Winter Wonderland

It snowed again last night, so after dinner we went out in it to play. (Snow is such a rare and precious treat for us that all normal routines are gone with the wind/blizzard.) This time it was the perfect snow for snowmen... We rolled a HUGE snowball, until it was too heavy to turn over again, and then rolled one nearly as big for the middle and then the head - which was nearly too high for us to lift it up. But we did it. We were very pleased with ourselves, and so in fine old tradition we began to pelt each other with snowballs... I am not a very good shot - almost as good as the kids, in fact, and so I got very cold down my back... ug!

By the time we brought everyone in for a bath we were freezing again, and they were whiny! Cold, tired and whiny! Great combo. Warm bath, warm pjs, hair dryer and bed...

And then I got the camera out again...

I had to get one of the eucalyptus covered in snow. I could title this What Nature Never Intended, I think.

And I was at it again, early morning... or, not so early because sunrise is pretty late mid-winter, but in time for the dawn colours.The birds were out eating again, and I got these shots of ground-feeders having a go at the crushed fat-balls and sunflower seeds I put out for them.

Funniest was the magpies which were stuffing their beaks with fat and then stashing it in holes in the snow... squirrels of the bird world! They were intimidating everyone who flew away from the saucer when they showed up. Until, that is, a collared dove came and started intimidating them. This is a picture of two magpies pretending that they don't want anything to do with that saucer and they would much rather have peanuts than fat, thank you.

Here is the snowman that we built last night, in the sunshine of this afternoon. It's as tall as I am.

And the setting sun (at 2:30) across a snowy field.

Icicles hanging from the church.

Our hedge and bin covered with snow. That's the depth of snow that fell last night. 3 inches or so.

And finally, our Christmas tree. Potted, so we can (hopefully) use it again next year.

Baby, it's COLD outside!

As usual in this cold weather, my first task after hauling myself out of bed was to give the birds their breakfast. They were right on it!

It had snowed in the night, covering up the tracks made the day before, giving us a brand new piece of paper to scribble on.I stayed warm inside while my eager offspring bundled up and headed outside to throw snowballs at the windows.

After breakfast (hot porridge with brown sugar!) we went out sledding. There is a nice little slope about 100 yards away from the house... very convenient. We stayed out for a good hour before my toes were just far too cold and I insisted we all came in. There wasn't too much argument so I suspect they were cold too. Maybe it was the offer of hot chocolate...

But right after lunch they were out again, trying to make a snowman.

Unfortunately the snow is very crunchy. The kind that sticks to your gloves and not to itself. In Feb when we had our last snow it was perfect snowman snow. A small ball rolled around the garden gathered everything up to itself and we made a huge snowman...

This time, however... not so huge (bucket for scale):

So they turned their attention to sledding again. Well, not the downhill sort, but the pulling-each-other-around-the-parking-lot-next-to-the-house sort.

It was 2:30 and the sun was already starting to head low.

An hour later and this is the situation.

More snow is forecast for tonight, and the temperatures remain well below freezing, so I think this will continue for a few days. Luckily the roads are clear and we have no-where to go - until Tuesday morning that is, when we gather in our Grandma from the airport!

Woohoooo.....

Hey, guess what? It actually snowed! A whole 2 inches or so... more in London and on the hills, I think, but here is where it counts.

So today, the last day of school, the boys went in wearing their wellies and have no doubt spent most of the day playing out in the snow - when they weren't in their classrooms playing games. What a way to end the term.

Spike has his nursery Christmas party this afternoon, complete with magician and a visit from You-Know-Who! He went in his wellies too.

This morning though we took a trip to Tesco to get more milk, and this was our mode of transport:

and we had some lovely visitors...

Real Snow Day?

There has been a 'Severe Weather Warning' for our part of England...

Heavy Snow, Thurs 17 Dec

There is a moderate risk of severe weather affecting Eastern parts of England. Rain showers will turn increasingly to snow, especially during the late afternoon and evening. Accumulations of up to 5cm are likely with perhaps 10cm over hills.

Now, those of you reading in places where it really does snow a lot can just stop laughing now. Remember, we don't often get snow. This is cause for dismay/excitement depending on your age.

My family and I are in the 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeee................' camp! We know where our snow suits and sled are and we are ready! (And will be really disappointed if it just rains.)

