We measured Jack and Ellie the other day – Jack has grown an inch and a half in just 12 weeks and is now 5 foot 3 and a half, Ellie is shooting up just as much and stands at five foot 2. Edward has also grown about an inch and a half in the same amount of time and is now the grand height of 2 foot 9. And don’t even get me started on the size of all of their feet!!

Edward is beginning to get his head around numbers – if you start to count he will join in and has got the sequence of 7, 8, 9, 10 down to a fine art along with 2 and 3.

He is also a boy who knows what he wants – he says, “Mum/Dad/Jack/Ellie c’m-here,” if he wants you to go to him and yesterday he was calling me from the lounge, “Mum, c’m-here!” I asked him what he wanted and he came into my office, “Finley…?” he said, whilst pointing to the TV.

“But Finley’s not on now Bear, it might be on later.”

“Finley!” he insisted pointing frantically at the TV, and then he disappeared back into the lounge. He returned moments later with a Wii controller, thrust it into my hand and went back to the lounge, “Mum, c’m-here, Finley,” he said pointing to the Wii. THat’s when it dawned on me that he wanted me to turn on the Wii, connect to the internet and BBC iPlayer so that he could watch Finley ‘on demand’!

He also knows what he likes and what he doesn’t like – whilst Meer-Meer (Thomas) is still a firm favourite along with Pocoyo, Bobber (Bob the Builder) and Pingu, he can’t stand this weirdo ‘In the Night Garden’ programme and isn’t overly interested in the Telletubbies either. So he’s not a boy that is content just to sit in front of the TV and watch anything that’s on; if he doesn’t like it, then he’s OFF preferring instead to play with his trains and tractors (the tractors have to go to bed with him now and be read Smoke and Fluff and Downy Duckling as many times as he can get out of us!)

The church website that I built is becoming a bit of a beast – I must say that it’s been a lot of fun doing it. There are all sorts of things going on and news to read about (and some GREAT pictures of the village *wink*) and the barn dance tickets are now available to buy online (I spent a lot of yesterday adding that facility to the site) so if you’re coming, go and buy your tickets because numbers are limited to 200! And if you’re not coming but haven’t seen the site lately go and have another look www.lowickchurch.com

The weather is lovely here again today and Edward is enjoying spending lots of time in the garden; a month or two ago I approached Charles (our landlord) to see if we could extend the garden back to where its original boundaries used to be now that Margaret (the lady that lived in the house over the back) has moved to another house in the village. He came round the other day, we went and had a look at where the new/original boundary is/was and he gave us the go ahead to start doing whatever we like to it!

The Estate are going to fence it all in so that it matches the fencing we already have but we don’t have to wait for that before we make a start. There’s a HUGE pampas grass there and some other big ugly shrub so we’re going to dig those out (hopefully with the help of the Jeffs’ and their digger!), move the hundred-weight of aquilegias and delphiniums and forget-me-nots (they always remind me of you now MIL) to the edges and then turf the rest. Below are some pictures of the new bit of garden as it is today so for once we actually have a record of before and after, somehow we always seem to forget the before photo. It’s all very exciting especially as all of our favourite plants and some of the new ones we put in last year are growing away like crazy.

Simon’s ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ plant showing off its first flowers of the year (this is one of his favourites)…

The centre of a ‘Mrs Bateman’ clematis flower – it reminds me a bit of a sea anemone – she is currently smothering the trellis that we put in front of the oil tank to hide it and is doing a fantastic job!

Here are a few pictures of the new bit of garden – this first one is looking away from our garden fence with the house and the back of Simon’s shoffice to your right. The tree at the end is a fabulous pear tree and under it are a couple of very established peonies that are just stunning – we are very lucky to have inherited them!

This one is standing further into what was Margaret’s garden – you can see the MONSTER pampas grass (it’s easily 12 feet tall!) and other funny shrub thing and where I strung the boundary up for Charles to come and have a look at.

And this last one is from underneath the pear tree looking back towards our current garden fence with the house and Simon’s shoff’ there on the left…

And finally, a photo of Edward relaxing in the garden this morning – I think this is my most favourite image of him to date!

This is a sentence we hear lots from Edward every day.  It can be used to say that a tractor has driven past or to try and explain that he can’t find his tractor, with lots of activity going on in the fields at the moment and with the work that is happening at the house behind us, Edward is in tractor heaven every day.

His skills of identification are quite remarkable – he can spot a Land Rover at fifty paces, “Lan!” he says, and he can identify several garden birds: robins, jackdaws, blue tits, goldfinches and of course captains!  He does get confused when it comes to chaffinches though, he seems to think they are robins too.  Then there are the aeroplanes – “eobeans” and boats – “boat” and vans and lorries and car, always lots of cars.

