The decorating, painting, fishing, pancake-cooking, hill-walking, playing, fire-lighting and 'looking excited for the camera' family

Bit of a catch-up to do on the blogging. Why is it that the longer you leave it the harder it is to get back into posting?

Anyway, we've been up to a few things recently and I've just uploaded some of the photos off my camera. These are in no particular order, but give an idea of what we've been up to over the past fortnight. It looks reassuringly like we've been very busy when I post a whole load of stuff like this.

As mentioned in my last posting I've been decorating the kitchen. I had a little help from dd, who has now got the decorating 'bug' and wants to paint all the walls everywhere...

Anyway, the kitchen is looking good, or at least better than it was. All clean(ish) and new(ish). Seeing as I only usually bother decorating when I'm pregnant (no I'm not) it's nice to actually have a saner un-pregnant perception of colour. Previously any rooms I've painted in this house took on a certain orange or bright yellow 'theme' (see above for an example!). It seemed a good idea at the time.

This bad taste when pregnant thing reminds me of a friend of mine who whenever she was pregnant would buy the most hideous clothes or shoes, something that she would never normally choose. On at least one occasion I had to say 'take the shoes back, they're gross and in a month's time when you're less hormonal you'll regret buying them'. (If this sounds harsh, don't worry, she's still a very good friend of mine, and she wouldn't hold back from giving me the same advice lol). That's not to say that either of us are fashion victims - far from it - just that pregnancy does weird things to your taste, and not just the tasetebud sort of taste. It's a kind of brain rot that sets in. I'm not sure if I ever recovered fully; I've been buying 'comfortable' shoes this past year...

Last week we took up an offer for a local 'palace' whereby you could swap a day ticket for a year's pass. The day ticket is extortionate (something like £40 for a family) , but it is worth it for a whole year. Although the day was cold we made use of the adventure playground, the train, and butterfly house, in the palace grounds. Hopefully it will be warmer next time - I plan to get lots of book reading (and maybe some writing) done there over summer while the kids entertain themselves.

On the train

Ds1, just hanging around in the adventure playground

A butterfly (I'm guessing you worked that one out for yourself).

Ds1 freaked as they kept dive bombing him

And , true to our non-resolution of going somewhere different each week, we went to The White Horse, a chalk horse on a hillside, with friends. This is the horse's head:

It was a bit of a hike up the hill, but not as bad as I'd remembered from BC (before childbirth) which was probably the last time I visited (yikes! Over 10 years ago). I even lugged the storm kettle up the hill in our cowprint granny trolley, just to prove a point. And yes the kettlelit beautifully in the hill-top wind, though I think I smoked out all the other hill-walkers!

Dd was rather frustrated that she couldn't see a horse - I told her it was more of a stick-figure dog than a horse, which probably confused her even more lol.

Proof that I pulled the cow trolley to the top of the hill.

(That's the castle mound in the background)

And here's a view of the walk to the nearby castle mound:

So what else have we been up to? Well we've been to the woods and done some fire-lighting. Here are the kids toasting marsh mallows:

In the woods

And ds2 cooked pancakes for us on Shrove Tuesday. In the background you can see the new colour of the kitchen walls (we haven't done the gloss at this point, so the yucky yellowy-pink is still on the door frames)

A couple of weeks ago we went to a local garden centre that has an animal farm and a small stream. The kids played for ages (and got rather wet feet) while I sat and nattered with a friend who was visiting from Nottingham. And yes, the storm kettle had another outing. Here is ds1 fishing for shrimps with a plastic bag on a stick. These home ed kids like to improvise!

And we visited a science history museum. Here is ds2 after I told him to look 'excited' for the camera.

Ok, well I'd better go now. Will post more soon.