, so wouldn't fit (unless we changed the other two). So, back he went to get the regular kind, which seemed fine, until we realised that the configuration of the holes was backwards to what was in the door already (ours goes top left, then right, then left and bottom right - the one he brought home was top right, left, right, bottom left). And unfortunately, just turning it upside down didn't work. We didn't realise this until we had the old hinge plates off the door, so at this point, the door is only connected by two hinges. This is of course when people keep coming to the door and wanting in or out!

So back to B&Q - and well, they didn't have the type we needed, so he had to go down to Homebase (different DIY shop) which I like better, but which is further away, so isn't the place to go for quick things... Luckily, they had the right kind. And after a lot of work and my managing to hit myself in the finger with the hammer, we did get it to fit. And now the door closes properly, but holy cow, what a palaver.

After the hinge was finally fixed, I put a new coat of paint on the door (the kind that supposedly only needs one coat, but really ends up needing two) and proceeded to have to leave the door standing open for the rest of the day so it could dry. But it looks much better, and as soon as I go back to B&Q to get more paint, I'll do the gate as well, which looks really old now, especially compared to the shiny new door...

Oh, and once it's completely dry, I'll put some new house numbers up - I have a shiny new pair of numbers waiting. Maybe Monday as we'll be out doing stuff tomorrow.

Alex rides his bike

He's been pretty good at doing the pedals for a while now, but it's only recently that he's mastered steering, which is good for my back...

Easter baking

So, the Easter holidays have begun, and astonishingly, the entire bank holiday weekend looks to have good weather. Yesterday we went out in the morning to buy Olivia a new bike (photos of that to come, I'm sure) and then spent a few hours in the park and riding bikes (a video of Alex on his bike later, once YouTube has processed it). Then in the afternoon we made some Easter cookies - I had some cookie cutters in spring/Easter shapes - egg, bunny, butterfly, chick, flower, lamb - and decided I should probably do the biscuits now before the cutters were no longer topical. Anyway, we made lots of colours of icing to go with them - spring colours work very well, nice pastel colours are usually what I end up with when making icing - it's the darker ones I have a harder time with.

And here are some of the finished results - yum!

An Alex Day

This is Alex, with his friend Alex. She came around to play the other day after nursery and they had a great (and somewhat silly) time. Here I think they are pretending the little bowls are hats, though that doesn't really explain why my Alex has his on the side of his face. Oh well, four-year-olds, what do you expect...

Change all the clocks...

I wonder how often we realise how many different time-telling devices there are in the average house - or perhaps mine is above average. There are 5 downstairs (kitchen and computer room wall clocks, VCR clock (which in theory changes itself but in practice has the auto function turned off as it's unreliable), computer (which does self-adjust) and the clock/timer on the oven. On the first floor, there's my sewing room clock, Alex's Bob the Builder clock, and three alarm clocks in my bedroom (I have two - one's a radio, one's a battery powered backup). The girls have 3 - two alarm clocks (again, one a radio) and a wall clock. And then there are watches (I have 2, Geoff and Sarah each have one). Oh and heck, I haven't changed the clock on the central heating/hot water - see? there's always one you miss!

edited to say - the day after I wrote this I realised I hadn't changed the clock on my phone or in the car...

More funny names

Or rather, one - just had to add that today's bulk mail contained an item from the sender "Misquotes G. Bracelet". What program would generate that as a name? Although with the names some kids have these days, maybe you never know!

Crooner O. Footing

Lately Yahoo has gone through a spate of dumping a number of messages that I really wanted into my bulk folder, so I've been having a quick look through that folder every day to rescue things from my friends, etc. Most of it is spam, of course, but once in a while there's something in there I want. I have to laugh, though, at some of the "names" that the email is purportedly from - some are ordinary enough, but today contained a real gem - Crooner O. Footing. Frankly, I'm just glad I don't know anyone called that - can you imagine the ridicule?

Perhaps spring...