This time 3 years ago we were running around all over the place getting things ready for the wedding! The day’s agenda went something like this:

Get all the muffins for the ‘cake’ and the lottery tickets from Tescos.

Roll and tie all the lottery tickets with ribbon and arrange on the glass stand.

Pack the car with all the various bits for the reception like balloons, ribbon, cakes, cake stands etc

Drop off the suits to Pages Lane and collect the VAST amount of drink and take it across town to Marilyn and Chris’s. Meet mum and have lunch there whilst forming a battle plan for the afternoon.

In the afternoon, Simon went to collect Niki and they both went on to get Jack and Ellie from school, then back to Marilyn’s where they started blowing up all the balloons. Me and mum went into town to try and find a tie for Tony and then dashed across county to Horsham to collect my dress, then back to Littlehampton to drop it off at Peter and Sarah’s – we didn’t get back to Boundary Road until about 6pm whereupon I had a glass of wine thrust into my hand and given my only job of the evening…to put the champagne in the fridge. It was tough work!

We got home at around 9ish and finally got to bed at just gone midnight.
I can’t believe it was three years ago! WHERE has the time gone? Simon keeps reminding me that we have packed a lot into those three years but even so it CAN’T be three years ago, there has to be some sort of mistake!!  It’s just as incomprehensible to think that Edward will be two years old in just 9 weeks time – he is going through a really funny phase at the moment, funny-ha-ha not funny-peculiar.  He is stringing lots of words together and talks pretty much non-stop, he’ll say things like, “Tractor – all gone – farm,” or “Captain – all gone – fly-away.”  (Captain is his name for all wood pigeons, I’ll explain another time) And if you say, “That’s right, Captain flew away,” he’ll come back with this real sing-songy, “I knowww,” that has the sort of tone you’d use if someone had just told you some amazing piece of news, it’s so funny!

He says all sorts of single words, too many to list now, but he also says “Oh noo!” “I-don’t-know” and “What’s-that?!” “Lou – good-girl” “Minky – big-dog” and “DAD!  Come-here!”  Come-here is courtesy of Jack and Ellie.

They had their second appointment with the orthodontist this morning and had the moulds taken for their braces.  Ellie is having hers fitted on the 6th July and Jack’s will be slightly later as he still has a baby tooth to come out and they won’t start anything until that’s gone, the xrays also showed that neither of them have any wisdom teeth like me (apparently this means that we are more evolutionary advanced than mere mortals who have wisdom teeth LOL!).

It’s the May Fayre this weekend (fingers crossed the weather stays fine) and Ellie is out each evening at the park practising the maypole dancing and helping Maud (she teaches the dancing) to show the younger ones what to do.

Jack and Ellie are both going to go to the tennis club after school that starts next Tuesday and Ellie is doing really well with her triathlon training on Wednesdays – they are introducing the running element this week.

Everything else is just the same-old-same-old: very busy, we don’t eat until late and go to bed even later!

And on that note, I must go and get on.

Sarah x

We’ve put the blog back to how it used to look in a bid to try and update it more often (well at least the intention is there!), with the other style the login ‘button’ wasn’t easily accessible and it was a bit of a faff to get in to the admin’ section – it’s a naff excuse but it does have an impact.

So it’s back to the old look and maybe a new start in writing here more regularly….that said, I’m not going to write much today – time is a commodity that we just don’t seem to have anymore and it’s rapidly heading towards dinner and bath and bed time for Edward. Dinner for me and Simon is rarely before 9pm and bed is often later than 1am so it’s a case of grab spare moments when you can, the thing is…there are so many little things that need to be done it’s almost impossible to know where to start.

So what’s the news – lots of Edward bla-bla, he talks LOADS, says the funniest things and can mimick almost everything you say (we have to be very careful). He also seems to have the memory of an elephant! He met my Grandma for the first time last month, we were only with her for a couple of hours, long enough for a couple of photos, a quick potter around with her pots and pans and a tinkle on the piano; I processed the photos today and Edward came along and sat on my lap – he pointed at Jack and said, “Jack,” he pointed at Ellie and said, “Ellie,” I pointed at Grandma and asked who it was, “Grandma,” he said. Quite amazing!

Jack and Ellie are growing too fast for their own good, Jack took part in the football tournament at the Pocket Park on Sunday and Ellie goes to triathlon training on Wednesdays. There doesn’t seem to be much to say about them, but it seems like we don’t see them very often in the grand scheme of things.

What else? Lots of business bla-bla…..not enough time bla-bla so here are some photos bla bla (if you don’t watch Al Murray then the bla-bla is just going to pass you by).

Corporate image – lovely!

Business Bla-Bla

The Generation Game

And again…

Child prodigy…

What are YOU looking at?

Strike a pose…

 

And r-e-l-a-x

None of the big kids – apparently there’s to be no more shots of them first thing in the morning in pyjamas….does that mean that evening shots in pyjamas is ok I wonder?

