Fun weekend.

Well, I say fun, but it would have been funner if it had involved more sleep.
First, Joshua and I decided to pop to Cambridge (well, I decided - he didn't get much say in the matter!) to see our niece/cousin. Sadly, boy fell asleep on the journey down and thus refused to go to sleep properly at bedtime. Then, didn't sleep properly, woke me more than once, and generally deprived me of my human right to sleep. (I should speak with a UN representative - isn't there some sort of law about not torturing people by depriving them of sleep?) Then, on the journey back up, he was so tired, having not slept properly the night before, that he (you've probably guessed already) fell asleep in the car. That led to another night of not going to sleep 'til about 10.30, and another night of daddy ending up somewhat grumpy.
Thankfully, tonight he was out at about 7.00.
BUT that's a distraction anyway, Cambridge was fab (although I didn't get much sleep, but perhaps I'd mentioned that...) and it was a delight to see the gorgeous addition to the family. (No pics without parents' permission!).
We even went to Wimpole for a quick look around the gardens. Lovely time, and a very impressive pumpkin and squash display. (Photos on camera, not phone, and camera's downstairs, so you'll have to wait...)
Then today was a 'day off' and we went to Calke. Again :) It was Fine Food Fair day today (Fine was a description of the food, not the weather, which was, on the contrary, anything but fine!)
Lovely time, and we saw some of their pumpkins too.
Now, you're probably thinking that their pumpkins are somewhat more impressive than mine. And you'd be right. In fact, some of my pumpkins haven't even exceeded the size of your average apple yet... But, when you take into account the amount of bed space they have there, and the number of volunteers tending the gardens, then it's a whole different league. (That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!)
In fact, this second picture gives you a good idea of the bed space. I just can't compete with that... Well, not without a lot of back-breaking digging, anyway!
Anyhow, it was nice to get out for a bit. We watched UP when we got home. Nice film, if a bit sad at the start...
And now I'm ready to go to bed. Maybe I'll leave it until after 8.30. Just seems a little more ... uh ... grown up.

A little trip out.

Bit of a random post, but hey.
We went to Calke Abbey a while back. It's ten minutes down the road and our regular visits make our National Trust membership worthwhile! Anyways, we took Granny and Pops, and had a nice wander around the gardens and a picnic. This time, for the first time, we went to see the ice house. Basically the oldy worldy version of a freezer, though you didn't plug it in, you collected ice in the winter to fill it with, and kept it nice a chilly for as long as the ice lasted! Pretty natty. Here are a couple of pics:
This first one is looking into the ice house from above (there were kinda skylight holes)

The second one is obviously looking up from inside! (I put the camera phone through the bars to take the first one, if you're wondering!)
Pretty cool.

Not only did we 'find' the ice house on this trip (it's a little way beyond the gardens and we'd never bothered going that far - lazy, I know!) we also came across a hide! Some bloke built it with donated materials and you can watch birdies from it (and deer, if you open the side window).
Here are some deer (though not seen from the hide) and a small boy who seemed quite happen to frighten them off!
Perhaps I should just point out that he's wearing 'short-trousers' it's not just that we haven't bought him any clothes for months...

But perhaps the most exciting thing was this:
Joshua was allowed to ride on the buggy with Granny and Pops AND he got the front seat AND the lovely man who was driving let him press the button on the remote to open the gate at the end of the drive! What a lucky boy! He doesn't look thrilled in this picture, but he was really :) Daddy did still manage to beat them up the hill, but felt a little worse for wear afterwards...

And here are my fave photos from the day:

Been away awhile.