What makes it all the more exciting is that Friday is the last day of school here, and it is traditionally a 'toy day'. They spend the day playing games they have brought and enjoying themselves... that is after such a hard week of Christmas parties, Christmas worksheets, finishing off Christmas gifts and cards, singing Christmas songs and going to the school Christingle. So a snow day at the end of the week will be just the most exciting thing and a wonderful way to start the Christmas holidays.

And here's a picture from our last snow, back in February. Just to get us all in the mood.

So, how's the forecast where you are?

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.

So Proud!

Probably the proudest Cub Scout in the world...
Pip's Cub pack had a 'race night' tonight. They had been given a project. 3 weeks to turn a block of wood into a racing car... towards some badge or another. The variety of cars was incredible and there were prizes for all sorts of things - best wheels, fastest car, distance, originality, 911 look-alike... It was a lot of fun, and we raised money for Children in Need which is always a good thing.

And Pip-squeak won the 'best paint-job' prize! He was so proud of himself... I just wanted you to see.

Thoughts of a flea-brained mother

Dude is on his way to being entirely toothless. Another one fell out on Friday while he was brushing his teeth, and yet another one is wiggly! I have warned him that it may be a diet of soup and porridge for him. He thinks it's hilarious - being gross is his favourite pass-time. Well, he is a 6 yr old boy!

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Since the bird-feeding-tree has lost all its leaves I have started re-filling the birdfeeders. We have fat-balls, peanuts, niger seed and hulled sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds go fastest, followed by fat-balls, then peanuts. Niger is a very poor last favourite. I rarely see any bird there. Even the goldfinches (Niger is supposed to be their absolute favourite) ignore it and scoff the sunflower seeds.
This morning I counted 7 species while eating my breakfast:
goldfinches, sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches, a wren (ok, he was hopping on the fence behind the tree, but still), collared doves pecking at the spillages on the ground, and, joy of joys, a greater spotted woodpecker!!!!

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Good mother/bad mother. You judge.

Bad:

Yesterday Pip had his bestest friend over for a serious Lego session, and what did I do? It was a gorgeously blue day, so I winkled them out of the bedroom and outside to help me fill my new leaf bags, which I ordered the other day. They weren't impressed and being press-ganged into child labour, although things looked up when I offered them 50p a bag (there were 5 bags) each to spend at the Church Fair that afternoon.

Good:

This evening Pip and I painted designs on his 'design a car' project for cubs. They got given a piece of wood, about 2.5" by 6" by 4", a few metal washers and the instructions to turn it into a car by adding bits/ taking away bits/ decorating it. They were allowed help since it was bound to involve saws... I now have red and yellow gloss paint on my fingertips from holding it in the wrong place. *sigh*

Tooth Update

Dude's wiggly tooth has fallen out... so now he is entirely gap-toothed.

And wonder of wonders, the Tooth Fairy didn't 'get lost' last night and actually managed to leave a golden pound in exchange for the newest brick in her Tooth Castle. Way to go, Tooth Fairy!

Halloween

Just thought you might like to see my Halloween gouls and ghosties:

They were very proud of themselves and enjoyed being scary...

And here is Dude with his pumpkin-teeth, just in time for Halloween he lost one and the other is so wiggly he can turn it around in his head. Quite disgusting, really!

Good News

Well, after much trouble we found a microwave repair-man locally, and he managed to do the job in a day for £22. And considering that a comparable microwave would have cost about £122 we are very pleased.

Now we just have to work on getting a new oven. But at least we have something to cook food in if it finally gives up the ghost. Although it has been behaving well recently (which is why we still haven't managed to replace it).

We are on half-term in our neck of the woods, which means no school for a week.

We went with 50 of our nearest and dearest Church Family members to a Youth Hostel at New Lanark for the weekend. We took over the whole place and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. There were about 20 kids and of course they enjoyed each other's company immensely.

It rained quite a bit while we were there, but that meant that we got to see the nearby waterfall of Corra Linn (the hostel overlooks the River Clyde) in both gentle

and torrential

modes!

After that we went over to visit a friend in North Berwick, just to the right of Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth. His garden backs onto the beach, and so the boys were in 7th heaven!

This was the view from our bedroom window. Lovely!

