Paula brought Kody and Luko to play

Lovely Paula came to see us yesterday and bought with her Luko (her friend Sorrel's son) and her niece Kody (Mitch's daughter) both of whom are the same age as Eden and Morris. Despite the frequent downpours the kids had a great old time playing boys against girls football, hide and seek and scoffed loads of sweets brought by Paula.

The Slightly Shocked Gene

We've noticed that Snugs very often sports a slightly shocked expression. We're trying to work out where she gets it from and I think my mum may have just found a clue while I was writing a quick email the other day.

Discovering Ledbury

Unfortunately our trip to Eastnor Castle had to be aborted when we got there as we discovered it doesn't open to the public on Saturdays (!). The poor kids had worked so hard to get 10 gold star stickers each on their reward charts and the carrot at the end of the stick was a big play at Eastnor's wonderful woodland playground.

After tearfully munching on their sandwiches I decided that we'd head for nearby Ledbury as my mum really wanted to see what it is like (lovely old market town) and I felt certain it would have a nice playground near the town centre.

The day turned out to be a winner as the town's playground was really perfect for two energetic five year olds, the ice-cream van came jingly-jangling round the corner, the baby finally nodded off for a good solid two hour nap in the pram, the sun stayed out and we found all manor of bargainous treasures in various charity shops.

Nana comes to stay

Mum has come to stay while Bealers enjoys a bi-annual windsurfing weekend in Cornwall. Seems like a good enough excuse to get the camera out and take loads of pictures of our favourite 12 week old family member.

A new mobile

Baby S was very pleased to see that I've finally found a little mobile which attaches on to her luxury hammock bed. Most cot mobiles are designed to be screwed on to the bars of a cot and are too high and too dangly. This car seat/pram mobile from eBay does the job as it clips on, has a mirror to gaze at and has lovely music to listen to.

Heaven is...

...a baby asleep long enough to put the freshly washed nappies out, warm Spring sunshine, birds singing, cherry blossom

Eden's Expedition in the garden

Finally Spring arrived this afternoon after a cold grey morning it suddenly turned warm, the blossom on our three fruit trees suddenly appeared and the birds burst into happy choral chirping.

When they got home Morris marched straight inside to watch tv (partly because his eyes were sensitive to the bright sunshine as he'd been to visit an opthamologist in the morning who had put drops to make his pupils stay dilated, partly because he's a creature of habit and LOVES his daily fix CBeebies when he gets home from school), Eden stayed outside, applied some sunscreen to her bare arms, donned a sun hat and declared she was going on an expedition and would need to draw a map to find the bunnies and the butterflies.

After she'd drawn a map, gathered some tools (a toy grabber & her bottle of water), selected some of her fluffy bunny toys to 'find' she was delighted to find a huge red admiral butterfly (or possibly a peacock butterfly) sunning itself and gently airing its wings on the path. It kept coming back to the same spot and she sat and watched it. She decided it must be a newly emerged butterfly as its wings needed drying and exercising. She was doubly delighted as during the school day they had a PE lesson where they had to pretend to be a bug and she'd been a butterfly...

Snugs gets a new swing

In September last year I bought this old battery operated baby swing for £5 and then lent it to Christina and David's baby Jake when they came to stay last November when he was just a bit older than Scarlett is now. He loved it until he was too big for it and so they returned it to us this week just in time for young Snugs to enjoy many a pleasant 20 minute gentle swinging (complete with soothing creaky noises from the v. old mechanism) while I dash about doing household duties.

Christina, David & Baby Jake came to stay

For the past few days we have been enjoying the company of lovely London friends Christina & David. Their little baby is now 9 months old and an absolute cutey. We had lots of fun hanging out with them. Last night Boris and Emma joined us for a fantastic 'build your own pizza dinner' party while all 5 babies (Eden, Morris, Grace, Jake & Scarlett) slept soundly upstairs.

The Beautiful Beale Sisters

Seed sowing with Daddy

As I'm having a year off from gardening (and concentrating instead on my three very lovely human seedlings/saplings) Bealers has taken up the vegetable plot, constructed a very complicated looking mini greenhouse and is currently spending each free moment either digging the ground in the vegetable garden, planting seeds, watering seedlings. He is very good at getting the children involved and all three of them spent most of this weekend in wellies getting onions, peas, garlic, potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, chillis, salad crops and herbs started off ready for us all to enjoy later on.

Here they are rummaging through the boxes of seeds wondering what to tackle next. I'm really hoping the oversized pumpkins do well.

Another supermarket, another choice chum!

On Saturday we were informed via a text message that lovely Tissy was not in her N. London residence but in Worcestershire (again) visiting her cousin and so she had a brief opportunity to see us - we both had some shopping to do so we comedily met up in Worcester Tesco's bakery aisle, then had a quick cup of tea together. Morris got plenty of admiring comments from other kids on his marvellous super hero look.

Mobile Hairdressing is the way to go

Finding the time/inclination to get the kids to the hairdresser happens infrequently, Darren uses his own set of clippers but never quite can see the back properly to look as sharp as he'd like. I can't even remember the last time I'd had my hair trimmed so we were all delighted when my friend Kirsten passed on the number of Mark the mobile hairdresser.

He came to our house this evening just after tea, I put the baby to bed while the kids were having their hair cut, Darren bathed the kids while I was having mine done and it was all much much cheaper & more fun than any salon experience.

Visiting Bryony and her new baby William

Bryony is my top chum who lives in the next village. We were pregnant at the same time and strangely had misscariages at the same time before our lovely healthy babes came. Her little lad is just 4 weeks old.