After what seemed like interminable rain, to the point we were getting ready to build arks, we have finally had a small (so far) spell of sunny - and dry! - weather. I think this is the third day in a row that it hasn't actually rained. Hoorah. Anyway, the kids are taking advantage of it by being outside as much as possible, though it's still a bit chilly - early spring always is, of course.

The photo is from Thursday afternoon - the mattress was supposed to be collected by the council on Friday - I was told to have it out the evening before because they could come as early as 6am (in theory - in reality, the mattress is still sitting in our front garden, but that's another story). So anyway, I put it out Thursday afternoon so the kids could have fun playing with it, which they did. Here are most of the neighbourhood children playing on the mattress - my three, Gabriella and Katarina, who I child-mind 3 days a week (and who live a few doors down), Thalia and Keir (three doors the other direction) and Eliza, who lives over the road and is mates with Olivia and Gabriella. Only Eliza's brother and sister missing, really. But they had fun with it, which is what matters.

Catching up, again again

I know, I know - I have been terrible about blogging. And it's not that we haven't been doing anything - there was an entire half term holiday and my mother's visit during the non-blog period. Basically, I think it's just laziness or inertia.

Anyway. Both of those things went well, though it rained for most of half term (indeed, most of February - and shows not much sign of stopping - I keep meaning to take the camera out to show everyone the mud and puddles that our poor park has become). But we kept the kiddies entertained - went to the Natural History Museum, the Wetland Centre, went bowling, went to Tiger's Eye (an indoor adventure playground). The main problem with all the rain during a holiday is that you have to go places that cost money (well, the museum is free, but we can't do that every day - it's too much for the kids, and for that matter, the grownups).

Mom's visit was very nice - we even had a couple of days where we did stuff together without kids - spent one day browsing around the V&A, which was lovely to do without any kids needing toilets or getting bored or getting too close to touching things they shouldn't touch. And one day we went up to Islington to meet Geoff for lunch in a very nice GastroPub (The Elk in the Woods).

No New Year's Resolutions, but a March resolution - try to blog more. We'll see!

More snow midweek

The kids were dressed, finished with breakfast, had teeth brushed and out playing before 8am - that's what snow does, I guess. If we had it all the time, it probably wouldn't be all that thrilling.

Make a wish and blow out the candles...

Birthday party boy

Yesterday was Alex's birthday party at the Malden Centre. It went really well - all the kids were really well behaved - I was impressed. They get an hour at the start to run around, use the bouncy castle and soft shapes, slides, little cars, etc. After that, they get an hour in the creche to have some food and play games or whatever. There were no big fights, no crying from the birthday boy because he didn't win the games, and no one got sick. One little girl forgot to go to the toilet and had an accident, but luckily her mum was there and could help with that so I didn't even have to deal with it. A video of us singing happy birthday and Alex blowing out the candles will follow later, once YouTube processes it, but here are a couple of photos - the table laid out for the meal before it was attacked by kiddies, and Alex with Geoff and Katarina - they are talking to a little girl called Natasha who we can't see, but who obviously is about to eat a jam sandwich - that pretty much sums up kids' parties! Alex has anothe one to attend today - we still have a huge stack of presents to open from yesterday - we only opened about 4 last night and there were about 18 kids at this party!

Gotta love those local papers

Headlines in particular. My current favourite is "Cafe thief in jail". Yeah, yeah, of course I know what they MEAN, but the mental image it conjures up is priceless. Wonder how far he managed to get before it got too heavy?

Never mind the Hand of God, it's the Hand of Sarah

Years 3 & 4 are studying India as their topic this half term - and this week they had an Indian day. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of Sarah in a sari, though one might be forthcoming later, as I understand the teacher did take photos, but here's her hand the next day - great henna job, really strong colour. She loves it, of course.

Who needs huskie dogs when you have little kids?

This is Alex pulling all the bags in the sled on the way to school on our recent snowy day... He's so cute.

Bob's the man!

