Hair cuts for a special Birthday

Carols Nan was 90 on last Sunday. So to make sure the boys looked smart I took them for their first hair cuts. Amazingly they were beautifully behaved. They sat pretty still and seemed to enjoy the whole experience. The hair dresser was very good with them and it went a millions times better than I thought it would.

Here they are just before we set off to Nans party



The party was at a nearby manor house and Carols Mum and Dad had done an amazing job of getting it all organized and the whole day went really well.



Loads of Nans relations turned up, which was great, some had come quite a long way and I know she really appreciated it. Nan had a lovely day.

Now it must be said that the Boys did not sleep well at all the night before, so we were worried that they might be ratty. But again they did us proud and were so well behaved.

I'll leave you with one last party photo:



Until next time, bye :-)

Moving House

My cunning plan re blogging our house move was scuppered by the Removal Men. I wanted to get to the new home, take photos of the empty rooms, the garden and then take more photos from the same angles a few weeks later. But my before and after plan failed because whilst we went to the estate agents to get the keys, the removal company turned up at our new home and the previous owners let them in as they were leaving. So when we turned up they had already started piling boxes and furniture into the various rooms.

Do'h!

Anyway the move went well, the boys love having the whole of the ground floor to explore and play in. The conservatory at the back of the house is their new play room and they are well sorted now :-)

As the past few weeks have sped by, so has their learning increased. Harry can count up to 20 (he sometimes forgets 11 and 12) but pretty amazing for a two and a half year old. What is even more amazing is that he now knows his alphabet !!! Again he gets a little confused around J to O but still I think he is brilliant.

Ben is talking so well now, he has learned so many words and they are both such a joy to be around. They are really playing and interacting so much more now. They are very into giving hugs to us and each other.



We have a large back garden now and the boys nieces have given them their old sand pit. They love playing in the back garden and hopefully the weather will improve soon so they can do it more often. There is a slight snag with this though. At present I can leave them for a few seconds to go to the loo or the kitchen etc. I can even read a book when I am sat in the lounge with them. But outside I can't take my eyes off them. I was reading a magazine the other day, just finished the first page and when I had looked up Harry had got a large lump of earth and had been eating it, he had mud all over his chin. I just have to sit there and watch them constantly. Harry also likes eating the sand - strange boy. Ben on the other hand plays beautifully he loves the sand pit and the slide that Nanny and Grandpa bought them. He is very well behaved, not daft like Harry.





Next time I shall tell you all about the boys first trip to the hair dressers !

Malfunctions,Monsoons & Moving

You may well be wondering where we've been for the past two months & why I have not updated our blog. Well.....

Here is a bumper 'catch up' edition with all our news.

At the end of May my PC died as I mentioned last time. I got it working again just enough to enable me to write the last entry. Shortly after that it died again and I had to wait until I got Windows Vista so I could rebuild my PC. I now have an all singing all dancing version of Vista and I have got my new ISP sorted out (obviously). So I am back and will hopefully be updating this blog more often. Enough tech' talk, here is what the family has been up to.

We were supposed to move house at the end of May, it didn't happen. Due to numerous issues with the people at the top of the chain and problems caused by solicitors, we had to put back the completion date until after we went/came back from holiday.

So off on holiday we went to a lovely rented cottage on a farm at Bosinver just outside St Austell. Now when Carol told me we were going to Bosinver, I immediately pictured in my head some War torn Southern European country (Bosnia/Kosovo?). As it turned out it was a lovely Cornish holiday farm. It has several cottages on the farm estate and we stayed in Higher Hill (if you follow this link there is a button on the right hand side of the page with a gallery of photos of the cottage. It was an upside down cottage, the top floor was one large room comprising of the lounge, dining area and kitchen area. A huge space that the boys could run around in. They loved it. Downstairs were the bedrooms and bathroom etc. The accommodation was 1st class, the farm was lovely and the facilities were excellent. The people running the farm were lovely as well. We couldn't fault it, (apart from the trees, more later on that). They also had a play barn with a climbing gym for small children. Harry & Ben adored this and we spent lots of time in there watching them burn off all their energy! So the location was brilliant, the area of Cornwall was great only 16 miles to the north coast and lovely beaches there (the same ones we went to last year) or just a couple of miles to beaches nearby. Lots of attractions nearby to visit, some good indoor stuff also. Which was just as well as Cornwall had just started its monsoon season! The weather was just awful. But we did get some lovely afternoons when the torrential rain stopped and we got some beach time in with the boys.

Carols' Mum & Dad joined us for the first week and when they went home after the first week, my Mum joined us of the second.

Carols' Mum with the boys



Carol with Harry and in the background Grandpa with Ben



All that sea air was too much for Ben, he was totally zonked on the way home



The Play Barn at Bosinver Farm



As no one was looking Carol had a little play as well !



Truth be told, so did I. It was a great giggle and before you ask, no my big arse didn't get stuck in the slide !

Ben exploring the upper tunnel of the gym area



Another afternoon on the beach !



Rock pooling with Grandpa



The storms were pretty bad, so on one of the bad weather days we went to Flambards. It is a large theme park with some great stuff for indoors type of weather. The Victorian street was just like stepping back in time, so authentic. There is also a Blitz exhibition, which is very realistic. There is part of a Concord fuselage in another area, which you can go in. Boy that thing is small inside ! I'd prefer to fly on a 747 and take longer to get there than cramped up in a Concord, it might have been fast but it is so claustrophobic !

We ran low on milk on one morning, so I decided to go to the Post Office store which was very close by. When I got in the car I thought, nah, we need more stuff for tea as well, so I might as well go further down the road to the large ASDA superstore, it might take me 30 minutes instead of 5 minutes, but it saved going out again later. This longer trip decision was one of my better decisions of mine during the holiday, when I got back to my parking spot outside the Villa, there was a surprise waiting for me !!!



There was a large bow from the tree overhanging the parking spot, if I had been just a few minutes to the local Post Office and back, then my car roof would have been caved in for sure !!!

Carol has always wanted to go to the Eden project so when we got another clear afternoon we headed a short distance down the road to the project which was very close to where we were staying. It is an amazing place the Bio Domes totally capture the environmental feel of the Tropical and Mediterranean climates and areas they have reproduced. The sights and smells and temperatures ! - It's like being there. Very impressive and if the Earths climate continues to change, we may well all end up living in Bio Domes !


This image of the Eden Project was three separate photos I took of the place and I used Photoshop to create the panorama image below.



Picture of the boys in the lounge area of our cottage, enjoying a well earned biscuit after playing hard and so nicely together all morning.



Another day on the beach, we had been to Newquay to the aquarium and the weather cleared long enough for us to have a short time on the beach. It was a bit blustery hence the jumpers. My Mum loved spending so much time with the boys and I know they enjoyed it as well.



So that is what we did on Holiday. I was going to write about us moving house, but I lost my internet connection just over an hour ago and my PC froze. It has taken me this long to get back online and I am very happy to say that I found that the blog site had autosaved what I had written so far. I don't want to push my luck any further tonight so I will write about the house move tomorrow. Goodnight !