Teddy Bears Picnic, spontaneous fun, and then sorrow

Today was a long day.
First was the Teddy Bears Picnic with the Nursery forest school, marking the final day of the term. Since the primary school finished yesterday, there were 3 big sisters who came along with their younger siblings to have some fun! Everyone brought their favorite teddy(ies) and we had a little picnic in the forest. Here is the scene:
There is rope strung up all over the place because the "ladies in blue" got some new rope and rucksacks that they wanted to test out. Pretty soon all of the teddies were walking the tightropes between the trees. Here is Tryfan and his precious "Kitty" along with "Mr Monkey" who are trying out the fun.
The morning was soon over and we had friends Neve and Blithe over to our house to play (Neve being in Rhiannon's class and Blithe in Tryfan's). Pretty soon all the kids were nekkid, the hose was on, and we adults (sitting beyond the reach of the hose) graduated from cups of tea with biscuits to glasses of wine with cheese. It was a perfect afternoon.
Sadly it had to come to an end around 5pm because we were off to the cinema in East Grinstead to see Cars 2. But that was fun too because we had never actually gone as a family to the cinema, however it was showing at 5:30pm which is when tummies get rumbly and even popcorn doesn't do the job sometimes...
So we went to a pub for dinner after the film and that's when we saw on the news about the unspeakably horrible things that had just gone on in Oslo. We texted all our friends there to see if everyone we knew was safe (they were) while we waited for our food, and we tried not to talk about what was happening in front of the kids who were happy to have had such a great day.

Sports Day at the Nursery

Today was Tryfan's Sports Day at Nursery school. A lot of preparation went into it, as each year group had made their own team t-shirts. Tryfan was on the 3 year old Elephant team, shown here flirting with one of the few girls in the village...
Here they are getting ready for a big race around the perimeter of the village hall grassy area.
It was fun and relatively short-lived, but the problem was that it felt like the last Friday of the school year and it wasn't -- it was the last Tuesday of the school year. The bummer with this situation was that we still had Wednesday and Thursday to go until Friday. So it ended up feeling like a very very long week.

Cat Center Fun Day

Today was some kind of community fund raising thing at the Cat Center. We met up with our friends Danni & Bryn and their kids Neve and Blithe. We brought Bentley along too, which wasn't as big of a mistake as I thought it was going to be considering it was the Cat center. But anyway, it was absolutely pouring rain at times during this thing. Fortunately we all had our rain kit on. Also there was a bouncy castle with nobody on it, so the kids had a blast jumping in the rain and finding ways of bouncing and sliding off into the grass. Here is Rhiannon mid air:
Then we made some badges, bought some ice cream, and walked back through the forest to go home for a cozy cup of tea and a quiet (and rainy) afternoon.

Rainy Saturday morning

Today we went for a mid-morning amble in the forest with Bentley. It was raining medium-hard but wasn't too cold at all. My strategy has been to repeatedly say with conviction how much I love being outside in the rain, and eventually the kids will start saying this too (if they didn't feel this way originally).
We didn't really go anywhere in particular, just explored. We did spend some time looking for a stream that had flowing water in it, but didn't really find one that was any better than the first one we came upon. So then Rhiannon started digging for mini-beasts and Tryfan continued to climb, swing and jump around. Bentley, in the meantime, did plenty of sniffing and chasing whatever hints of wildlife he found. See if you can spot him in the photo above...
I found myself telling the kids about Stehekin and how the trees there (Ponderosa Pine) are similar to some of the trees here (Scots Pine) except that they smell like vanilla. And the berries here are similar to the berries there... I'm really excited for all of us to get uplake this summer. Yay!

Swimming breakthrough

Today we had a breakthrough on the Tryfan swimming front. He has been going to swimming lessons with Rhiannon for the past several weeks and just screaming the place down with his unhappiness. It is so awful to hear or see, but the swim teachers have been assuring us that we need to not give up, just to keep bringing him to the classes even though he is so upset and traumatised by it. But it has been getting worse and not better...
So this week, we tried a different strategy and it seemed to work. The afternoon started the same: Tryfan refusing to get into swim suit, saying that he hates swimming, that he really really really really doesn't want to go, etc. I said, he gets to choose between two options: (1) keep saying how much he hates it, crying, being sad and angry at having to go to swimming lessons, or (2) think about all the good things that will happen after swimming lessons are over, i.e. have ice cream when we get home, watch a bit of a Star Wars movie, cuddle with his kitty and blanket, etc. So in the car we talked about all the good things that we have to look forward to after this quick 30 min lesson, and he kept crying and saying how much he hates it. I also said that I really wanted to be able to watch him and Rhiannon swimming in the pool so that I could take a photo to show Grandma and Grandpa. And if he was screaming and crying, I probably wouldn't be allowed to stay in the pool area and would have to wait outside (all true, as this happened last time).

