A Christmas Yorky (by sarah)

We headed up to see our Northern friends, going on a little tour on route to see our friend Andy which was far too brief but lots of fun. Though I don't think Alaric is going to forgive him for introducing us to the 'What does the Fox Say' song!

Jean loves this song as it is the style of music she likes but not about love or money or things she's not interested in - it's about foxes and she loves animals - her comments where high pitched and consisted of 'CUUUUUUTE!!!!' Also the old guy reading reminds her of Ferfer when he's reading her and Mary stories and doing the silly sounds. I personally think the guys are cute and I love silly songs 😉

Alaric lives in horror as I have started singing it but merging it with leek spin and the gummy bear songs etc al 😀

Anyway it was great seeing Andy again and the kids loved him 🙂 One of the things it has highlighted for me is how long it has been since I saw a lot of my friends - something I wish to rectify this year.

Then we went on to Yorkshire to see our friends Ulrike and Mike and their ginea pigs 🙂

Ulrike had decorated the house fantastically for Christmas! Jean and Mary are still talking about it 🙂 There were lots of pocket dragons and a golden dragon in a santa hat with bells on it for Jean. Mary is so happy with her 'babies' - survallian family rabbits - baby and toddler 🙂

The girls loved opening their presents and we played board games 🙂

We went to see some horses (photos on Alaric's phone still!) and watched the Grinch and Brave and played Mario Carts which I am even worse at than 2 years ago, when I played it at my Bro's house - Jean says this is because I was using a steering wheel last time and this time it was controllers. I was pretty bad with the steering wheel!

Ulrike is a Harry Potter nut just like us and has the MOST amazing potion bottle collection 🙂

We also had an amazing breakfast with bread rolls in a lovely wicker basket:)

It was lovely and we really enjoyed ourselves and wish we could have stayed longer with both Andry and Ulrike and Mike. Here are more photos of the girlies and piggies 🙂

As you can see Jeany still really loves the bundles of fluff 🙂

Doh Mummy! (by sarah)

Mary will be three at the end of this month, she tells me off in Lojban if I knock something over etc... she counts and she said her first lojban sentence over the Christmas period.

She has tantrums the like we've never seen with Jean and she screams, she also smiles and is cheeky cute and caring when she is thinking. She loves to look after baby things, dolls, teddies, cats (not entirely sure what the cats make of being tucked in and given toy kittens as their teddies but they let her do it).

She loves climbing sooo much and the little bears I knit her. She is shy of the other children but that is getting better and is part of the reason for going. She's moved up a section at nursery and is ahead an age group for most of their assessments. She is no longer behind on the social ones and has worked out that only certain people understand lojban etc...

She is currently learning colours - she says the correct one in lojban but not in English, she will hold up colouring pencils to me to check the colour and in general does this for objects she doesn't knwo. She is actively learning, seeking and exploring. She doesn't have Jean's patients but has fine motor skills and writes 'snails' as she calls them - these are spirals on paper.

Mary immitates sound really well, from chickens to engines to music, she sings and you know which song it is and she loves the hammond organ. She has opinions on what is good music and at the moment it is sadly Barbie Girl which she asks for and will dance too for hours, on loop.

Potty training... hmmmm somedays she is great others she is just too busy and doesn't want too know. She is naughty, pushing her boundaries and grinning whilst doing so - a contrast to Jeany who tends to accidently do things wrong. Mary says please and thankyou! Sometimes she gets them round the wrong way she has never said ta! Though she knows what it means.

She loves Gromit and Aardman animation in general, though what she really loves is She-Ra! And she holds her sword aloft etc... She will sing the theme tunes to things including the music of Harry Potter etc... enough that other people recognise it.

She is cuddly and clingy and full of character. And it doesn't matter where I had the plough dough - how high or low - she will get it and take it into the rooms with carpet!

Badges and Books and Yay! (by sarah)

Yesterday I received through the post the little button badges of one of my illustrations - it is the Mummy Eating Cherry Pie. I am so pleased with them! I gave the girls their badges as soon as they came home from school.

There are a hundred of these and they are for the launch of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry 🙂 And to just add the icing to the cake yesterday - they themselves arrived! I thought I need to go and pick them up so was really chuffed to get them delivered to my door 🙂

I'll be sending out the pre-orders at the weekend and shall be finishing off the book marks today!

To say I am excited is an understatement, the girls already have a copy in their room and insisted I read it too them last night 🙂 Mary is actually responding to the poems now which is lovely 🙂

A Month of Chickens (by sarah)

I ment to do this post at the weekend but just didn't get the time! We have now had the chickens a month.

