busy and fun!

Before I start on today, I just wanted to share with you the cookies that Benny and I made yesterday. Stem ginger and dark chocolate..yummy yum! There are not many left needless to say!

So, wow, we had a lovely day today! We managed to get to the birthday party at the soft play area after all. Andy drove and the brakes were fine all the way there and back! He dropped us and went to work for a few hours then came back and joined us. I loved catching up with all my lovely friends and the kids just had a ball. Benny has never really been to a place like this and was in his element. I caught him here wearing 2 odd crocs that he had liberated from a family somewhere in the building. Luckily the daddy had spotted him and came to retrieve them.

My wee guys sharing a quick 10 mins in front of starfall while I unloaded the car and made a cuppa.

Once we had our tea we were in need of a bit of calm and fresh air so we grabbed our coats and spades and made for the beach for an hour before dinner (how I love living here for this exact reason!)

a sand rock, Rebe is fascinated by these clumps of sand and explained them to me today saying that you get them when you dig and you can pick them up very carefully, but if you squeeze them too hard they crumble.

A little shell Rebe found and called Rosie with whom she played the rest of our time at the beach.

I love this beach so much and to think it's at the bottom of our street!

sandy snotter...obligatory for any winter beach visit.

Yeehaaaa! Giddy up horsey!

Another one of our favourite beach games is 'Stone Age, Bone Age'. We find tools (sticks, stones, shells) and generally skin a large animal (log/ tree branch) and cook it over a fire. Today we branched (no pun intended) out into cave/ sand drawings.

This is Rebe's picture of the stone age, bone age king. How royal he looks with his crown. We also had to write our names in the sand. My stone age bone age name was 'Dave' (shrug), so in return I named Rebe an equally exotic 'Grant'.

Then it was time to go home and put on the rice. Rebe collected a bit of rubbish to say thank you to the beach for such a good time (we always do this when we go to the woods or the beach..it's a good way to show gratitude to such great places I think).

It's finally here!!

Benny's finally got another tooth, hehas the grand total of ...5!! Which is pretty rubbish for 19 months. I knew it was on it's way, but it broke the skin yesterday. Woohoo for Benny's new tooth!

Here are the few little things that I have been working on during quiet time. The card below is for my friends new baby. I really like it and think I might do more like this. It's just a little bit of fabric cut out, but I think it looks quite effective.

These are three Birthday crowns I have made for three little friends of ours. We are supposed to be going to their party tomorrow, but I don't think it's going to happen because the brakes on the car are dodgy again. I'm so sad we're going to miss it, loads of our friends will be there and it'd be so much fun to catch up.

Rebe is at school and I have Benny all to myself so I think we'll go and do a bit of baking or something equally messy!

Oops!

Oh dear, I managed to dye all of Benny's nappies bright pink! One of our new red napkins had snuck in with that wash! Oh well, at least they're under his clothes! The kids have been a bit under the weather the past few days so we haven't done much, short walks to the beach and the park and lots of stories and playing. Here are the two favourite toys of the week:

Benny is loving this wagon, it's been transporting just about everything.
Rebe is loving these little cut out men, they are all named. The middle one (Jake) is very naughty and rude, they each have pockets. We have also made a bus and a plane for them to ride in and a great paper picnic too. Amazing how much fun and how many hours can be taken up with the simplest of things!

We've also been doing a lot of crafting during the quiet times Benny has his naps in the afternoons. I have had a few Birthday pressies to make (I'll post more about that tomorrow). Rebe made this cat badge, and it was too good not to sew onto something. Inkonk (my mum's godmother) had made her this jumper for xmas and I'm sure she won;t mind that we embellished it! I think it looks really cute, as does the little lady modeling it!

Last night's dinner was such a throw back for Andy and I, we had Kase Spaetzle and Frikadellen! The Kase Spaetzle were surprisingly good,although a bit tricky to cook. You have to push the mixture through the holes of a colander into boiling water. You have to be pretty speedy at this or the steam will cook it in the holes (as I discovered; just putting Benny's welly back on him and me holes were all blocked) but i managed and everyone enjoyed it.

So all is good here. The kids are sleeping better and Benny is managing the big bed great. He is also sleeping through til 7am now that he goes to bed wearing the nappy equivalent of the princess and the pea.

The bump is steadily growing and is full of kicks and wriggles. We're nearly 22 weeks now! Can't believe in 4 months there will be another little person sharing our house!

That's all for now folks.

Great Chieftain O the Puddin' Race

Oh what a great day I have had today! In fact yesterday was lovely as well. It started off with a glorious lie in; Andy got up with the kids and I even got breakfast in bed and this fabby picture of a dragon by Rebe. We spent the morning playing and sewing. We made this wee pile of napkins for dirty little hands and faces.

Rebe did all the ironing for me...well we just did the napkins and didn't bother with anything else.

