SnowDays

This is one of our favourite wintertime websites.

You get to make your own snowflakes...

Its easy and fun, you don't waste paper, and there aren't any little scraps all over the floor at the end.

Go on, give it a try!

Stones into Schools

I am all excited! Greg Mortenson has a new book out. It's called Stones into Schools and it is on my Amazon wishlist!

His last one, Three Cups of Tea was amazing. He is amazing. What he does, and has done is amazing. And wonderful. HE should have got the Nobel Peace Prize, not Obama. Not that I have anything against Obama, but really, compared to what Greg has acheived...

Anyway, very excited about the prospect of this new book, and wanted to let you all know about it.

And if you order it from Amazon.com (not sure about .co.uk, maybe there too) the CAI (Central Asia Institute) which Greg founded and runs (with a little help from his friends) gets a whopping 7%. Which they are very pleased about... it makes me wonder how much (how little!) authors usually get from book sales!

Anyway, go find out about it, and if you haven't read Three Cups of Tea, please do. The generosity and kindness in it is wonderful. Amazing. Inspiring.

And go find out about the CAI and the work they do here!

Good News and Bad News

The good news is that Spike is feeling fine, bouncy, playful, happy - in short his usual self.

The bad news is that his cough has returned and this morning he was wheezing a bit, so I called up and got him an appointment with a lovely doctor (every time we seem to see a different one... this one was really chatty and friendly - just right for a little boy who didn't want to be there in the first place!) that morning (again, thank you NHS). And his chest infection has returned and so he is back on another course of Amoxycillin. Hopefully this time it will clear up completely, but if it doesn't the Dr said to come and see him again.

While we were there we saw three other kids we know... it's that time of year. All the best kids are coughing, spluttering and dripping snot. Don't you wish you could be here?

Wet and Cold

We needed more peanuts for our feeders, so I took Spike with me on a 'job' to go get some. And there was a deal that if you spent a certain amount on a particular brand of peanuts you got a peanut feeder free... no way we could pass that up! He chose an apple shaped one and he is very proud of his 'apple feeder'. Here is a very blurry picture of a tit investigating it...

To be honest they seem more interested in the one they were used to, but I'm sure they'll figure it out. For now it is just one adventurous tit braving the scary new thing in the tree!

But look who I got a picture of the other day! Our lovely Greater Spotted Woodpecker! He has been a regular visitor this winter. He grabs a peanut from the original (long) feeder and takes it to the stake next to the tree and hammers away at it. It's always a thrill to see him! And the frost this morning has brought them all flocking in. Nothing better than standing in the kitchen with a hot mug of coffee watching the birds and ignoring the housework... (there you go, a confession of a guilty pleasure!)

It has been pretty rainy over here in the past week or so.

Last week the North West of the UK got it all - Cumbria (the Lake District) was terribly flooded. This week it looks like it's our turn. This is what it's like just down the hill and 'round the corner from us. Those are newly built half-a-million houses there in danger of being flooded out. I wonder what the new inhabitants think about that! Living close to a river is lovely, but this close? Hmm...

Mouldy update

Incase you were concerned, the mouldy ones are improving rapidly. Hooray!

I gave them their last dose of fever medicine last night at bedtime. They went to bed early, at about 6:15 (7 - 7:30 is normal) and Spike woke up at 7ish and 8ish... and I thought 'oh no! this is going to go on all night!' but that was it from both of them until after 7 this morning. So that's good.

They both came to church, and have eaten properly all day (a huge improvement on yesterday when Spike barely ate anything and Dude ate no lunch, just lay on the sofa feeling mouldy). There has been no fever since last night and they have been fine. Dude took himself to bed tonight at 6:45 and fell asleep before Spike came in after his shower, but considering that I was thinking I was going to have to take him to the doctor on Monday he is fine. I think he will even go to school tomorrow. He did his homework this afternoon, with no more complaints than usual, and has since been playing lego happily with Pip... perhaps a bit more tired than normal this evening, but otherwise just fine.

And the antibiotics have certainly done the trick for Spikey's chest infection. He was really poorly on Friday evening, coughing up great wads of phlegm (tmi?), totally miserable and very hot and sweaty. Today, after 2 full days of meds he is just fine. Snotty, sure, but not even coughing much, which is great!

So I am one relieved Mummy!

Thank God for the NHS - I got an appointment an hour after I called, was seen by a lovely nurse, and was home with the antibiotics (which were free because Spike is under 16) by 10:30am. And I got my (free!) flu jab that afternoon - and I had only booked in that morning when I was in the doctor's office! I know we pay for it with taxes, but 'what the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't yearn after!' The convenience and security is so worth it. One big reason to live on this side of the pond.

And that's as political as I am going to get. Nighty night, folks. I am off to listen to the sweet sound of children breathing peacefully in their sleep.

Mouldy Children

Dude told me today that he was mouldy.

"Mouldy means", he said, "when you're not feeling very well."

An odd correlation, but I know where he's coming from.

Both Dude and Spike have a bad cough and a fever. Spike has been worse, and when I took him to see the 'nice nurse' on Friday she listened to his chest and said it was very congested and gave him some amoxycillin. He is improving a lot. Dude hasn't, and if he isn't much better by Monday I'm going to take him in to visit her.

Feeding Frenzy

I filled up the sunflower feeder this morning (aka 'giving the birds their breakfast'). By lunch it was empty, so I went out a few minutes ago and refilled it, plus I topped up the peanuts and put two more fat-balls in that feeder too.

This so thrilled the birds that we had a veritable feeding frenzy on our hands! A huge flock of sparrows, FOUR goldfinches and a couple of greenfinches decended en-masse and the lot of them flapping around and jockeying for the best angle on each feeders. Amazing to watch.

Earlier we had been visited by our woodpecker, not once, but twice! He goes for the peanuts. And we had THREE collared doves moseying around on the grass below. I had only seen two before, so now I am wondering if this third might be a chick, all grown up now. Do collared doves mate for life?

I get such a lot of pleasure from these little guys. Worth every penny I spend on bird-food.