Hoorah! Just had an IM conversation with my friend Cathi in Ireland, who is my co-conspirator in sad Dylan fandom (were not that bad really, we just both like him and have a history of going to see him in concert together). Anyway. I recently found out he's got some UK tour dates in April, over the kids' Easter holiday and suggested she & her family come for a long weekend so we could go see the show - her hubby saw the e-mail and thought it was a good idea (bless the man) so they are coming to visit & Cathi and I are gonna see Bob. That'll be twice in 12 months, which is pretty good for me - I hadn't been in years before my trip to Ireland to catch him at the Kilkenny Festival last June. With Cathi, obviously! At least this time, the girls won't nag me about why they can't see Cathi, Dave & their girls...

Let it snow!

Much to the delight of the children (and the grownups too, I rather fancy) we woke up this morning to a blanket of snow. For once, it was not in the least bit difficult to get the kids up, dressed, breakfasted and ready to head off to school. My friend Sophie had a small sled, and they all took turns pulling one another (we have four families of kids who always tend to walk together as we live just a few houses away - between us, we have 10 kids between Alex at nearly 4 and Thalia at nearly 10 so it's a great gang for things like snowy days. Out of those kids, only 3 are boys!). They also took turns pulling all the mummies as well - surprisingly they managed to pull us all, not just Lana, who is pretty small for a grownup, but bigger people like Sophie (quite tall) and me (not nearly as light as Lana!) too. It was fun, actually. This kind of snow always puts me in a good mood...

There was a quick meeting at school about some teacher changes going on in Olivia's class (in which Sophie and my friend Lorayne - also one of this pack of families - have daughters) so after the meeting, we all decided to go up to the high street in Worcester Park and have a coffee. It was all very civilised, even if we did feel a little silly carrying a bright red sledge around the high street!

More photos of the trip to school here.

"Just like Daddy"

Haircut day today. I usually cut Alex's a little longer than this, but today he insisted he wanted his hair as short as Daddy's, and with another round of nits for the girls (hopefully) just finished it seemed a sensible choice. Isn't he a cutie (and Alex isn't bad either!)



And to make up for not blogging for ages, here's another little taster of what the kids get up to when they aren't fighting with one another... For those of you without young girls, this stuff is called Ello, and it's a bit like Lego, only with lots of interesting shapes - you can make buildings out of it, and people, and it comes in funky colours - it's a building bricks set, essentially, just a bit weirder and funkier than Lego. Obviously aimed at the girl market (that said, Lego is a lot more girl friendly than it used to be, too!). Sarah and Olivia made all these people last night on their Ello table. Cute in a kind of weird way...

The games kids play

I feel somewhat guilty for not blogging for so long, but it never seems as though there is anything specific to say - the kids basically do the same kinds of things they always do - go to school, play, argue with each other... We haven't been anywhere interesting or done anything unusual. I considered blogging about the weather, as we had a big wind storm which brought some trees down on cars in our road (but not our car, luckily) but I kept forgetting to take a photo of the trees down and it seemed silly without it.

So anyway, today I thought I'd show a few of the things they do when they play. All three of them were playing with playdough on and off this morning - Sarah was helping Alex make a cafe (with playdough food) and then she went to play on the computer and Olivia decided to make playdough pictures - this is her creation above- a playdough girl skateboarding and a playdough lion in the grass. Very creative, I thought.

And this is one of Alex's favourite things to do - make a "train" in his room from the little chairs and add passengers - he is the driver of course! Today he was doing this while I was sewing and I had to keep getting up to see which passengers he ha changed for which other passengers. He has a lot of stuffed animals, so there is no passenger shortage.

Some christmas karaoke cheer...

Olivia got a special karaoke microphone thingy for Christmas, so we had lots of singing...

Mummy's taking us to the zoo tomorrow...