Then we arrived and he started acting worse for a bit, but was willing to have arm bands put on without too much resistance. He had a reluctant but brave start and got into the pool But he clung to the side and kept looking at me and starting to cry all over again. I thought I might have to leave... but then! he started smiling and all tears disappeared and he was really having a good time in the water. Yay!

When it was all over and we were on our way back to the car, I asked him what he was thinking about when he was able to stop crying and start having fun. He said that he was thinking about the swimming pool and the water, and that's what made him stop crying. So anyway it was a big success and he claims that he doesn't hate swimming anymore but we will see when the last lesson of the term happens next week....

Sports Day

Rhiannon's school had their annual "Sports Day" yesterday. This is apparently a big tradition in British primary schools! The whole school spent the morning in a nearby sporting field and did not-very-competitive activities in teams. Our friend Danni took these photos of our girl in action:
This photo is from the big race which was dreaded by lots of kids for some reason but which doesn't look too bad since these people at least look quite happy! I love how Rhiannon is smiling and looking straight at the camera.
It was actually quite a fun morning because all of us parents were sort of standing together and chatting. AND it was a gorgeous day so that helped as well.

Pastures Pink

This weekend was a big local event called "In Pastures Pink" which was another charity event! What is it with this week and charity events?!
Anyway, I was working at this event in the children's tent because there were actually 2 children's tents and 1 was for the Forest School part of Chelwood Gate Nursery! So I set up 4 different stations and children could come in here and make stuff.
The centerpiece was a ring of 8 pestle and mortar stations with 4 types of natural materials to make paint out of: charcoal, chalk, sandstone, and stinging nettles -- 2 stations of each type. So you could grind up some raw material into a powder, then sieve it into a pot and add some water. Then make a paintbrush by bashing the end of a small stick and then flaring out the fibers into a brush. And so the 2nd station was an artwork station with loads of different colored and shaped paper and space to create.
Here is a really crappy photo that I took once all the kids started to leave. The remains of the tidy pestle-and-mortar ring are in the middle.
The 3rd station was making beads and/or pencils out of Elder tree cutoffs. I had made some bits of charcoal when we were camping the other weekend (was that really just last weekend?!) so I offered those up for pencil lead use. Since Elder has a soft inside, it is easy to poke through and make hollow - perfect for threading a rope through or stuffing some bits of charcoal into!
The 4th station was making stinging nettle cordage/ rope. That involves basically bashing a stinging nettle plant that has had all of its leaves removed until the inside part of the stem is pulp, then peeling off the outer layer of the stem to become the rope. The final step involves twisting and twisting and twisting the outer layer until it twists back on itself, and voila - done!
The 5th station was making spinners out of hazel coins which had 2 holes predrilled in them (courtesy of Rhodri!). So that involved just coloring the slice of hazelwood and then threading some string through the 2 holes, tying them together, and then trying to make them do fast spinny things.
Phew! I'm exhausted just writing about all of that!
It was a long afternoon which took a lot of preparation and setup, then herds of kids needing supervision while I was by myself looking after these 5 stations. Rhodri came in a few times to help me out and our neighbor through the hedge also helped out a bit, which was very nice. Somehow 5 hours passed and I was really burned out and decided to join the festivities.
We stayed until about 11:00pm although the festival went until midnight. Tryfan took all his clothes off and fell asleep in the car (which was parked right by the children's tent rather than in the parking lot with all the other cars), and Rhiannon was a little dancing banshee all night. It was fun but even after recovering on Sunday, we are all still a bit grizzly from the event.

Extreme Mother!

Rhodri and I had an exciting night last night!
There was a Charity event for the two charities of Children in Crisis and Right to Play which celebrated the recent efforts of Sabine, the Extreme Mother, who trekked across Greenland to raise money for these charities. Here is a photo from her blog..
Now, Rhodri and I are not usually the types who attend these sort of gatherings, especially when they are in ultra-posh neighborhoods such as Knightsbridge and the venue is adjacent to Harrod's! But on this occasion, Rhodri was invited to represent the Norwegian clothing company Brynje, which had outfitted Sabine and her two guides on this expedition, since the normal representative from this company couldn't make it to the event. Ever since Rhodri stopped working for Schlumberger in Dec 2010, he has been starting a business importing Brynje clothing to the UK, so being asked to represent them at this charity event was a great opportunity.

