Random Beauty

Early morning sunshine casting shadows through the clematis and heart at our lounge window.

"Boat!"

 It has been a long time since we met up with my Dad, getting on for 18 months!  Everyone seems busy with their own lives and getting to see each other just goes by the by.  So imagine the excitement when I phone Dad and he invites us to his boat for the day!  Sophie was especially excited, and kept on saying how she was going on the boat.  I had my old life jacket from many moons ago, which fitted Sophie perfectly, and she even insisted on wearing it for the car journey there! 

I think it is fair to say whilst the children were very excited, I was rather nervous, taking four children who had not been on a boat before, and one of them being a toddler who is rather headstrong.  I packed full changes of clothes for all of them, and gave them a pep talk too!  Well, if I was nervous, I think Dad was even more nervous, letting four children who had never been on a boat before onto HIS boat! 

The boys all had a go at steering, and Dad explained to Luke and Stuart all the gadgets and dials etc.  This is one serious boat, with GPS, sonar, and many other things I didn't understand!

 Alec's favourite place was the sun-deck!

 It was a lovely day, pootling down the river with the Malvern Hills in the distance, and the rhythm of the engine lulling us. Really relaxing, and took me back to the many weeks spent on the rivers and canals during my childhood.

 Dad's wife, Sue, provided a lovely buffet lunch, complete with jelly and blamange (sp?).  She was especially chuffed that the children ate it! 

 Sophie found it all a bit much in the end, and half way through decided she wasn't going to wear the life jacket any more, and that she wanted to go home!  I was able to get her to sleep in one of the berths, which is what she really needed! 

Ethan and Alec were busy discussing how we could sell the house and live on a boat, which I think means they really, really enjoyed themselves!

School's broken up!

We are in  our first week of the Easter holiday.  I like the Easter holidays, not too much emphasis on having to do things (as there is at Christmas), but a well timed break, just as the weather starts to improve.  Unfortunately we have been bug fighting this week.  Sophie has a rather nasty cold and temperature, possibly a mild chest infection, but has spent the last few days demanding feed upon feed upon feed, which seems to be working, and her temperature is now gone, so hopefully we have turned a corner.  Luke has had a tooth abcess (must be about his 10th by now, poor lad) and this has been a really stubborn one, which he has not been able tolerate without regular pain relief.  Hoping that the anti-biotics are doing their stuff now. 
So, not much time spent outside really, more nursing the poorly ones, and letting Alec and Ethan entertain themselves, which has meant them playing outside with the neighbours children, or more often than not them all on the trampoline, trying not to fall out the enormous holes in the safety net (although I think one game was actually to fall out and get rescued by the others!)

Some crafting has happened, with varying interest from the children.  We made some yarn bowls that I had been shown here.  Ethan, Alec and Sophie lost interest at different points along the line, Ethan sat there for a while just picking the wood glue off his fingers (mind you I love doing that too!)

 We also had a go at making felted eggs.  I could only find two plastic eggs in the play food, so can only do two at a time, but Ethan and Sophie enjoyed helping me with these.

 The highlight of the week so far is probably the discovery of 3 mice in a box of Traidcraft stuff I had stored in the garage.  Fortunately there wasn't that much stuff in there, but blimey, they made a mess of what was there!  Two jumped out the box pretty soon after I had popped it in the backgarden.  They legged it down the garden, with chickens following in hot pursuit!

The third one stuck around for a few photos.  It was very sweet, and the children enjoyed watching it, but it too decided thought enough was enough and braved the chickens to earn its freedom!

Hopefully next week will see us enjoying the outdoors a bit more, and eventually getting the potatoes planted!

A long awaited trip

We have been promising the boys a trip to legoland for about a year, but the time has never quite been right, combined with the schools making it very difficult to take the children out of school during term time.  However, as the boys broke up early for Easter, as well as having a teacher training day on the Friday, we jumped at the chance to take them.  For Alec and Ethan, it is like Mecca!  But we were all very impressed with what we saw.  A dinosaur made to look as if it is made from tecnic lego, but is actually made up of normal lego made to look like tecnic!

 Sophie wanted to play with the lego!  But was placated by an ice-cream!  (food prices were astronomical, we'll have to be better prepared should we go again!)

 Miniland, with all the lego models was really impressive, and we all enjoyed marvelling at the detail, and scale of it all.

 There were rides to be ridden too.  Sophie really enjoyed this little train, going on it multiple times, this time with Stuart.

 The boys all went on the driving school, although Luke stayed well hidden from the camera!

 We ate our lunch (more money!) whilst watching a puppet show, Sophie liked meeting this little duck close up.

 A fun time was had on fire engines, which required alot of effort on Stuart and Luke's part to propel the engine with a pump action, and then pump the water through the water cannons that Alec and Luke got to control.

 There were models all over the place, small ones, big ones, but I think my personal favourite was this dragon.