Here's Olivia on the bridge crossing Regent's Canal, on the way to the zoo - we had to take Grandma Lucy up to St Pancras Station to go back home, and it was a very nice day, very mild, so we decided to head up to the zoo, which is quite close to St Pancras. Olivia had been before on a school trip, but none of the rest of us had been. London Zoo used to have a reputation for being one of those dismal Victorian Zoos (which it probably was, to be fair) but they've obviously put a lot of work into making it a nicer place, and I enjoyed the visit. We didn't manage to see all the animals, even, so we may well go back, perhaps when Grandma Kathy is here in February. Apparently, if you save your tickets, you can get re-admission for half-price within the next 12 months, and as it's not cheap, I think that might be well worth doing.

They had a number of seasonal activities on, as well, including having a photo taken with a reindeer (which we didn't do, though I did take a photo of the reindeer - Alex kept telling me that the reindeer wasn't supposed to be here, it was supposed to be at the North Pole) and making Christmas crackers for the squirrel monkeys (which we did do - with nuts and seeds inside) - then you can watch as they give them to the squirrel monkeys, who of course fight over them and tear them apart - worked very well, I thought. Alex wouldn't do the activitiy, just wanted to hold onto my legs, but the girls enjoyed it. At Easter next year, they are opening a new gorilla area, and reopening the small mammal house, which should be fun. Perhaps my friend Barbara, who is into gorillas in a big way, will come visit and take a trip to the Zoo...

Tis the season to... bake!

Well, here's a sample plate of this year's Christmas baking. Sarah and I (and the other two kids, off an on, but mostly off) baked up a storm yesterday and ended up with all these: Butterscotch shortbread (the shapes), Butterhorn cookies ( the crescent shaped ones - a family tradition & my dad's favourite, not that he gets them very often any more), Candy Cane cookies (which are a bit of a fiddle, but look so pretty with the others), fudge meltaways and no-bake peanut butter squares (neither of which is cooked, and both of which are easy and done in trays), coconut meringues (a change from all the heavy chocolate stuff) and orange cranberry bread. We like a variety, but to keep up all from gaining even more weight than normal during the holidays (or rather, to keep ME from that weight gain, Geoff being one of those annoying people who never seems to put on weight regardless of what he eats) I make up plates of goodies for a number of my friends & neighbours, to share the wealth. We also send a few to school for the teachers. Then we can have great variety without huge numbers of goodies. My friend Lorayne was delighted when I showed up on her doorstep this morning - she said "Oh lovely, I was hoping you'd been baking this weekend." And she promptly hid the plate from her kids. A girl after my own heart!

December strikes again

You'd think I've been round long enough to know how much December just eats up your time, but somehow I always manage to forget... And isn't it funny how I can be so busy and yet still never think of anything to blog about! This week is the week of Christmas plays - this year, I am only going to one, as Sarah is singing in a Carol Concert - or rather, she isn't singing in it, as it's on the same evening as her Brownie Christmas outing, at Build-a-Bear Workshop in Wimbledon, which she's been dying to go to for ages. But Alex and Olivia are in the same play, which is nice, and Geoff and I are seeing it on Thursday - Alex is a shepherd, Olivia is a reindeer (the Boss reindeer - no typecasting there!). Will let you know how it goes and if she remembers all her lines.

Alex dances to X-factor

OK, so I'm trying out this whole You Tube thing - we'll see if it works...



This is Alex dancing around to someone on the X-factor singing. He's got his own unique way of dancing!

Hey, hey, the gang's all here..

well, except for Hannah S, that is. But these are the fearsome foursome - all of Olivia's little clique of friends, many of whom live in our road - Nina lives near us, but not in the road - Hannah, the remaining member of the group, lives in the opposite direction from school, so doesn't get to hang out quite as much. Left to right, they are Nina, Olivia, Eliza and Gabriella. Trust me when I say, none are as angelic as they may look in the photo!

Happy birthday dear me

Well, another year older and strangely enough I feel exactly the same. :) No suprise there - it's not quite like when you are a child and so excited over turning whatever the next number is (for Sarah, the next one is 10 - not til the autumn, but still, the idea of double digits is exciting for her - and scary for the parents - where did THAT time go?)

