A bit of chocolate cake

Mmmmmm..... all this walking, you need something to nibble on - purely to keep your spirits up, you understand! This was a recipe from Baking Bites (check the site out on the links at the side), it's very nice, keeps really well too. Obviously, if granny and grandpa were around, keeping it would have been a problem .....

Road Trip

Well, it's taken me a while to get back to posting, I can only say that life's been getting in the way! Also, I've really been too tired to do much more than read other peoples' blogs. And dream.....

Anyway, the one day road trip to the old homelands was very enjoyable. Firstly, the traffic - it was amazingly good - 3 hours each way, which considering the fact that I have known it to take me almost double that when the children have been on board in the past, was really quite an astonishing feat. Anyone outside the UK will laugh at the thought that driving 150 miles one way could take that long, but if you live in Dorset and want to go anywhere further than your local town, you will understand just how far away everything is from here, including the motorway (grimace), but it does keep us nice and rural y'know! Secondly, my little burdens were actually well behaved, civilised and didn't require potty stops every 2o minutes like they do normally as soon as we get into the car. Thirdly, the weather was so fine - the best we'd had in ages in fact - we had a bright blue sky, fluffy white clouds and SUN (yes, really). And it nearly was warm. Almost like Summer, in fact!

And of course seeing this little fella (George, 6 days old) and his family was so nice,


and then this lot :



(Sammy and 2 of her 3 burdens) for lunch, playtime and catching up on 3 months of news - including the addition of burden no. 3 (see below), was just fabulous. And the children all got on, and (mostly) ate the food they were given, and played nicely together.


A good mental health day for me, at the very least and of course, the last time we can take off like that with very little notice because tadaa - my little boy starts full time school next week (phew). Although there was just one disadvantage - my back/leg complained viciously for a week after, about the unacceptable task of sitting in a car and driving for such an outlandish amount of time!

Bullfinch Nest

IMG_0273
Originally uploaded by rowsew

Retrieved from Teflon Boy before it got bashed into a compost bag, when he trimmed the palm tree in the front yard recently. It's been home for a bullfinch family, who fledged 3 babies this year. So lovely to hear them all chirping away at crack of dawn, and see them learning to fly, all whilst lying in bed!
For those who don't know, we own the bottom half of a big detached brick house (which luckily for us includes the whole garden too) and our bedroom is the old main front room from before the house was divided up. One day I will get around to drawing a suitable illustration, but for now, suffice it to say that the bedrooms are at the front of the house, and the living/dining/kitchen space is at the back, where the garden is - unusual, but you do get used to it!