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.

Happy birthday to Olivia...

So, today is Olivia's birthday and what she wants to do is go ice-skating, so we are off ice-skating later. Right now, we are hanging out waiting for Uncle Steve to leave to go to the airport - he's been here for about a week. Which is part of the reason I haven't blogged much - not just Uncle Steve being here, but Grandpa Karl and Grandma Nancy, too. So we've been busy! On Friday we went up to Baltimore to a place called Port Discovery, which is a fun kids place, kind of combination adventure playground and museum - it has a three-story climbing thingy in the middle, and the fact that Daddy and Uncle Steve were both here meant that I actually didn't have to climb around in it.

Saturday was a lovely day, so we just packed a small picnic and went to one of the large playgrounds in Columbia, Centennial Park, and the kids spent an hour or two climbing around the playground stuff, before we went over to Columbia Mall to ride on the restored Carousel and have the grandparents buy presents. (photos from those events here) Sarah decided she'd rather go back to the house with Daddy and Uncle Steve, who was planning to make a lasagne for dinner. She adores her uncle and he's been very good at putting up with them, I have to say. Even if he does tend to make them hyper - I guess that's uncles for you, though! Geoff was due to fly home later that night, so after dinner, Karl and Nancy left to go back to their hotel (they were due to leave early in the morning anyway) and the kids and I took Daddy to the airport. They don't really miss him too much when he goes, because there is so much exciting stuff still to do after he leaves - including Halloween this year, of course.

On Sunday, we met up with my friend Kristen and her mom, sister & niece, Kestrel - Kes is four and a half - at a Fall Festival at Homeland Gardens (a large garden centre). Lots of little rides and things. It was really sweet, actually, and again the weather was fabulous, so the kids had a great time. Then we went out to dinner together - a lovely day. Yesterday we kind of took it easy, just ran some errands, including me getting my drivers' license renewed, and some shopping my mom needed to do. I love being here and visiting, but there are so many things to do and people to see that in some ways, when we get back we need a holiday to recover from our holiday! (Tried to upload a pic from the Fall Festival here, but Blogger wasn't cooperating. Or it might be my mom's connection, which is slow. Anyway, lots of photos here...)

In and around the harbour...

Spent a nice day yesterday in Baltimore - Andy came up from Virginia for the day and we went up, had lunch at Phillips and then went to the Aquarium. Tiring, but fun. Here we all are (except me of course) at lunch - Andy being silly as usual. The kids adore Uncle Steve, so they had a brilliant time, and he's very good with them, probably because he hasn't really grown up that much himself! More photos here.

Zoom, zoom, zoom, we're going to the moon...

Poor Alex was a little disappointed to discover that we weren't actually going to go in a rocket ship to the moon, but he was happy to see rockets and planes and to be able to walk through one (Skylab) at the Air and Space Museum. He really enjoyed it, and particularly liked the section about planets - he seems to have an obsession about Mars at the moment - I'm wondering if maybe he's seen a cartoon about someone going to Mars or something. The girls enjoyed it as well - I think Olivia read nearly every sign in the section about early flight and the Wright Brothers. It's a good museum, and of course different from anything in London.

We also ducked briefly into the East Wing of the National Gallery and looked at modern art (Picasso, Matisse, a few others) and into the Natural History Museum to have a quick look at dinosaurs and the Hope Diamond. We may go back there another day, as the kids (and Geoff) were really enjoying that, but we did have to leave to take the Metro back to meet Grandma at a set time. And Alex had reached the bursting into tears for no reason stage, too, which is always a sign that it's time to go. A few more photos here from yesterday's outings, and Sunday, which we spent locally and with my friend Kiki and her little boy Kenny, who is nearly 2.

A trip to the pumpkin patch

Another gorgeous day here, and we took advantage of it by going down to a little local festival - Riverfest - in Laurel. This was a nice small affair, a little like a county fair, only tiny - local vendors and businesses took booths along the riverside path in old Laurel. A few things for kids, like a hayride and a puppet show - and facepainting, of course.