The concept of Christmas for Edward is an interesting one – what are you all doing with that paper?  Nothing?  EXCELLENT!  I will go and play in it then!

Edward is currently asleep, Simon is creating a culinary masterpiece in the kitchen, the big kids are upstairs watching Pirates of the Carribean 3 (one of the day’s presents) in Ellie’s room so I’ve sneaked onto the computer to put some pictures up.

Jack and Ellie have been adding music to their iPod Shuffles and eating chocolate for breakfast.  Edward has had fun with his rocking horse and singing-talking book from Anna and Gary – we already know the ‘Tad the Farmer’ song off by heart – but as soon as he got into the kitchen, it was down to the serious business of helping Daddy do the cooking (…I really do cook by the way).

After the carnage that is Christmas dinner has been cleared away I’m going to light the fire and we’re going to do nothing other than ooh and aaah over our lovely presents and batten down the hatches in readiness for watching Dr Who.

Hope you’re all having a lovely day so far…

…ok, so there’s no chestnuts (yet) and no roasting (yet) but we can do the open fire, and THANK GOODNESS because it’s come to the rescue twice in as many months!

First, the power went off about a month or so ago in the high winds and although the water is heated by the boiler, which is fired by oil, the  pumps run on electricity so when it goes off we lose everything.

So the Bear missed out on a bath and it looked as if we were going to be without power for the duration.  My mum wasn’t affected so Simon beetled off over there armed with a flask or two so that there was hot water to make milk for Edward and perhaps a cup of coffee in the morning if it still wasn’t back on.

Edward couldn’t wait for his bedtime milk so I put some water in a pan and held it in the fire for a minute or so – I must confess to wondering how many other people had cooked/heated things in that fireplace over the 400+ years that this house has stood for; I felt very historic.

The second time our lovely open fire came to the rescue was on Monday and Tuesday this week.  I woke up and thought I could smell oil, but I was half asleep and decided that I was imagining it.  When we actually got up, the house was freezing and there was almost over-powering smell of oil pervading the house – the boiler was kaput!

We called Ruth (she’s our point of contact within the Drayton Estate) and she, in turn, got onto the plumber and the earliest he could come out was Tuesday afternoon.  So we lit the fire in the morning and had it blazing and crackling until at least 9pm that evening, followed by a repeat performance the next day.

What else has been happening – LOTS!

Edward has become partial to a bit of dog training, he’s a bit of a one-trick pony at the moment though.  If the dogs are being particularly noisy or boisterous behind the gate, Edward goes to the gate, throws his hand out and shouts, “SHUP!  Bad bob!”  Then he turns round looking pleased as punch and every inch as though he is control.

Crawling is pretty much a thing of the past now.  Since my birthday, when he finally decided that walking was definitely the way to go, he has become increasingly confident and even breaks into the odd run here and there.  Being up on two legs also opens the way for JUMPING and BOUNCING on the sofas amid much squealing and laughter.

In the absence of being able to articulate, “Will you get out of bed now and get up please!” Edward has developed his own unique way of communicating this wish.  He slides off our bed (where we’ve been sharing early morning cuddles, or more often where he’s been poking Simon in the eyes and up the nose whilst shouting, “DAAAD!!”) and goes and gets our slippers and throws them on the bed – impossible to argue with because it’s so CUTE!

Jack and Ellie are still going great-guns at school.  Ellie got her silver award the other week and is well on her way to a gold award.  Jack has his bronze award and has a few merits to go before he gets a silver one.  Ellie also took part in the ‘Christmas Cake’ lunchtime club and her cake is currently on display in school.

I won’t even bother you with the MADNESS that is Internet Explorer rendering issues – suffice to say that it really shouldn’t be so bloody difficult to line up four buttons on a web page!!

And so we rapidly face the dawn of Christmas Day and all the pre- and post-festivities that go with it.  I adore Christmas.  I still remember the excitement of Christmas Eve and going to my Grandma and Gramps’ in the evening, the journey home counting how many Christmas trees you could see in peoples’ windows.  The feeling of anticipation going downstairs and hoping that Father Christmas had left presents and the feeling of REALLY believing that he’d been in the house and stacked all the gifts under the tree.  It’s just magical.

So I kicked off Christmas gifts early for Simon by ‘giving’ him a little surprise present this morning – I arranged for a special crimbo message to be displayed on the HUGE Coca-Cola sign in Picadilly Circus.  If we were a child and dog free couple then I would have whisked him off down to London so that we could go and see it ‘in the real’ but it was just as special watching it over a live feed instead.

I am quite excited about the presents we are giving this year – some of them have been quite a long time in the ‘making’ and there were times when it seemed that we might not be able to pull them off, but they are here!  HURRAH!

The house is looking particularly festive this year I think and I bought a couple of special little ornaments for the tree.  I did have visions of Edward trashing the tree but he’s only been interested in jangling the two little bells, other than that he just likes to point at it and say, “Ee.”  Even the dogs have left it alone this year – amazing.

It’s the start of the Strictly Come Dancing semi-final in 5 minutes and I have cheesy dumplings to make, so I will leave you with some pictures -one of Cypher (that I took ages ago but only recently got round to working on), a couple of Edward (one with Jack whom is disgustingly photogenic) and a few festive ones, shot especially for Niki

No I’m not going to talk about the Spice Girl’s reunion and their new record or indeed Britney Spears new album, I mean that it is a new record amount of time that has elapsed since we updated this.

The good news is that although we haven’t posted here, Sarah has still been taking plenty of photos and will put them here soon!

Our reason/ excuse for being so slack is that we have been so busy setting up our company. An opportunity arose, the timing was right so we went for it. I finished and qualified my PC engineering course, the big kids are happily back at school, Edward is settling in to a nice routine, Sarah and I wanted to move on and build something together that will provide financial security for the family and Kirsty started her new business was kind enough to put her faith in us that we could deliver her business needs.

So here we are and Sirah Digital Ltd was born. I am typing this entry from within my shiny new office, affectionately known as the Shoffice as it is indeed a shed and a office! Albeit a brick built construction with a tiled pitched roof! Sarah lovingly painted it a nice shade of white last weekend and put together my desks (two at the bargain price of £49 for both! Ikea’s finest and not a hint of John Lewis here!) We need to sort out a few more plug sockets (just need to learn how to do that!) run a phone line and another network cable and we are all sorted! Anyone got a fax machine going begging! We got rid of our last one as the cost of new ink cartridge was more than the cost of replacing it!

Sarah has her office inside, I call it the ‘hoffice’ – home office! The whole set up seems to be working well. I have put in an order for some pictures for my office walls – Sarah is of course commissioned to shoot the images!

Both of us have been working late often not going to bed much before one in the morning and with Edward waking us up nice an early we could do with a restful holiday already! I can’t believe where the days go, it seems to race along much quicker than I was working for someone else! One of the frustrating things we have learnt over the last couple of weeks is how other business are so bad at doing what they say they’re going to do. I want to know why it is so hard to get someone to call you back when they say they will!

We are finding that the two ‘sides’ of the business are working well, Sarah is responsible for the design side of things and this very weekend is teaching herself web design! I am responsible for computer side of things but we are finding, as we expected that there is a cross over from a client point of view.

We placed our first order with a supplier yesterday and so far they seem to be really helpful so we can’t wait for a lorry load of bits to turn up on Tuesday. Then we can build the pcs and set up the other bits and get them ready for our first client!

We have few contacts lined up for new business and Sarah’s mum is turning out be a one-woman walking, talking advert! “So who looks after your computers then?” if one of her new phrases! Followed by “why don’t you have a look at this web site – www.sirahdigital.com” It is a temp site for the moment but Sarah is on the case!

I’ll leave the business things there for now…

Edward is walking everywhere at the moment! He even walked around Waitrose the other day! Slowly! We had to let a decrepit old couple past as they were going that little bit faster than us – I think it made their day!

Jack & Ellie are doing well, both stacking up the merits at school and doing really well. It is their birthday next weekend so they are excited about that. Jack went to a classmates birthday party last week, a disco in a nearby village hall – it didn’t finish until 10.30 so he felt very grown up. The only let down was that his girlfriend wasn’t able to come at the last minute.

We went to two firework displays last week. One in Sarah’s mum’s village of Old which was great, Sarah took some photos so I’m sure a couple will appear here later and then on Monday 5th our village had a display in the park down the road. Which although smaller was just as good! The kids watched the display and ‘hung out’ with their mates while the grown ups huddled around the fire and gossiped! (Not that there is much gossip in our little village!) Although it was very cold it was dry and the bonfires kept us warm! Edward loved the ‘crash bang boom’ of the fireworks and giggled all the way through!

A couple of weeks ago something technical happened with the people who ‘run’ the blog and a side effect of it was the loss of everything post-July.

The gaps in the blog will be filled in at some point (or maybe just added to the end) from the backup but I also felt that it was time for a new look to the Drayton Road Blog.  I hope you like it!

There isn’t a great deal of new news to tell that isn’t already common knowledge so until we make some (or make some up lol) here are lots of pictures for you to look at.

Sarah xx

Edward with his cousin, Madaline.

I think I prefer this in black and white…

This was taken on the 1st of September…

These on the 19th…

And these were taken today…

I would like to propose a toast to celebrate our ninth year of togetherness! So raise your glasses!
“To the bestest and most scrumptious wife in the whole wide world (or www!) I love you more and more everyday. Thank you for being my other half that makes me whole.

LYM SB xxxxx