Today we all (apart from Edward) discovered the form of our Daemons! If you haven’t read the Dark Materials trilogy then a) you’ve been missing out and b) you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about!

My daemon is a tiger called Pyrrheus, Simon and Ellie have Wildcats and Jack has a wolf (he’s very happy about that!) If you want to know what your daemon is then you can go and find out at www.goldencompassmovie.com

Our fireplace has been finished – after living with a temporary fix since we moved in (good for deciding exactly how you want it to be in the end) the hearth has now been permanently raised, it look great and somehow it seems to make the room look bigger.

The plants – front and back – are beginning to really race away in the warm weather we’ve been enjoying, although warm weather means no rain and lots of watering.

Life is peaceful and quiet and there isn’t much else to say…so here’s THE latest picture of Edward (who else!) and I must confess that it’s one of my favourites to date.

Sarah x

Are Edward’s current favourite things. He has also added two non-mum and dad words to his vocabulary – DUCK and DOG! Of course to anyone else they don’t sound anything like dog and duck, but to us it’s crystal clear.

There’s nothing really to add to what Simon said the other day other than a few photos.

Sarah xx

The weather this week t’up north has been on the whole glorious! We have had temperatures reaching 25 degrees.

On Tuesday I had a great birthday with some lovely presents and lots of nice cards! I was lucky enough to get some green and blacks chocolate, some very nice biscuits/cookies and a fab rose from my beautiful wife called ‘Lover’s meeting’ (the rose that is!) which will have large orange, fragrant blooms. I also got a fan trained apple tree, so with luck we will have have our first home grown apples in the autumn!

I wanted to create an area in our ‘back yard’ which was dedicated to roses, so it is off to a flying start! Also I have always wanted to have a bash at growing an espalier (fan) fruit tree!

Last Monday we went to the Kelmarsh country show which was great – it showcased all sorts of country pursuits from logging to falconry, shooting to dog trials. I got a genuine Australian outback hat made from suede. It looks great and most importantly it will stop my bald patch from burning and keep the sun out of my eyes!

We have visited a few garden centres too this week – picking up a few bits and pieces. Sarah has taken the render of an old wall in the garden and revealed the beautiful brickwork underneath it. She has planted aubrieta in some of the cracks – so it will fab! We have also put on the wall a couple of ‘manger’ troughs which are filled with trailing sweet peas (a first for us this year!) We will let you know how they grow!

Jack and Elise took part in the village football tournament on Saturday. Jack’s team won! Other than that they have spent most of the time at the yard!

Right then I’m off to watch the Grand Prix from Bahrain!

Happy Birthday my lovely Mr Man.  Love you more and more!  Noo xx

Happy Birthday Daddy.  We hope you have a lovely day – Jackaboardy, Piglet and The Cub xxx

We took Edward to see our GP today for his 9 month check up. “Perfect – and a very bonnie baby” was Dr Lynn Warren’s summary.

He passed all the tests with flying colours. The tests included checking his eyes, head, hips, legs, feet, heart, skin, boy-bits, co-ordination and fine motor skills. We’re very proud of our perfect boy!

As you saw in the earlier photos he is trying to eat everything – today his favourite object was a plastic potato masher! And today he actually ate some home-made food! Sarah made a wonderful shepherds pie and Edward enjoyed it as much as the rest of us! So with that milestone achieved we now need to find more dinners he’d like. After all man (or baby) can’t live on shepherd’s pie alone – no matter how scrummy it is!

Jack and Elise started their half-term break today so they were pleased that the weather was gorgeous today. This afternoon we cemented in the base for the rotary line so we should be able to use it in a couple of days! That will save a small fortune in electricity.

And finally for now, we had 20 fuchsia plants arrive in the post. Half are for Sarah’s mum. They will need potting on tomorrow! They are all hardy with 3 bush varieties and one trailing so they will fab for years to come!

Edward says….