We went home for lunch and a little rest, and in the afternoon, Geoff and I took the kids to Clark's Elioak Farm, which is a little petting farm, with various other attractions. It was crowded, in a good way, as it was a lovely afternoon, and the kids had fun looking at the various fairytale related sculptures and petting the goats. Very low-key, unlike so many American attractions, which all seem to feel compelled to be Bigger and Better.

Pictures from both of these places, as well as more pictures from Patuxent Wildlife Refuge (where we went yesterday) are here. Oh and in the way of kids everywhere, Olivia was just fine this morning and totally back to normal today.

Autumnal Walk

Local time: 7.15am. Yesterday, after meeting up with some friends of Mom's for lunch, we decided to head out to the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge. We were originally intending to take their little tram tour around the area, but found they weren't running on weekdays after school started, so we ended up doing a nice walk around the lake - much prettier than the tram ride would have been anyway. We saw a large variety of birds, most unidentifiable, except for the heron, and a chipmunk and the coup de grace of wildlife - a black snake. Poor snake, Mom stepped on him. Geoff was disappointed not to see him, as he's never seen a snake in the wild (England not being big on snakes). It was a lovely day until the end, when Olivia got sick - I think this is the bug that Alex had last week and Sarah had Wednesday on the plane - Olivia always gets these things worse than the other kids. She's fine now, though she spent a long time yesterday evening throwin up, poor thing.

A long (but nice) day

After the early start, we decided to do some grocery and other errand shopping (first time in ages I've been shopping by 7am, but we were all up, so why not) - Alex fell asleep on the way home in the car. I let him sleep for an hour, but around 12.30 had to wake him up to eat, and so we could go do something else, otherwise his schedule would be really off. Forgot to take my camera, of course, but we ended up at Brookside Gardens/Wheaton Regional Park. They have a nice selection of playground equipment in addition to the garden stuff - the narrow guage railway and carousel weren't in operation today (to Alex's disappointment) but as the playground is pretty good, there weren't too many tears. Apparently they are going to have a ghost train ride/scary carousel in operation from tonight, so they were getting ready. It's a little far away and probably a little scary for my little ones, so I think we'll skip that, but we'll no doubt do something else Halloween related. There are a lot of Halloween related things here, more than I remember from when I lived here - I think the holiday is bigger than it used to be. The kids are looking forward to it, that's for certain.

Touchdown!

Local time: 4.30am. Yes, the joys of kids and jetlag. Although Alex stayed up to 7.30pm last night local time, he was still awake early this morning, so here I am, awake, too. Luckily, I had gone to bed at 9.30pm, so I won't be quite so sleep deprived as I might otherwise be. 5.30 would have been better, but you do what you have to. But we are here safely, with not too much trouble - Alex threw up all over me on the plane, but that was the worst of it. Luckily the plane was a new one and had individual screens in the seat backs and entertainment on demand which is the best for kids - kept the girls happy for most of the flight with very little adult input. The only other thing is that Geoff somehow managed to leave his jacket somewhere - we think on the plane. "Why didn't you check to make sure I had it" he says, like I wasn't already trying to keep track of nearly everything else we brought! Anyway, nothing too serious, and we shall just add a jacket to the list of clothes we were going to buy for him in the US. Hopefully tomorrow the sleep patterns will be a bit more normal...

A less drastic solution, possibly...

So today I was in the kitchen rinsing out some dyed stuff in the sink when Olivia comes in, streaming tears. "What's the matter?" I finally, finally get her to speak, and she says "look what happened to my fringe (bangs)". I look, and notice it's a bit shorter than it was, and not quite so even. She has two friends over, so I immediately suspect hairdressing games, even though we've made it quite clear that there is to be NO haircutting. Anyway, I finally get out of her that it was she herself who cut the fringe, not Nina or Gabriella, which is good in a way, but bad in another way. "Why did you cut your fringe, darling, you know you're not supposed to use scissors on your hair..." "Because it was all sticky, Mummy, from the Golden Syrup" (they'd been eating waffles earlier). I literally had to stop and take a deep breath. "Olivia," I said, "Don't you think it would have been a little simpler just to wash it a bit?". Luckily, after being trimmed up by Mummy a bit, it looks ok, just a little shorter than normal. At least it was her OWN hair.