The Island of Fidra, which was the inspiration for RL Stevenson's 'Treasure Island' was just down the coast, and easily visible from the house. We visited the beach nearest Fidra one evening...

These sunset pictures were taken from the North Berwick beach, within minutes of each other. Look at how the colours change!

Appliance Suicide

Our kitchen appliances are all dying, one by one. I am beginning to wonder if we have a gremlin! Or maybe they're complaining of overwork?

First, the fan in the fan oven is temperamental. It seems to only turn on when the oven temp reaches 'hot enough' (whatever that is, I don't know. I have just learned to turn it on and eventually the fan will kick in). We do have plans to replace the oven, but seeing as I am lazy I haven't done it yet. Bad idea to wait until it dies entirely? Probably, but hey...

May be definitely a bad idea, since our microwave seems to be giving up the ghost. When I say 'giving up' I mean, 'has given up and is just faking it'. It looks fine (no burn marks, no funny smells) it looks like it's working (turns, light on, makes noise) but nothing heats up. Hmmm.... Time to get a new microwave? Probably, but have you seen the price of microwaves these days? Yow! Beginning to wonder about calling a repair-man.

Which is exactly what we had to do for the washing machine last Thursday, when after acting wierd (stopping mid wash and not spinning) and being forced to spin a load of clothes that seemed clean, just sopping wet it started moaning loudly, followed by a burning smell... EEEK! Pull out from under shelf! Unplug! Unplug! Luckily we have this little beauty insured. We bought it when Pip was a wee baby and so it's now about 8 yrs old. It has had its drum changed, and its bearings changed already, so the insurance is worth it (also cheaper and more environmentally responsible than buying a new one). They sent out a nice man on Monday and he fixed it in 24 mins!!!! Apparently the motor had gone (hence the lack of spin) and in doing this it fried the control panel (behind the buttons) and the door lock mechanism (hence the burning smell). But lickety split it was all replaced and good as new...

Jubilation all 'round! Clean knickers once again! (tmi?)

So anyway, now considering the cost of calling a repair-man for the micro (surely less than buying a new one?) and which will be the best new oven for us... Our current (ancient - came with the house) model has the controls up high, against the wall above a 'back-splash' sort of thingy. Which means that little fingers can't fiddle. These days they seem to be built with all the controls just at the eye height of a 3 yr old... Brilliant design. Ho hum. Also want a A-rated one for energy efficiency. Which narrows the field.

Anyone (in the UK) have any recommendations for ovens?

Spiders and Dogs

Look who we found scuttling across our kitchen floor the other evening. He was a biggie. You can tell because that's a drinking glass he's under! Dude christened him 'goliath'.

Spiders seem to be everywhere at the moment. If they're not making sparkly webs in the bushes (where they should be) they are wandering around the kitchen or hanging out in the shower. Not really the best place for a spider to be.

I don't mind spiders... I don't want to cuddle one, and I don't want one to walk on me... but in general I am happy to have them around, just at a distance. We have a pact. They don't bother me, I don't bother them... It even goes so far as the embarrassing fact that when at school they did a project about their pets (we don't have one) Pip did his about his pet spider! (I am sure there was an alternative project he could have done... children without pets would not have been ostracised!)

But never-the-less, I don't really want big hairy beasts sitting down at the kitchen table and demanding dinner. There are enough of those who I actually DO have to feed! So goliath got sent outside to hunt for his own dinner.

In other news: driving home from school the other day and Dude called from the back 'Mummy! Look! It's a rainbow sun!' And so it was... the conditions were right to produce a Sun Dog! It wasn't a brilliant one - and my photo of it is even less than brilliant... note to self: take a picture that includest the sun next time! In my defense it was quite small, and so I zoomed right in.

They are so amazingly cool, and we see them so rarely, and if the clouds change between when you spot it and when you find your camera, or someone to show, then it will have gone... so I rushed the job. Good thing I did though, because in this photo it is less bright than it was, and in the subsequent photos I took it was even less visible.

So there you go, your weekend activities: spider hunting and keeping an eye out for sun dogs...

Oh, just remembered... Pip is having a friend over tomorrow night for his very first sleepover... wish us luck!

Big Hint

Another sign of Autumn? How about this for a can't-ignore-it hint: