Skip to main content

Family antics: Spring 2018

Well.  This has been a spring, hasn't it?  In less than two months we've gone from this:

to this:

via a LOT of rain.

It feels like a long time since I wrote a general family update, so here are a few highlights for March and April.

Easter

Toby and Theo both needed Easter bonnets this year.  I was dreading the whole thing, but to my surprise, both boys were enthusiastic about making them, and it turned into an enjoyable experience.  They didn't win any prizes, but they were very proud of their hats.


We also baked and decorated biscuits, and took them to my parents' for the Easter service at their church.

 

Car


We parted with our aging and decrepit Rover and traded it in for a shiny new vehicle.  Graham did all the hard work finding the new car, but it was well worth it.  The gears work.  The windows roll down.  The doors open without falling off.  It even has a voice control system which tells the boys to "Please speak more quietly" when they yell at it.  Such luxury.

Walks

We discovered a couple of new walks.  On one, Theo learned to play the saxophone, we followed an old Roman road, and we sat in a WWII bomb crater.



On the other, Toby built a house among the rocks, Theo kept asking where the volcano was (answer: 600 million years ago), and we visited a monastery.




World Book Day

Toby wanted to go as Willy Wonka.  I briefly considered making a costume, then bought it on Amazon.  Best decision.  Made my life about a million times easier.  And he looked fantastic.


Theo was quite happy to go as Superman.  I was quite happy about that too.

Entertainment

A Writers Day organized by the Association of Christian Writers, of which I have now become a member.  The speakers were from Premier Christianity magazine, and were both excellent; even though I wondered if it would have been more useful to spend six hours actually writing, the day was informative and entertaining.


A 2nd birthday party and a 1,000,000th birthday party (or 64th for those who don't speak binary) where we saw friends and family that we haven't seen for an embarrassingly long time.  The millionth party included karaoke, so we had a go at Shut Up and Dance as a family.  I didn't think the boys would actually do it - well, I didn't think I would actually do it - but we did.  And it was fun.

At the 2nd birthday party


The Play that Goes Wrong - absolutely hilarious.  I can't remember when I last went to the theatre, and I can't remember when I last spent an entire evening laughing.  That night I did both.

Spring!

The magnolia is in bloom for about ten minutes every year (there are petals all over the lawn already) but looks lovely while it is.  So here's a family portrait in front of it.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Growing things

For those of you who are interested in my attempts at balcony gardening, I thought I'd update you a little. For those who aren't, don't skip this post. You may find something else of interest. Apart from the ever-present herbs, tomatoes and cayenne peppers are on the go this year. The peppers are really on the go - we went away for a week and came back to find them twice the size as when we left. Now they're producing fruit which is growing at a similarly rapid rate, though none has ripened to red yet. I realised I should have given you some kind of scale, so I just went out and measured. They're about 22 cm long, or 8 1/2 inches for you non-metric types. I may have to find out how to dry peppers if they all ripen at once. A couple of tomato plants are looking pretty healthy and beginning to flower. A few died; one, apparently, by being eaten whole by a bird, a trouble I've never had before. I had two seedlings left so used those as replacements, b...
2 comments
Read more

Portway: Down to the Derwent and back up again

I've never been to Holbrook before. It's a small village on a hill, just south of Belper, and I instantly like it. Look at the view! And interesting buildings too. I leave my car to enjoy the scenery and head down Stony Lane. Good thing I didn't bring a vehicle for this bit - there are several signs warning me that This Is Not A Road. I pass a few farms and the back of Holbrook School for Autism and come out on Port Way, just where I left it last time . A short distance up the road is St Michael's Church, which has a semi-circular window, a secret tunnel, and a sprawling graveyard. The church is closed today. I'm now back in the centre of Holbrook. I take a left on Mellors Lane and soon leave the houses behind. There's a good playground. I still find myself rating play equipment, even though my boys are far too old for it now! I cross a couple of fields, then the ground starts to slope downhill, with a fantastic view across the Derwent Valley. There's a squa...
Post a Comment
Read more