Then even though it was rainy and wet we had a great play in the park.

Burns Night

Today too was just great. It started off with the kids not getting up til gone 7am (minor miracle) and Benny had had his first night in the big bed without having to be transferred to cot, or having fallen out. We had plenty of time to get ready for school (apart from a little sudocreme smeared all over small persons self and having to get changed quick incident) and at school Rebe's teacher said that she was now also booked in for Fridays. Benny and I went shopping and got some wonderful bargains in the charity shops. These are my fav finds:

This moses basket is so beautiful I couldn't resist...3 euro!!

I got the Shirley Hughes Treasury (I am so in love with Shirley Hughes, there is something so magical and yet so simple about her style)... 50c

We had this book when we were kids, I couldn't pass it by... 1 euro

Benny couldn't pass this one, I love too that it is original pre tv show.

After picking up Rebe from school we came home to prepare for our Burns supper. We made a Loch Ness Monster Table decoration.

A slightly over excited (and massive looking) mummy bringing in the Haggis. Andy and I made very realistic sounding bag pipe accompaniment for this part!

Haggis, Neeps and Tatties

Benny loved it!
Before desert we read out some poems that we had written (as I could only remember one verse of 'Tae a Haggis'). Here are the ones Rebe and I wrote over breakfast:

'Jake the Pinecone

Loved to Pine tone'

'Once there was a fat cat,

Who loved to pat.

He wore yellow fur,

And stroking it made him purr!'

'Jake the Pillow Snake

Ate a cherry cake.

Eating it hurt his tum,

So he went and called his mum.'

And here is Andy's less savoury contribution (of course Rebe loves it!)

'There once was an elephant's bum

That played like a trumpet for fun

One day his bum died,

from all the gas inside,

So he said' Come on everyone, RUN!!''

Yummy Trifle!

Hope you all have had a wonderful day too!!

'Bo'!

I've been a very tired, very grumpy mummy the past few days, so we haven't been up to much at all, just trying to stay around the house and catch up with some play, rest and housework.

This is today's rainbow

Benny is such a wee outdoors guy. He brought me his wellies this morning and asked to go out. I gave him a spray with water and he 'cleaned' the windows for me... note to self...clean windows!

While he was doing that a wee fishing boat went past on it's way out of the harbour and he grabbed the step and gave the cry 'Bo!' (say that in a broad scottish accent and you get the idea) and watched it steam past. Gosh I do love it here!

Hope you're all having a good time (and a great deal more sleep!)

Breakfast in an Aeroplane

We had to say goodbye to Vicci yesterday. We drove her to the airport, where we had an amazing breakfast in the Cork Airport Hotel. The service and food was lovely, but best of all our table was in an aeroplane! Our seats were real aeroplance seats and were under the real over head lockers. It was so much fun, we pretended to be flying all over the world. It was brilliant. After dropping Vicci off at the terminal we picked up Andy and went to the city to get Benny some new shoes. To my delighted my favourite shoe shop, Little Piggies, has opened there. Where we got him these boots... And best of al they were in the half price sale!! Benny's really proud of them>

We made food pictures for dinner, this was Rebe's

And this Benny's.

We also started putting up pictures on the pin board Andy made. It's at the right level for the kids to be able to put up what they want. Here are a few of the pictures we found when going through the huge stack deciding what we wanted to go up...

Me with the baby in my tummy.

And this hilarious one of Santa and his reindeer. Rebe assures me he has on a belt, though it looks like a strap on something else to me ;-)

A plate of soil with engine oil

Wow, look we managed to get a photo of our winter rainbow fairy in front of a rainbow!
Had a really lovely day today, my darling best friend is staying at the moment (we're even getting her for an extra day because I managed to bribe Cork air traffic control to go on strike tomorrow so she can't go home he he). We went for a walk in the woods with the kids, Vicci carried Benny for me, cause I can't tie my sling round the bump anymore.

As you can see Benny was delighted to be in the sling again... he soon nodded off.
And that one again because it's so cute.. and I can't work out how to delete just one picture :-)


The sea was very stormy and angry so we didn't last long on the cliffs and went home to make 'A plate of soil with engine oil'.
Vicci gave us a Roald Dahl recipe book and this is the recipe that Rebe chose to try first. Essentially it's sticky chocoloate pudding Our's didn't really turn out so well, it was more like a solid brick of chocoloate stodge. But we ate it anyway :-)After dinner we had a bit of a Uke concert.

While Vicci has been here I've showed her how to knit a bit (I'm not a very good teacher, especially with my pregnancy brain as it is and I can't string a sentence together). This was the first thing she ever knitted and as you can see is a wee bit pleased!I finished these bootees and wee gnome hat for a special arrival due, well, 9 days ago. Am really pleased with how they turned out and will defenitely make some for our wee one.P.s. Anyone any idea what's happened to my feet?