Had a nice quiet birthday, as Sarah was away for the weekend at Brownie camp - this meant that we didn't have all the usual bickering all weekend long. It didn't start until the car trip home from Brownie camp... (I let her take the old camera with her and she had fun taking lots of silly pictures with her friends - here she is with two other Brownies, not sure who.)

Anyway, opened my presents when we got back from collecting Sarah, and I got some very nice things - a nice pair of "earwigs" as Olivia put it (luckily, they were really earrings, not insects), a couple of CDs, a magnetic pincushion and a kit for making a Jacobean Pomegranate Wallhanging. I won't start that for a week or so, as I have some stuff to finish up, but I'm looking forward to it - it's different from what I usually do, but I do adore the fabric.

Blog lag

Keep thinking I should write something, but I'm not inspired - and none of the kids have been doing anything particularly cute lately, so I don't really have amusing anecdotes to share... But I thought I should at least make a note that we are here, and more or less back to normal (or what passes for normal around here) after our trip-- it seems months ago in many ways. Sarah's away at Brownie Pack Holiday this weekend, so it's fairly quiet around the house, although Alex is whingeing for England, which is fairly boring. Hopefully it's a short-lived phase.

"It's nice to see you back"

- this was what Alex said to Daddy when we arrived back home. Never mind the fact that it's not very accurate - it's pretty cute when you're 3 (or 3 1/2 as we are constantly reminded).

Anyway, we are back safe, with no breakages and nothing lost in transit except possibly Sarah's book, which we can't find anywhere. We are pretty sure she had it in the airport, and I know I checked the seat pockets, so we're thinking maybe it got left in the airport. One kid's paperback - no big deal! As Sarah said, at least it's not a jacket (Geoff left his on the plane on the way over).

Getting back into the swing of things, a little slowly, but getting there nonetheless. It's nice to be back - I think three weeks is about the right length of time to be gone - any longer and you really start to get fidgety for home - or at least, I do.

A note on the website: I have re-uploaded my site (good thing I keep a local copy, as lycos seems to have just deleted it entirely) - the only thing is that I can't get the index page to upload called index.html, so I have just renamed it - the site can now be found at http://members.lycos.co.uk/thenorths/main.html.

The joys of website maintenance

For some reason, Lycos seems to be playing silly buggers with my website, giving an "unauthorised" message when anyone (including me) tries to see it. Of course, there's very little technical support, as they are a free service, and being at my mom's house, it's a little harder to sort things out - no FTP, for instance and the Web FTP at Lycos isn't working at the moment. Presumably the stuff is still there, just not accessible, though I do have a copy on my desktop at home anyway. I guess it's time to finally move it somewhere else, which I've been thinking about doing for ages anyway. But it's still annoying... It also means some of the photos on my blog template show as broken, as they are located on lycos.

a bit later: had a browse through Lycos's help forum, and this seems to be a wide-spread problem with all accounts starting with T, U, V, X, Y and Z (but not "W" - wonder why not?). We're "t" (TheNorths) so I guess all I can do is wait until it's been sorted out. Which is not so good for my impatient self!

Far more treats than tricks...

Well, the kids have now experienced full-on American Hallowe'en... And it was really fun, actually. It's much bigger than I remember from when I was a kid, although this may be partly just that this neighbourhood is particularly good for it. Also, it was really warm yesterday - got up to 23 or 24 yesterday during the day, so that the evening, while not particularly warm, was fine for sitting outside with a jacket. (more Halloween photos here)

This neighbourhood is really good for Halloween - lots of houses with kids and lots of people sit out either on their own or with friends or their neighbours. Lots of decorations, and a number of very nice hand-carved jack-o-lanterns. My mother's neighbour, Patty, carves really spectacular ones. But there were also a number which had obviously been carved by or with children, which is always fun.

