winter weekend

We had a really nice weekend. Before sharing some of it with you I just want to say a little something about letting go.
The last few weeks I have been super busy and I find that my head is filled with plans and lists and thoughts. The hours in the day are too short and there is just not enough time to comfortably fit it all in. I had a great plan in my head for an advent wreath I wanted to make last week...it didn't happen. I was going to do it this week, trying to shift time and factor the gathering of the materials, the walk out to get the greenery, the time to make the various parts and then I though 'hang on, what am I doing?!?' I just need to let it go, I can't do it, the kids won't know the difference. We are following advent with our daily calendars and I'm sure my time and energy can be better spent...so I let it go :-)

Instead the kids and I headed to one of our favourite beaches for a picnic

We got soaked pretty much on arrival, but no matter, we had our picnic anyway.

For some of us it was pretty relaxing...

For me it wasn't that relaxing as I had to keep chasing Joa away from the path up to the road, he was determined to keep climbing it. So not long after we bundled back into the car and headed for home.

Today was also lovely, I woke in a great mood, full of energy and joy. The children were very excited also because Santa was coming by lifeboat to the village.

We set about baking a little bag of biscuits for him,

We decided on gingerbread robins. We made gingerbread using the best recipe in the world. If you don't have a great recipe for crunchy gingerbread I am very happy to share it here.

We cut out the dough into egg shapes and made white and red and yellow icing.

Benny was in charge of red tummies,

Rebe did yellow beaks and legs and I did white eyes and wings.

Joa begged for licks :-)

When we had made those the kids also wanted to make some cards for Santa.

Benny's picture of Santa.

Rebe's picture of Santa. Rebe's picture of a lifeboat person for the crew. She wrote a really sweet letter on the back of this to say how she sees the boat from the window and how she is going to be a lifeboat person when she's older :-)

After lunch it was finally time for all of us (including Andy) to go down to the pier. From our house we saw the lifeboat going out to collect Santa as we set off to make our way down.

And there he is the beardy man himself:

The kids were beside themselves, look at Benny's wee face :-)

we waited for a very long and cold time for our turn to go on the lifeboat, but to Benny and Rebe's utter joy Stormforce Stan (the character from the RNLI children's club that Rebe is a member of) was there to jolly us along. Rebe gave him the bag of robin biscuits that she had brought for the crew to share, and got her picture taken with him.

Finally we went to see Santa on the lifeboat. He popped Rebe on his knee, but Benny wanted to stay by me after handing over his little bag of biscuits to Santa. Rebe leant over to me and hissed, with complete awe, out of the side of her mouth: 'I'm sitting on Santa's knee!!!!!'

We had an offical photo taken (that we can collect later in the week) and then we got to walk all around the lifeboat back to shore,

It was completely lovely and one of those special memories for the kids. Also it is always a good thing to support your local RNLI when you have a husband who has a boat like Andy's ;-)

and as if the weekend wasn't gorgeous enough, a final beautiful moment as the light faded :-)

Hope your weekend was lovely too :-)