Well, not 'away' in the physical sense, just not blogging. In fact, just not blogging here. Spun off a couple of book blogs.
It's half-term, and time to rest, recharge, regroup and prepare for the next few weeks. So here's the plan. We're actually staying put. For the first time since arriving here almost two years ago, we're not going anywhere for the holiday. Don't get me wrong, we'd love to go and visit people, but it seems to make much better sense to stay here. We've had a truly draining (half!)term and running around the country during the holiday doesn't allow us to rest.
Having said that, there are a few things we're doing/have done.
1) We went to Big Church Day Out on Saturday. There was a point at which I could happily have fallen asleep (which would tick the 'rest' box) if it weren't for the fact that Joshua was on top of me and being very wriggly indeed. But the day did help to tick the 'recharge' box. So good to have time to 'worship' in a relaxed way, with both a whole bunch of strangers and a few friends from church. Something we're really missing at the moment.
2) We went for a walk round the village yesterday. Nice to do something as a family. We don't get to do stuff like that enough during term time. It wasn't particularly exciting, but it was together, which was the important thing.
3) We're all hoping to have slept more this week than any other week since records began...
4) I'm aiming to have completely cleared my desk of detritus by the end of the week
5) Have planted corn and runner beans, and dug a new bed for squash and pumpkins (believe it or not, that comes under 'recharge', I think)
6) We've got friends visiting (some just for meals, others for stays!) which will contribute to the rest and recharge (because we like them!) (That's not to say we don't like anyone else ... just that when we have 'work' guests, it's not always exactly refreshing...)
7) I need to plan how to use my Wednesdays, when Joshua will now be at school for the next four weeks. The most obvious use of the time is book work, but that might not be the right one.
8) Plenty of time needs to be devoted to prayer, chillaxing and hanging out together

Sunburn in April.

In Derbyshire! Shocking I know, but I managed to actually burn myself by spending the entire day in the garden today. Well, I popped inside for the occasional drink and pee, but other than that, it was a proper outdoors day. Fab weather all day (thus the burn...) and great fun to be out in it.
Anna did a marvellous job of looking after Joshua while I was fulfilling some weird desire to turn a couple (three actually) of old pallets into flowerbed things. They're kinda flower troughs, I guess, but I can't show you a photo, because it was too dark to take photos by the time I'd finished sweeping up the mess. Very manly business though, even managed to use a couple of power tools for extra stud points. Sadly couldn't find my crowbar (Iso, is it in the lean-to? Don't worry, I won't ask you to post it), which meant I had to dismantle the pallets with my hammer, chisel and screwdriver (not the proper way at all!).
Joshua and I went to pick them up this morning from a friendly chap down the road. Well, strictly speaking, he's down the path, the other side of the field... Joshua was sporting his brand new Gruffalo tee-shirt, so wasn't allowed to help carry the pallets, as the tee would have got even dirtier than it did. The boy's a dirt magnet :) He stuck around for all of about ten minutes, then did a runner. To be fair, he'd already spent a fair amount of time wandering 'round the garden this morning doing the watering (still in his pyjamas - should've got a photo of that!) He did manage to water his jacket fairly convincingly too...
Anyways, the troughs are now filled with gravel and compost (yes, from the compost heap that I sorted out about a month and a half back) and are waiting for their plants. It's going to be sweet peas in the back, and tomatoes at the front. Hopefully, the sweet peas will be trained up some wires to produce a dazzling display, visible from the sitting room. Fingers crossed...
I'm now heading for bed for a well-earned sleep. There's something very satisfying about going to bed aching (well, when it's from hard labour, anyway!).

Fresh start.

Had a lovely birthday on Monday down in Worthing (thanks to everyone who helped make it a great day!). Great time catching up with friends too - here are a couple of pics from our trip to the beach with some friends ... The first one is the classic 'sun in the background over the crashing waves' shot. And believe it or not, this is not very long after Joshua's had his haircut. That's as short as it's been for ages!



The second is a wonderful picture of my brave little boy (!) running away from the waves. I know it's a fun game to play, but he's clearly a little less hardy than his mate, who's still ten foot closer to the sea than he is and hasn't even started running yet. Having said that, if you look closer at the photo, you'll see that Joshua's already failed dismally in a previous attempt - absolutely drenched trousers! His mate's mummy wasn't overly impressed with me either ... I was taking photos of them (as you can tell!) and saw a wave coming in. I legged it up the beach, staying perfectly dry, but leaving them to get wet. Oops.

Great to catch up with people at Worthing High too! Lots of new faces though ... weird. I now don't recognise half the school!