“With so many new exciting new foods and flavours to discover, it’s best to try EVERYTHING!”

Today started rather early as Edward decided he was ready to get up quite sometime before 7am. The frustrating thing is that when he does wake up early he’s usually back sleeping within an hour and a half! Just too late for us to go back to bed! So he had his milk and we watched the Hoobs and a few other tiddlely peep type programmes. He does like Thomas the Tank engine and Noddy! Good old classics! And a little while later he was off to sleep!

During the week we decided that Jack and Elise (J & E) were old enough to go to the park on their own! So this week they have been practising going out and remembering to come back on time – so far I don’t think they has forgotten once! Of course they love it – their first real taste of freedom. The park is a couple of hundred yards down the road and is split in to two parts. One part is small football pitch where they play football and the other is a traditional park with swings and slides etc!

They have made some friends and really enjoy going out – they also visit the horses and ponies in the field next to our cottage. Elise is horse mad – really really horse mad! Lynn took them both to a stables near her house a couple of weeks ago for pony club which they really enjoyed but the kids who went were all much younger than J & E. So we’re not sure if they are going to go again! Anyway it may not matter as they have been invited to help out around the livery yard over the back of us. They are thrilled. Not only do they get to groom and muck out horses all day but they will also to ride as well on occasions. The other kids there are nearly all the same ages as J & E. Jack plays football a lot with a boy called Ben and some other kids from the village but also enjoys working with the horses!

The only problem is that they come back stinking of horses! I had forgotten just how much you smell of horses when you’re working with them. Elise was really smelly when she came back for lunch, so much so that whilst she was standing in the garden telling Sarah and I about her morning adventures Cypher came over, cocked his leg and wee’d over her legs! Elise was shocked and we fell about laughing! With that lesson learnt we instructed Jack to change his trousers before he came in for lunch or he’d risk the same treatment!

So J & E are very happy – tomorrow they will be going swimming with Tony. More practice for the Pier to Pier race in July!

I popped out to get some dog food and a few bits from Tesco and came home with a rotary line dryer for the garden as well, it was 1/2 price in Homebase. And at about 50p a load to tumble dry it will pay for itself in saved electricity in no time at all! The only problem was getting the base stake in to the ground. Our back garden is laid out to gravel and seemingly the gravel is on solid rock! Eventually I got the thing into the ground only to find that it was really on the wonk when I put the airer on! The daft thing is that after spending so long getting the thing in to ground in the first place when I pulled up the airer to put it away the base stake came straight out of the ground! So tomorrow we will pop to Wickes and get some cement!

This evening saw the welcome return of Doctor Who, this was followed by home made quiche and bed!

Well I thought that it had been longer since we posted here! Anyway as usual I’ll blame time and the lack of it! But in reality the main culprit was BT Total Broadband. Our broadband connection had been on and off – mainly off or slow as dial up for the last 6-8 weeks. It seems to have sorted itself out now. We are still waiting for a courtesy call from BT to see how we are doing! I expect it will be us that contacts them first when we demand compensation for the rubbish service we have experienced.

Some of the highlights of the last week have been as follows:

The kids and Sarah going to the theatre to see Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ performed by the Shakespeare for Kidz company. Evidently it was great! I didn’t go hence the in-depth review!

Sarah has transformed an area of rough ground at the end of the house into a lovely garden. So we have visited a few garden centres and picked up a few select plants which will give it year round structure and colour and later on we are expecting some plants to arrive in the post from earlier offers we saw. Lily of the valley, jasmine, clematis, fuchias, heucheras and others that I can’t remember now!

We have also moved some the potted plants we brought with us in to the new garden which leaves most of the plants in the back yard of a Mediterranean style. So we are going to continue that theme with hot / dry planting in pale terracotta pots – we haven’t finalised the plans yet so this will be a long term project. We did get the OK this week to hang our baskets on the house so we are looking for to a fab display again. We have got some trailing sweet peas coming so fingers crossed they will look and smell great!

