Pancake Day!

The kids liked tossing pancakes yesterday! They came in our room and got us up in the morning, so we could have pancakes for breakfast, then Tom went to a friend's after school and had pancakes there, then came home in time to have more pancakes with the rest of us for pudding!
A lazy day today (though the house is surprisingly tidy, and I did do Visiting Teaching and 4 hours of ironing yesterday...) - Harry had his first time going to playgroup on a Wednesday, and so I came home and went back to bed with a big bag of Revels and The Diary of Anne Frank. We are discussing it at bookclub tonight, and I managed to finish it (and also the Revels). I also did do some wallpaper scraping in the kitchen, and Lucy did some after school too.
I decided to make tea early tonight and the kids and I ate without Scott. They are just too hungry and tired by the time he gets in at 6, and I hate trying to cook when they are like that. We have saved our pudding to eat when he comes in and has his tea, so we will eat together a bit. It has been amazingly calm and relaxed - for tonight anyway! Anna gave me the idea of doing it that way this morning - she happened to mention that Ben read a book by one of the General Authorities, and that's how his family did it.

A Walk In The Park

We picked up Lucy from a sleep-over this morning (she got to bed at about 3am...) and went to the country park on the way back. Jack was out with his friend Richard for the morning. The woods were pretty flooded and the kids had a good time poking around with sticks and getting generally muddy and wet. Tom asked me to take a photo of him sitting on the stump, then Harry did too. The park itself was a bog, and there are some very messy wellies in the car which I am in no hurry to go and sort out. (P.S. We woke up this morning to find our snowman finally dead. Our front garden is about as boggy as the park.)

The park was sooooo muddy, it was unbelievable. Its woods were like marsh and it was really fun to walk in all the swamp, although it resulted in wet feet, despite the wellies!
From Lucy

While Mum and Dad were at France....

While mum and dad were at France, my brothers and I were staying at Nottingham, with my mums parents, my grandparents.On the first day, my auntie Katy was there, and my grandma was at her local charity shop, where she works.The rest of us went to the park, where I got rather muddy! That night, I slept with Harry, who had a terrible cough, so I got hardly any sleep. The next day, some other of our aunties and uncles, Robin and Niki came round, with little Adam, our cousin. That day, they stayed round for dinner, where we had a rather interesting dinner, Shepherds Pie, with wheat instead of mince meat! On Sunday, we went to church, which was a disaster, as dad had forgotten to bring all the church clothes!! Luckily, we had all come in our school clothes, so we wore them, apart from Harry, who wore some things that mum had packed, and I got a top from the charity shop.On Monday, Mum and Dad came at lunch time, and shortly after this, we journeyed home. When we got home, we all watched a film, and went to bed.

By Lucy

Weekend in France

What a fun weekend! We took the kids to Mum and dad's on Thursday, then picked up a hire van on Friday, and took it back home and finally loaded up all the stuff we have been collecting for the house in France - Scott worked miracles and managed to get it all in! We set off to Portsmouth then to get a ferry.














Arriving at St. Malo on the overnight ferry















After unlaoding all the stuff out the van we had lunch in Auray (At the restaurant with the red awning) It was sunny enough to sit outside - really lovely...













Scott, with my 'I am wet' message - the sea (somewhere near Carnac) came in further than I was expecting while I was trying to take a picture - I was soaked up to the knees all day !





















Camping in front of the fire in Mum and Dad's room - it was FREEZING! We put a mattress down in front of the fire to sleep on and I kept chucking logs on all night!

















Wandering around Dinan, yesterday.

View out the van window when we had lunch! We wandered around M. St. Michael, then drove to the Normandy beaches and had a walk in the dark, before getting the overnight ferry home again.

A Fun Saturday

A lovely sunny day today, so we all went for a walk into town to get sweets. On the way back Lucy and I made a new head for our snowman - sadly his head and middle section had fallen off and cracked... He's a bit smaller this time! Jack was busy making lots of cute mini snowmen - I like how it looks as though they are guarding the house! When we got dried off again, I made some cushion covers for cushions to take to France, and the kids wanted to make cushions too, so they drew designs, and we stuck on the fabric shapes and letters ready to sew around and add backs to. Unfortunately my last sewing machine needle snapped halfway through, so we'll have to finish everything off next week. The house is now a total tip...

We-heeeey!!! SNOW!!!!

Well this is what we woke up to - that's a bit more like it!! We decided pretty quickly that school was off the menu, and Scott didn't have to go in to work, so we headed off to the 'grass-hopper bowl' (after snowballing the Hubbards), with our mini see-saw as a sledge... had a bit of fun there, and Tom and Harry made a nice snowman. Lucy then started making a big snowball and we tried to push it all the way home so we could use it for another snowman body. It got way too big and heavy before we got anywhere near home, but some nice people helped us get it home with their sledge! So we made our 7 foot surfer snowman - Jack from next door had to help with the head! (We didn't have any carrots - had to use a tube of Tomato Puree for the nose...) Then we had a go at body-boarding down the road. After some lunch, we set off on a walk into town, but never made it - we stopped at the park and made an igloo instead!! About 3 1/2 hours later we did it!! Scott took the younger ones home partway through, and we didn't really think we'd get a roof on anyway... Quite a few passers-by helped out a bit, and we eventually finished it!! We are SO PROUD OF IT!!! Scott bought us some chips half-way through too which helped us keep going... I feel like we made the most of the snow anyway!

A bit of Snow (and a mini album...)

Well we woke up to a disappointingly feeble amount of snow this morning, but the kids were still excited, and when I came downstairs they were outside having a snowball fight in their pyjamas! (Jack was slightly more sensible, with a coat over his dressing gown...)
I made a mini album on Saturday, with pictures of the house in France - I've been wanting to make it for ages. It's not finished yet - there are a couple more pages to go.