I haven't actually got a picture of William yet as Bryony hasn't sent it over but here's one she took of us having a nice smiley moment - can't remember if this was before or after Scarlett was sick all over Bryony's big posh sofa!

A short meet-up with The Horrocks Girls in Waitrose

Emma & Baby Grace were in town (Malvern) and I had to visit the dentist so we met up briefly in Waitrose before their bus came.

Lovely as always to see them both but especially nice to see both looking so well and happy. We particularly loved Grace's new improved thick shiny barnet and gorgeous cheeky shrieky giggle!

An impromptu visit to Clevedon, Somerset

Ages ago we agreed which date would be best for a visit from our friends who live in Clevedon (my old friend Mitch, her 5 year old daughter Kody & lovely Brenda who is dear Tina's mum). It was meant to be on Wed 9th but poor Kody had caught a nasty virus and Mitch was reluctant to spread the germs around especially as we have a small baby and Brenda's husband Mort is going in to have a heart by-pass operation next week.

Poor Brenda so looking forward to seeing the baby and has knitted little Scarlett about 10 beautiful cardigans, pram sets, all with matching booties, mittens and bonnets (bless) and was quite low to be told we couldn't find another mutually convenient date until the summer so I hopped in the car with the baby and whizzed down the M5 to Clevedon to spend a couple of hours with Brenda and Mort.

We were spoilt hugely for the two hours we were there, given huge baskets of homemade chutneys, marmalades, pies, crumbles etc. Brenda had knitted another huge pile of pretty cardies and jumpers for the baby and also a big sister one for Eden.

A quick after-school visit from Aunty Pam, Mel & Jess

When Mel and I were small we used to go on holiday most years with her family. She now lives in Poole with her daughter Jessica but her mum (Aunty Pam to me) lives a mere 20 mins drive north from our house in a village near Worcester. Mel is staying with her parents while her school is on Easter holidays as she is expecting another baby in October and in need of a bit of R&R.

They came for a quick visit this afternoon but enough time to have a party-style tea of sandwiches, cake and fruit, a few cuddles with Scarlett and for Eden to very generously give Jess a huge bag of unwanted play food, cups, plates and even the little toy oven she got for her third birthday.

Really nice to see all of them.

Been to childminder's - no harm done

Little Scarlett went on an adventure today as it was her first morning with her new childminder Karen. As planned Karen came to collect her at 9.30am, I handed over the baby asleep in her car seat, a bag of spare clothes, nappies and a bottle of milk and cracked on with my long to-do list. She was brought home again at 12.30 having had a nice morning being spoilt by Karen (but having refused to drink any of the milk I supplied for her)

I took these photos soon after she returned while I was working at my desk and she was lying on her playmat behind me. She looks like a very contented baby.

'Glasses Grandad' pops in on his way back home to France

My dad had an inpromptu few days in the UK seeing old friends and was able to whiz up the M5 from Bristol for a couple of hours this morning for tea, cake and a quick (freezing cold) walk to the marina to feed the ducks (no ducks around so we came home and put the heating on). Unfortunately he had to leave to catch the ferry before lunch was ready so we enjoyed home-baked ham n beans after he'd driven off.

Snow!

Just when the children had given up all hope of there being any snow this winter and I had just gone through our large collection of hats, gloves & scarves to see which ones were worth keeping for next year in the loft it SNOWED in the night but was picture perfect by morning time as it was clear blue skies. I've never seen Eden get dressed so quickly!

Talia & Bobby drove up from Glastonbury

We all had a lovely laughter filled afternoon today when Talia & Bobby came to visit with their two young sons Spencer (5) and Boris (3). Amazingly both Boris & Morris had brand-new life-sized light 'savers' so were able to play dark side games to their hearts content.

The horizontal hail stopped long enough for us to bundle the kids into their coats, over the spikey field, round the marina and into the Kings Head for an apple juice, we then showed them Siftware HQ and *then* went for pizza's at Puccini's - Upton's lovely Italian restaurant. Unfortunately the pizza oven wasn't working so we had to settle for generous portions of pasta and risotto instead.

Highlights included having drives in their new Bentley, marvelling at Talia's super-slim size 10 figure, laughing our socks off at silly things that only old old friends would also find funny.

Poor Eden managed to get stung on the foot by a baby bumble bee which was in the playroom just as we all got home from our adventure.

Eden's Garden

Eden is very good at playing by herself and finds it easy to imagine all sorts of scenarios with bit of sticks, stones etc. Here she is taking her baby (Bunny) in her pram (plastic shopping trolley) to the park (her 'garden') - her bit of the garden is looking very lovely at the moment as last year she planted primroses, primulas, a hyacinth and it has self-seeded forget-me-nots and acquuilegas too.

Cake making before Georgia's playdate

Eden's best friend from school, Georgia, was coming to play so we took a leaf out of our very inspriational friend (Libby)'s book and made sure we had an interesting activity for all three children to enjoy together instead of rampging through the house. Cake decorating is always a treat for five year olds so we made a quick batch of sponge cakes in the morning ready for drowing in pink, blue and yellow icing and huge mounds of sprinkles in the afternoon.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo during Georgia's visit or of the lovely colourful cakes.

The original Snugs (circa 1972)

As Scarlett was born the first thing I said 'It's a girl' and the second thing I said was 'She looks just like me'. I asked my mum to dig out these old photos to see if my memory of them was correct. To my eyes we are very similar looking babies.

Waking up

Sorry to you both for the early morning flash (oops) but I just had to get a snap of what currently seems 'everyday' but one day we will find hard to believe that Snugs slept in the space between our two pillows each night.

The Beale Sisters

One little blondie with her new tiny dark sis having a nice cuddle...