Birthdays

Although his birthday isn't till Thursday, Joshua had a party yesterday afternoon.  He shared the party with another 7 year old also named Joshua - Mummies then can share the cost! They went to a local play area called Little Angels.  It is like a giant climing frame made with metal rods (scaffold?) commando nets, rope walkways, bouncy castle like stuff, tubes, a plastic ball pit,  shutes and a massive slide. great fun if you are between 3 and 12.  After the fun they had chicken and chips in a basket and plenty of soft drinks.
Grown ups are not allowed on to the equipment unless it is to help a little one get up and down the steep steps and commando nets but I went on it.......hehe.......I just love slides and this one was superb! long and bumpy! My son-in-law was amazed that I had done this and I got away with it because I made Emily (4) take me to it and go down with me.......

Joshua was telling me the other day that he had lost anpther tooth and this photo shows that it was a bottom one - his two new top ones are growing well.  Don't they look funny when they have a gap in the front - we had been teasing him over Christmas about the top  gap but the teeth have grown so quickly.

Mummy Sarah made the cake - Joshua is obsessed with Lego so of course his cake had to be a lego brick! he loved it. I didn't get any as it was all eaten by the children but Sarah is making another identical for Thursday afternoon's tea, so we shall go and have some then.

Although I haven't been posting lately I have been busy,one of the quilts shown is now finished and the other is well on it's way. 

The bag I made in a few days and has been on it's first outing, I made the handles a lot longer than they are now and found that they were too long so I have altered them - I can still get them over my shoulder, so I am happy about that!

These little pin cushions have been mad using paint palets, circles of fabric, wadding and a hot glue gun! they are for friends of mine as pressies.

I have done quite a lot of sewing over the last couple of months as my DH has been so very poorly and has done nothing but sleep - he missed christmas totally as well as the New year celebrations - he is now on the mend but has to watch what he is doing as being inactive for so long has meant that he has lost o lot of strength .

Updating - again!

We have had the snow that most of the country has had - when I last  measured the depth with a metal rule it was 9" deep.  It has been very cold but not as cold as Scotland has had it, and I don't like it -can it all go away soon - please?  The icicles that have formed from the gutters on the conservatory are amazing! sooooo long!  Our conservatory is heated by a radiator on the house wall and the roof above gets warm - so the snow has melted there and the melt water has run down and icicles have grown and grown and grown!  it has looked very pretty but I have now had enough of it!

I have been house bound as our road was impassable, not a car has been moved for a week - now people are finding that the main roads are clear and they have no excuseto stay home any longer - so the weekend saw lot of drive clearing and car cleaning.  This last picture shows the car on Tuesday evening  last week - just an inch or so of snow but by the morning you couldn't see the car at all - just a heap of snow!

My grandaughter wanted to borrow my car to day so I told her that she would have to dig it off the drive first - so she and her Mum and Auntie did just that - I had already cleared enough snow of the drive to enable them to get to the car........well I had to get out to post birthday cards for friends and rellies and didn't want to fall over before I had begun my adventure to the post box at the end of the road.....!

I don't know if we had fairies in the garden early in the morning when this picture was taken or if it was just the reflection of the flash on snow flakes, but as you cansee the snow was quite deep at this early hour and it continued snowing all day!  How my sister in law who lives in Montreal Canada cope's with snow for nearly 6 months of the year I don't know - I don't think I could.

I know that the children have all been having loads of fun,  building snowmen, making snow angels, toboganing down slopes in the park and helping Dad making an igoloo because they have had time off school - but yesterday they had to go back to  their classrooms.  I believe that every school in our town was closed.

Snow!

Well here it is - the first snow of the winter.......it had been -5c over night,  cold enough for me to put another quilt on the bed and have a hotwater bottle to cuddle. It was very frosty and we had to scrape the windows on the car before we could go and collect our grandaughter to take her to school.  It only started snowing half way through the morning and we didn't think it would settle - but it looks as though it may - the temperature at the moment is -1c (30f) so unless it gets warmer this afternoon we will have this stuff over night!  I  just feel sorry for a friend of mine who is moving house to day!  but I suppose it is no worse than our move in the pouring rain a few years ago.

Strange week!

What a strange week this is turning out to be!  We are having to do a school run twice a day all week this week! we haven't done that for years!  Charlotte's Mummy isn't very well so Charlotte is staying with her Daddy, who stays most of the time with his girl friend and her children (their Daddy died in a motor bike accident a few years ago).  As Stuart goes to work early to avoid the M25 traffic hold ups and Leslie needs to leave by 8:30 and her children all go to a local school, and walk there, we are picking Charlotte up at 8:20 to take her to school the other side of town. 
It seems funny to have to think about collecting her at 3pm and then having her here till Stuart picks her up again around 5:30pm.  We have told him that we will not be able to pick her up from school on Thursday as we want to go and see Joshua and Emily in there schools Nativity play.   I'm looking forward to that........
Today she asked me to wash her hair for her, she was going to the youth group attached to a local church this evening and her hair was 'greasy' she said......she has very long, very thick hair (down to her hips) and it takes ages to deal with it. I think she has trouble doing it her-self, and she likes the way I can blow dry all the waves out of it!

I think that Brian and I are going to be exhausted by the end of the week! and we don't yet know how long we are going to do this school run.........it may be till the end of term, depending on how quickly Charlotte's Mummy gets well again.

Rain!

I am fed up with the rain.......we have had so much lately and now it looks as though it's going to cost us a lot of money!  The garage roof is leaking !!  Himself has already started on the clean- up........he had our old kitchen units out there as a work bench and storage - they are in soggy bits down the dump now! and the tools and pots of paint that were stored in them have been dried off and are sitting at the other end of the garage! 
This roof has already had a 'patching' job done on it a couple of times since we moved here but it looks as though this time it will need something more drastic! and expensive!!
He is going to have a proper look later on today - now it has stopped raining for a while.........but it is soooo cold out there at the moment ,  just 2c with ground frost..............not good conditions to be climing a metal ladder - he could stick to it!
Oh well if it has to have a new roof it does but that will mean less money for our holiday to Canada next year.  We are going to Vancouver for a family members wedding and are going to ride the Rocky mountaineer train to Calgary and then fly to Montreal to see the rest of the family. 
We will be away all of August and some of September too.    Everything is booked except where we are staying in Montreal - we are hoping that the family will take care of us there........a sister and five neices should be able to have us a few days at a time don't you think?  if not we will go into the Comfort Inn nearby, the family all live fairly close together on the west side of Montreal and not far from the hotel is a fabric shop - the one that is the reason why I do P&Q.  La Maison d' Calico in Point Clare. (this site is in Canadian French but there is a button to change it to English on the site bar)

Arfur

As promised to Purple Podded Peas a picture of my red tabby..........waiting for his supper..........he has been gone a few years now but I still miss him.

He always took advantage of any body in a reclining position!