The anti peak spray seems to have worked wonders! And they will now let you stroke them though they do still spend a lot of their time running away from Mary who still excitedly cries 'Chicken!' everytime she sees or hears them.

My dad has decided they are velociraptors and they do have a tendency to come and stare in at you whilst you are cooking, they also tap their beaks on the door. I found this shopping list in his hand writing:

spread, olbas oil, cake, toothpaste, nappies size 5, cheese, bananas, VELOCIRAPTOR

Now cake is a bit iffy but velociraptor?

He says he just needed to check how it was spelt and the shopping list was a scrape piece of paper - I say LICKLY STORY!

But back tot he chickens - their feathers are looking really good!

We are still collecting the stats and the eggometer tells us that we are now under a £5 an egg but we are still out of pocket! However it has gotten down to that in a month and I ended up buying a run so when I do the cost benefit stuff I will do different combinations to show how economic this keeping chickens business actually is! They seem to go through about a sack of food and just over one of straw a month. When the jet washer needs replacing it will have to count as a chicken cost as we are jet washing the decking weekly at the mo but again that should reduce once we build the larger run - but of course you then have material costs for that!

The run should be sorted by the spring hopefully but I'm not too worried about it over the winter but chicken poo in summer will be a different matter!

The girls have been sitting in the autumn sun watching the birds and we do the main feeding and watering when Jean comes in from school - the corn is proving a very good tactic. Jean sprinkles that, whilst Mary sort of throws it about a bit (including on the poor things!), then Jean puts their food out and Mary does their grit. We all check for eggs and if needed I clean things up a bit and put fresh straw in the nest boxes. They mustn't have too much corn as it is a treat but I wanted something where we were properly interacting with them and weren't the scary things that just come and catch them!

They put themselves away in the hen house when it is getting dark but are also now more wary of being caught in the first place! They fluff themselves up if a cat gets two near them and spend their time trying to get into the shed (where we keep supplies) or into the bunny's run to eat his food, he on the other hand has been found eating their bedding in the nest box (though this was the day I'd run out of straw and say had put hay in instead and he loves hay!), I am forever having to remove him from the chicken run as he will eat their food!

We love the chickens! Also they have fluffy legs! (and yes the photo is upside down - I'll try and sort it later!)

Chasing Allotments and Organising Sheds (by sarah)

That horrible sinking feeling when you realise you now have a kitchen full of animal feed sacks and there is no room left in the cupboard under the stairs and you've been thinking this stuff should all be in the shed for a while for ages and it needs to be sorted so the table you bought for a fiver from the school for potting up and mushroom growing can be put in said shed (sounds far more exciting and illegal than what I actually mean!).

So we turfed things and sorted them and took some camping bits out to put in the cupboard under the stairs which were also sorting at the same time and some animal cage bits which are going in the eves of the house with the fish tank etc... and we put hooks in the sheds beams to hang the camping chairs, strimmer and jet washer etc... Found the grate of wine bottles I''ve been looking for to bottle my nettle wine and dandiion wine up in and a couple more demijohns to go on the shelves we built for the purpose in the kitchen etc...

Mary thought it was great - it was her house apparently!

Then we headed off to the Allotments Country Show in the hope of nabbing someone about the fact that I am now not even receiving email responses from the council about how long it is going to take to get one - I go blackberrying along there I can see the empty plots! I found a lady who said she would pass my details on after a long talk about making chutney and pickled things with me and Alaric so fingers crossed.

The weather was a bit pants by this point but Jean and Mary had a great time even though they didn't get to go on any rides - Jean went in her roller blades she picked up last year in a charity shop for like £2! She only fell over once and had her shoes in her rucksack which she changed into after seeing the zumba but by then it was too late to join in!

Mary was most pleased with her balloon dog - in pink as always - it is currently her favourite colour! I worry that people think I am one of those parents that makes their little girls wear pink!

And then I resisted adopting another bunny from the Windmill rescue people - the girls spent ages stroking a lovely little grey thing - Jean was concerned it wasn't walking and was informed that it is disabled with a twisted back paw - at the collected 'awww' from me and Jean Alaric took us by the arms and lead us away!

Apart from all that I cleared out and sorted the top shelf of the 'treats' cupboard (where all the cake making etc supplies are) and placed the chutneys and jams I've been making on there - so yeah guess what everyones getting for christmas! Something home made/grown anyway 😉