We had to order 1000 litres of oil this week as our December order was running out – hopefully this order will last until the end of November.

I have finally found a resting place for my laptop in the kitchen so I set up pc desk with my TFT monitor and 2.1 speakers and then discovered I couldn’t get a wireless signal – it was only two feet away from the previous place but no, it wouldn’t connect so I dug out some Ethernet cable and wired a connection from the router to my laptop. Which is great – it feels like I have a real home for my computer now! All I need to do now is clip the cable properly to the skirting board! More importantly it frees up the kitchen table for the kids studies!

Edward has been making lots more cute noises this week – mainly based on the mwah mwah, ma ma MA, da dwah daaaa, mwah theme but he has been much more vocal! He is desperate to get on the floor and crawl around, he almost got on his knees this morning, when he does I’m sure he’ll be off, racing around. Then nothing will be safe! He has already developed a fagin like approach to removing things from drawers when you’re not looking (he would make a great pick pocket) the funny thing is that he opens the drawer first then has a look and chooses something he fancies and picks it up. It is not a random rummage it is done with real purpose! He will be nine months next week. I just can’t believe where the time has gone. I know the pregnancy seemed to race by but now it is going so fast.

Our washing machine stopped working last Friday, it was over five years old and had been fixed a number of times before so this time we got another one. It came on Thursday at 7am! And has been in constant use ever since, although now I think we are pretty much up to date with the washing! The great thing is that I still don’t really know how to use it as Sarah has done all the washing! The thing lights up like a Christmas tree but is as quiet as a mouse – shh, super quiet technology. It also washes much more per load and only has a cold water feed so it will save us a fortune in oil. The previous one had a hot water feed and every time it wanted some hot water the boiler would fire up and drink some more oil! And that was only for a 30 degree wash – but we do do loads of washing. Now with the warmer weather here we will get a rotary line for the garden so we won’t have to run the tumble dryer so much. The new line will probably pay for itself in just a few months!

Next time I post I will go through some figures about electricity consumption. We seem to use more electricity than any one else in the country, at least twice the average household according to our bills.

I think that has covered most things for now!

The blurb down the side of the blog was obscuring Edward’s face!

So this is just a random post with a photo to move the group shot down…

Edward has had fun playing with Aunty Kirsty and Jack and Elise have had fun following her around and generally being her shadow for the last 24 hours.

They are currently initiating her into the world of Shrek and Shrek II if there’s time – it’s been a very relaxed and slobby agenda….just the way everyone likes it!

It’s a nice time to come to Lowick as everything is beginning to burst back into life, leaf and bud; the days are getting longer and noticeably warmer – summer will soon be here! Which means that Edward’s first birthday will soon be here too, in a mere 17 weeks in fact! At the end of this entry are some photos of our plants coming back to life.
Jack and Ellie have had fun this week dissecting an ox heart and pigs’ eyes – I stopped short of hauling them into the butchers so they could watch him gouge the eyes straight out of the head….I thought it might put them off a bit. We’ve taken lots of photos of their efforts and they can now tell you all about the anatomy of the eye, can label the various chambers, valves and arteries coming in and out of the heart and show you the way the blood flows through the heart.

Next week will have more a physics slant to things as they have asked how batteries work – so that’s what we’re going to have a look at. I’m sure you can make your own battery using water so between now and Monday I shall be looking up lots of interesting things to look at and do with regard to batteries and perhaps alternative ‘power cells’, I still really fancy making a potato clock

Simon is having a HUGE battle with BT….STILL! Our super-fast broadband is now half the speed of dial up and trying to get any sense or swift action out of BT is proving to be more difficult than walking on water. Today is their last chance to fix the problem before he takes our complaint to the higher level complaints team….I wonder if they’ll actually prove to be any more useful…

It’s nearly time for lunch so that’s all for now.

Sarah x