 We stayed overnight in a hotel by Heathrow airport, thankfully there was very little noise from the airport itself, well, Sophie drowned out any planes, as she was over-stimulated, tired, and wanted her own bed!  But, putting that behind us, on Saturday we had a lovely breakfast, followed by making use of the hotel swimming pool, where Sophie made leaps and bounds in her confidence, with the undivided attention of Stuart, and the distractions of her brothers.  We then returned to Legoland to do the few last things we wanted to do.  However, Saturday was a completely different kettle of fish, schools had broken up, and there was a Star Wars event on, it was absolutely heaving!!  We had a few photos taken with Star Wars characters.

 And then made for the sanctuary of the discovery zone, where they each had a kit to make up.  Quiet, cool, and relaxing, just what was needed.

We didn't last much longer, a mini golf course, and yet more extortionate food, and it was time to head home (via the lego shop!!)

We had a lovely time, but it has reinforced how we could never cope with doing such things in holiday time, just far, far, far too stressful! The boys continued the lego theme on our return home, with building and playing with more lego.

Woolly Wednesday- Getting underway

My first knitted project with own spun wool!  It is spun merino tops that was the first attempt I made at spinning.  My technique was awful, but it did actually turn out to be a lovely single ply fancy wool to knit with.  There was only just enough to make this knitted coaster, which still needs to be felted.  But I will look forward to putting my drinks (very carefully) down on my first lot of spinning!!

My second lot of spinning was some lovely brown and white wool that came in a bag of waste wool from World of Wool.  I have no idea what it is, but it is lovely and soft!  Anyhow, whilst spinning this my spinning improved tremendously, and I became far more consistent, so I have another fancy wool, I plied two bobbins together, and I have some bits that are thick plied with thin, or thin plied with thin.  Will have to think what to do with it! Plying it raised a few questions for me.  What do you do when one bobbin runs out, and you still have some wool left on the other?  Is there any way of splitting the remaining wool between two bobbins, so you can ply the rest of it?  Or do you just have to keep it as single ply? 

Another thing that has become apparent, as I am loving spinning, but keep wondering what to do with all the yarn I am creating.  Do you spin with a project in mind?  Or just spin to process the fleece, and hope a project comes to you at some point! 

And just look what came in the post the other day!  A complete surprise from the wonderful Sarah.  She has been busy dyeing and thought I would appreciate some lovely wool to practice with.  Thank you, I will look forward to spinning this, and hope to do it justice!

Two down!

Luke's drum exam was this morning.  We knew he was going to be doing it sometime around Easter, we had been initially told that it would be the Easter holidays.  However, last Tuesday night we got an email to say it was this Monday.  Luke had only practised one song.  Hadn't even looked at the others due to drum teacher illness, busy-ness etc.  So amidst the chaos that has been going on for him this last week, he has been fervently practising.

We were all a little nervous this morning, Luke, Stuart and me!  But Luke took it all in his stride, fortunately it was early enough today to make going into school a pointless activity, so he fitted in more practise, and then did about 20 minutes warm up once we got to the exam.  He did his best, which was all he could ever do.

We have just had a call from his drum teacher to say he got a comfortable pass!  Well done Luke!!  You have a natural talent there!

Birthday Boy

 The cool  little boy, who always looks so serious when posing for photos, has turned 7.  I can't believe another year has passed already!  My little boy is growing up.  I can go for days and barely see him, with him either engrossed in something with his big brothers, or playing so sweetly with Sophie.  Either that, or he is playing outside with the neighbourhood children, until way past dusk (well, not so much now the clocks have changed, but given a chance he would!)

He is growing up, but thankfully still needs his Mum and Dad from time time to snuggle up with, or creep into bed with in the middle of the night. 

For his birthday, we unwrapped presents, probably a bit earlier than everyone else would have liked,  but then it was his birthday, so your allowed to wake everyone up at 6.55am on a Saturday!  Amongst the presents were of course lego sets, which got built fairly immediately (with a little help from the master builder aka Alec).  They were so sweet, taking it in turns to do a page each out of the instructions.

 The cake we came up with (Alec helped with some of the design, and little details like the crown, and the eggs)  Yes, there's a bit of a theme, and link to Stuart's birtyhday the other week!

 And mama had to make something of course.  So seeing as they have all been playing Little Big Planet recently, i thought this little fella would go down well!  Trouble is, now I have to make one for Luke, Alec, and Stuart!

 We went to the cinema to see Rango.  Although Stuart and I were taking it in turns to entertain a bored Sophie, so between the two of us we saw the complete film, we'll have to compare notes to get the gist of the film!  We then had a birthday party to go to for a friend up the road, who shares Ethan's birthday.  Return home for Ethan's birthday tea, where we barely saw Ethan, as he just wanted to play with his presents. He did squeeze a bit of time in with his guests, with a request for people to play more lego, this time in the form of a lego game.

 And relaxing after a busy, busy day.  First of all Mum had a go at spinning, and then Luke.  They both did well for their first attempts (much better than I did!)

Happy Birthday our lovely 7 year old Ethan.  Wishing you many blessings for this year ahead of you.