The event was from 6:30-9:00pm and there were about 80 people there, many from the upper echelons of society. The best known personality there was Sarah "Fergie" Ferguson, the Duchess of York. She is the patron and founder of the charity Children in Crisis, so she gave a speech and shared the evening with the rest of us. The evening was mostly just mingling and drinking champagne, eating canapes, and then the speeches by CEOs of the 2 charities, by the Duchess, and then by Sabine herself. Sabine showed a video and then talked about her expedition. After the speeches was the auction, which included such items as Sarena Williams' tennis racquet, a case of special wine, a photo shoot with OK! magazine, and a weekend of cross-country skiing in Norway.

Well, Rhodri bid once on the skiing in Norway but then stopped and the item started to stall out at quite a low (ok, relatively speaking!) price. That's when the auctioneer suggested that maybe the Duchess wanted to come along too? And she agreed to it so the auction price immediately doubled. This was the last item of the auction, so after it all finished Rhodri and I went right over to the Duchess and waited for a chance to speak with her. Rhodri introduced himself as the Brynje rep and asked if she was interested in being outfitted by Brynje for her upcoming x-c ski weekend. She was enthusiastic about it and so she and Rhodri agreed to liaise through Sabine to set up sizes and so forth. How cool is that?!?!?! When we first went up to the Duchess, she held out her hand for me to shake and I'm afraid I was probably a bit too vigorous and squealy-exciteable for the occasion. I just couldn't contain my excitement at meeting her!

I also spoke with a guy called 'Dag', the Finance guy 'Paul' and the CEO 'Koy' from Children in Crisis, and a bit with a Cricket player called Tony (who used to live near where we live now!). And we both spoke with Sabine, of course, and quite a bit with her Norwegian guide Petter. What a great evening! Before catching the train back home, we stopped at a pub to have a pint and wind down a bit.

And where were the kids all this time, you ask? Well, our friends Emma and Rob stepped in yet again and picked up the kids from school, fed and bathed them and let them have a sleepover at their house with Sophie and Oscar! That was Tryfan's first sleepover, in fact, and he was perfectly fine. Hurrah!
Sorry there are no photos to go with this post - I really wanted to take a photo during the evening but just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Camping party in the back garden

We had a camping party on Saturday night with our friends Sophie, Oscar, Emma and Rob!
We set up the tipi/ lavvo and also our trusty Walrus tent and looked forward to 5:30pm when they were due to come over. I had to go to a course all day so Rhodri and the kids ended up doing all the setup work. But the weather was on our side and it was a gorgeous summer evening!
We cooked on the campfire and then all the kids got into their jammies and we put the music on (we had hooked up a bunch of extension cords so that we could bring the stereo out to the very back part of the garden). Here is Rob dancing with all 4 kids on him (Oscar not visible though).
Here is a bit of the scene as the evening got underway...

All the kids slept in the tipi along with Rob and Emma, and Rhodri, Bentley and I had the Walrus tent. Here is the scene as the kids started to "calm down". Yeah, right!
The evening turned into quite a late and fun one, with Rob's brother and partner (who live next door) coming over through the hedge to join us until the wee hours. We listened to some good ol' country/ Americana music and did plenty of dancing and imbibing of adult beverages while the children slept. Yeeeeehaw! Its been a long time since I've/ we've had a dose of this sort of fun and it felt really good.
Here is Rhodri the next morning, smashing beer cans with a brick.
The only unfortunate things during this great gathering were: (1) not many hours of darkness so kids woke up around 5am, and (2) I somehow hurt my foot (I think i fell into a small hole in the grass while we were dancing). So Sunday was a long, quiet, recovering sort of day with intermittent naps and so forth. But it was well worth it!

Friday with Tryfan

Tryfan wanted to dress like a pirate today to go to his afternoon nursery school, so he did!
This afternoon, Rhiannon was going to play at a friend's house and Rhodri was out for a bike ride, so Tryfan and I went to nearby Plaw Hatch Farm to pick our own raspberries. Yum! Its a tricky business picking raspberries because they do like to hide underneath the large leaves and there are some thorns in there as well. But it was a very pleasant afternoon to spend just chatting with Tryfan as we picked 3 punnets full of raspberries to take home (and we also gobbled a few as we picked, of course). Here he is saying "Raspberries!".

Heartbreaking scene

Don't worry - nobody got injured or anything, but I did witness a truly heartbreaking scene yesterday.