Then we got back home and I discovered this:


Yes, a tree fell over in our garden while we were away. Well, there's a bit of a 'did it fall or was it pushed?' debate, but the less said about that the better. It's funny, I was stood there thinking, 'oh no, that's our best cropping plum' (ok, call me sad if you like). And then I looked up at the sky, saw what a great spot the tree had been planted in and immediately started thinking, 'I wonder what else we could plant here instead'. If only all loss was so easily dealt with! And of course, there's the other advantage that we've now got more wood to burn!

I'm also now trying to work out what things need to be planted in the next couple of weeks. Our new fruit trees are on the way, so they'll go in. But I've got serious amounts of seed to go in, with what is currently quite limited planting space. I think more stuff may have to come out... Oh dear. Joshua and I planted some more tulip bulbs (WAY too late!) and some dogwood cuttings today too, so hopefully they'll make it... If not, it doesn't really matter, they'll just compost down over time!

And last but not least, we had a lovely lunch today with friends here. They introduced us to a game called 'chairs'. There are 24 little (like, two inches tall) plastic chairs that have to be stacked in a tower, with only one touching the ground. It's more fun than it probably sounds (think Jenga, but building from scratch, with plastic chairs...) and I spent some time crafting the amazing tower below ...

Little things please little minds ... as they say.

Happy not-so-New Year

Thankfully, I didn't make any rash New Year's Resolutions about blogging daily. In fact, I haven't really made any NYRs at all. My thinking is that I'll get around to making them when the dust of the holiday has settled somewhat. That way I can make some that are a bit more carefully planned than, 'Argh, seven-and-a-half minutes 'til the New Year, what should I promise myself?!'.

Had a lovely New Year though. I'm currently having a facebook conversation with a friend who refers to his New Year as 'insane'. I told him that I would have been most upset if my New Year had been insane (perhaps it's linked to the fact that I'm twice his age...)! Thankfully ours was very calm and orderly. So calm, in fact, that we forgot to set off the fireworks. Oops. A civilised roast dinner, followed by a few games of 'Snatch'. Rounded off with a nice bit of fireworks-on-the-telly and a glass of champagne. Even cracked open the bottle of Chateauneuf du pape. Very nice stuff. Silky smooth, in fact!

That was preceded by a couple of really nice visits to see old friends, (old in the long-standing sense, not in the long-in-the-tooth sense). North Wales was, as expected, grey, cold and somewhat wet, but brightened immeasurably by the renewal of friendship, occasional cup of tea, and roaring (well, more flickering actually) fire. Birmingham was also cold, but likewise was uplifted by the friendship and tea motifs.

And before that, of course, came Christmas. A Lewis spectacular: fantastic food, and a wonderful family Christmas. A highlight for me was the suckling pig (sorry if you're reading this Clare M...). In particular, Joshua wandering into the kitchen, seeing said pig in a tray about to go in the oven, and announcing, "I want to eat his nose!". No sign of vegetarianism breaking into his lifestyle! He was also taken by the disappearance of the sherry, mince pie and carrot left for Santa and co., and by the appearance of footprints in the ash by the fireplace. Ok, so the footprints were barely discernible despite being the work of a number of people and a fair amount of time, but the rest was good! Joshua was a huge fan of his new kitchen that mummy and daddy and granny and pops gave him. As you can see, he's cooking up a storm already.



And yesterday (apologies for the topsy-turvy chronology of this post) we did this:
I say, "we", but I have to say I'm the only one who saw the project through from start to finish. It was the (very well chosen!) gift of one of our girls. Anna and Joshua initiated the construction, but then abandoned ship on me. I think perhaps I was being a little over-enthusiastic about getting it 'just right' (though you might well question whether I actually succeeded...). A prize for the person who can spot the five differences between the two otherwise identical pictures...






Anyway, it's now a long long time since I actually started writing this (it's 20.42 now...) so I'm going to stop there. Joshua is now in bed, and I'm thinking of going out for a spot of sport :) Happy New Year to all of you. (All five of you, that is. I was hoping I might have hit 10 followers (not literally, you understand!) by 2010, but maybe I'll have to wait until 2011 for that)