A few houses had gone all out and set up scenes - one with a spooky campsite with dry ice and a severed head in a tent with a guy who jumped out at you with a chainsaw; one with cobwebs over the whole yard and a skeleton coming out of the ground and one which had lots of gravestones, and a flying bat (this one spooked Alex out a bit, but that was at the end of the evening, and he was really tired).

The kids got absolutely masses of "candy" [Alex was very cute - he learned all about Halloween in about 1 day and could tell you just what happens: "You dress up in a Hayoween cosyume and go to eddybody's house and say trick or treat." "And then what happens?" "Then, they gives you CANDY!!" - this from a child who hadn't heard the word candy a month ago (we say sweets or chocolate).] which I guess will have to be packed in the suitcase to go home as there's no way they will get through it all before we leave, even if I let them eat more than I really want them to.

We carved our own pumpkins on Monday morning; we didn't want to do it too early as the weather was due to be very nice, so we didn't want to risk them going bad too quickly. It was actually fairly hot in the sunshine when we were working on them. Sarah did hers entirely by herself, and Olivia did hers mostly alone, with only a little guidance with drawing the features. Grandma Kathy carved most of Alex's and all of her own and I tried my hand at an artisan pumpkin (above) for the first time - I'm pleased with the effort, I have to say, and I may well try it again next year.

The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous - Sarah and Grandma went out yesterday afternoon after we went up to the local elementary school to watch the Halloween parade to take photos of the autumn foliage. This tree is a photo taken by Sarah - and there are more here. It's really lovely, and very warm.

Swarm of kiddies

Spent yesterday afternoon at my friend Debbie's house; the kids, especially Alex, had a blast. Debbie and Kurt have two little boys - Zach, who is nearly 3 and Leo, who is 8 months and quite possibly the cutest baby I have ever seen. Except my own, of course! And we were joined by her brother and sister-in-law, Josh and Kristin, both of whom I know a bit as they both went to the same university I went to and I was close friends at uni with Kristin's older brother Eric... Anyway, they have Ian, who will be five in January, and Riley (a girl) who is 18 months old. So with my kids, that's 5 under-fives and the two older girls (Sarah keeps complaining that none of my friends have kids her age - like I can do anything about that!). Anyway, the girls were a little bored at times, although Kurt, bless him, played Scrabble with them for a while, but Alex was in heaven, as Debbie has even more trains than we do...

Day trippers

Drove down to Hampton, Virginia yesterday (3.5 to 4 hour drive) to visit my Andy (my former step-dad) and Robert (step-brother) and his wife Susan and daughter Brenda, who is just a few months younger than Alex. It was a lovely drive, through a lot of rural southern Maryland and Virgina (we went the scenic way, not down I-95, which is mostly trucks) and we had a good time with the guys down there. I hadn't met Susan or Brenda before, and hadn't seen Robert in years - the girls loved him of course and he's a big kid at heart and happy to play games with them and chase them around... and I enjoyed getting to know Susan a bit and meeting Brenda and seeing their house and where they live and so on. They live really close to the water, which is nice in principle, but unfortunately it was a little too close earlier this year when their house flooded - once again, I am glad to live somewhere where natural disasters are few and far between. Anyway, a lovely time was had by all, and next time we visit (which could be ages, of course) we will try to schedule a longer trip to the area, which has lots to do. (More photos here)

We were lucky to have Robert on vacation for a few days, and therefore able to spend time with us, although the down side of that is that he's in the navy, and the leave was essential demob leave, as Monday he is leaving to report to a new command - 6 or 8 weeks training in Texas before returning to Iraq for another tour of duty - this time on land rather than on a ship, which of course none of us are thrilled about. I think he said it was 450 days - so we'll be thinking about that whole situation a lot. I don't think I'd have the fortitude to be a military wife, personally, but we all do what we have to, and Susan is lucky to have her parents and Andy both very nearby. OK, it's not the same thing, but I'm sure it helps a bit.