I took Rhiannon and Sophie to school on Tuesday morning and as we were hanging around the playground waiting for the school bell to ring, another girl from their class arrived with her Dad. She had a big stack of white envelopes with names on the front, and she was proudly passing them out to people as she saw them. Birthday party invitations!

She handed them out to all the Year 1 (1st Grade) girls and also to Sophie, but not to Rhiannon. Rhiannon sort of followed the girl around and eventually asked her if there was an invite for her, and the girl shook her head no. This particular girl is actually someone that Rhiannon plays with and talks about a lot, so it wasn't like she was a random girl. Rhiannon came over to me with such a sad and shy face - not crying, but so hurt - and asked me why she wasn't invited. I said that I didn't know why, but that birthday party invitations can be a tricky business, especially at school. Fortunately the school bell rang then and distraction took over as the day started for the children.

I had been watching the whole scene unfold while talking to another mother, who happens to be a good friend of the birthday girl's mother. She assured me that it was some kind of mistake and that she would look into it. Strange all the things that pass through a parent's mind at this sort of scene... Is my daughter too bossy and the other kids don't really like playing with her? Did something happen to turn this girl against my daughter? Why would she invite all the girls from the class except one? It doesn't seem right to force a child into inviting someone who she doesn't want to come, so I didn't feel too comfortable about the mutual friend contacting the girl's mother on my behalf. And it probably would not have been an issue if there was some discretion when it came to handing the invitations out, but then again, the father was probably totally oblivious to the whole scene at the time anyway!

The case resolved itself later that evening when the birthday girl's mother came over to our house to hand deliver an invitation and explain the oversight on her part: she didn't realise there are only 2 girls in Reception class, and had told her daughter not to invite any Reception girls except Sophie (who has been friends with the girl for nearly her whole life). All's well that ends well, because Rhiannon was just happy to get an invitation to the party and didn't really care why she didn't get one to start with. But anyway, it was a bit of a drama at the time.

Garden bounty

The vegetable garden that we planted in April is starting to produce! Actually we've been harvesting lettuce for the past month or more. But here is Rhiannon with the first zucchini (aka courgette). It was such a beautiful specimen but then the inside was yucky! So sad! So then when we harvested another one a couple days later we didn't have very high hopes but it was perfect.

We've also harvested about 15 sugar peas (eaten raw as we picked them) and about 20 runner beans (eaten in last night's dinner). Yippiee!

Sneaky trip to the opera

I forgot to say that this week Rhodri and I sneaked off to see an opera in the middle of London! The opera we saw was called "Simon Boccanegra" and it was supposedly Verdi's finest work. We did this on Wednesday evening (22 June) and it was a success, but it was a MAJOR effort to coordinate. The troops went from school to Sophie and Oscar's house at 3pm, then stayed for dinner and were dropped off back at home around 6pm, where our friend Winnie had already arrived to put them to bed and babysit for the evening!

Meanwhile, Rhodri took the bus from our house to Haywards Heath train station, then train into Gatwick and I left work a bit early (having arrived extra early that day just so I would feel somewhat justified in doing so) to meet him and take another train into the center of London. Then the Tube from Victoria Station to Embankment, and then we walked around for awhile before having an aperitif at a little side street bar. We had dinner inside the Coliseum where the opera was showing, and we did this so that we could save dessert and coffee for the intermission and be able to sit at our same reserved table in the upper balcony.

Anyway, the opera itself had a strange beginning and even stranger end (was that the end?!) but we had good seats and the rest of the performance was thoroughly enjoyable. Well, the whole evening was thoroughly enjoyable although we were both shocked to discover that the train we took to get back to Gatwick (where my car was parked) was sardine-packed and it was 11pm on a Wed night!! Crazy how many people are commuting home at that hour on an average night of the week. Anyway, we were glad to eventually be home around 12:45am and ever so grateful to our friends Winnie and Emma who were able to make it possible for us to do this.

Done with the pox

I don't think I mentioned that Rhiannon got the chicken pox too...
The past couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur of sort of uninspiring weather, itchy kids, and Rhodri and I trying to maintain some sense of normalcy. But we are pulling out of it now.

Actually it was not too bad of a chicken pox stint because Rhiannon's friend Sophie had them at the same time so they got to hang out together! They are the only 2 girls in their Reception (Kindergarten) class so they hang out together anyway, but it was novelty fun to take turns going to each other's houses during the day so that respective parents could take turns getting stuff done! As you can see in this video, they aren't feeling too poorly or lethargic...

Revamp

I revamped the website tonight while watching the highlights of the Glastonbury Festival on telly. I just was feeling a little bit stagnant and in need of a bit of a change.
I also added a new link which is in my #1 position: http://odewire.com

I have a subscription to Ode magazine and I love it because it is so focused on the positive and encouraging, optimistic things happening around the world. They just recently (2 weeks ago?) started a webpage which is a news feed based on a filter that they developed (with the help of Google) to only find the morsels of positive news -- the kind of stuff you normally find on Page 23 of a newspaper because the headlines and so forth are sensationalized, mostly negative stuff. Hurray for this new approach to news!! I highly recommend checking in with Ode's newspage every now and then...

Rastamouse

There is a new(ish) program on the BBC channel for kids (CBeebies).
When the troops watch telly in the morning, they always tell me when Rastamouse is on and I will come watch it with them because I find it so, so funny!
http://www.rastamouse.com/
Scratchy, Zuma and Rastamouse make up the EZ Crew and each episode involves some kind of mystery solving and 'making a bad thing good' -- that is, getting the criminal to repay society somehow instead of just being punished in a negative way. I love Rastamouse xxx

Father's Day

Today we went on a bit of an outing to a place we hadn't been before - the Cuckmere valley which is some kind of state park or reserve or something. It turned into a lovely day and the kids rode bikes while we walked out to the beach just next to the Seven Sisters cliffy chalk section (behind them in this photo).




There were quite a few other people out doing the same thing but it didn't feel crowded somehow.
On the way home, we stopped for a late lunch/early dinner at "The Cricketer's Arms" in Bewick. It was a gorgeous little place with really good food. No playground though. And it started to rain just as we were finishing up, so it was good timing really.

Foxgloves and trees

This weekend we didn't do too much - mostly just hung around and went on walks through the forest with Bentley. T & R were keen to see if they could climb any higher in this tree than the last time they tried it. Rhiannon got about the same height (which was pretty high!) and Tryfan was able to climb higher than he had before so that was fun to watch.

There were hundreds of foxglove flowers poking up from the undergrowth in the forest and they looked so pretty.

As easy as riding a bike

Here is Rhiannon for the first time without training wheels ('stabilisers' as they are called here)

Green woodpecker

There is a Green Woodpecker that lives somewhere near us and I've seen him before but Rhodri hadn't until today. Here he is looking up after having been digging for worms (probably) in our unmowed lawn on this rainy Sunday...

Neighbor's party

Our next door neighbors had a housewarming/ birthday party last night and we were invited to come along! We came straight through the hedge (after trimming back the stinging nettles and brambles) and found everyone dressed in 1920's style outfits. We didn't know about this, but we settled in anyway. Soon 2 of Rhiannon's classmates showed up (Neve and Sophie) and they rocked the garden with their dancing. You can kind of see the 3-person band with the 3 girls dancing in front here. Tryfan wore his Superman outfit with his bike helmet on too, but the helmet part was mostly just to get through the hedge without injury.
Tryfan discovered meringue today. He took a bite of this white thing with a strawberry on top and his eyes widened and he said "Oooh! This is crunchy and yummy!". Here he is with his pal Oscar.
The party went on till late, and it was so nice to just disappear through the hedge and put the kids to be when it was time. I ended up going back over later so I could get to know some of the neighbors better. Great!

Tuesday picnic

This week is half-term and since Tryfan has the chicken pox, we can't really go anywhere in public so we are staying close to home. Today I worked from home but took a lunch break with the kids and Bentley to have a picnic in the forest! Such a luxury to be able to do this spontaneously... Here we are setting off.
And going deeper into the forest. Rhiannon decided to take her baby (actually it is Tryfan's baby that Rhiannon gave to him for his birthday, but now that has evolved into 'Pink Baby' belonging to both of them) for a walk in the pram as well.
The paths we took to find our perfect picnic spot were pretty narrow and rooty, and not terribly flat either. Fair play to Rhiannon who didn't complain - just pushed Pink Baby up and over the rooty path!
Finally our picnic spot next to the blue rope swing over the creek. After doing some swinging first, we ate all our food and then played "Leaf Snap": I hand each kid a different leaf that I have collected and they have to find a matching one on the ground and then find the tree that it comes from! Tryfan turned his part of the game into "Stick Snap", where he finds loads of sticks the same length and thickness, but Rhiannon was eager to learn about the leaves and trees.
Then we walked home a slightly different way so we didn't have to backtrack too much, and we all had a rest in the afternoon before playing outside in the back garden again before dinner.

How Elderflower Champagne led to Spontaneous Hospitality

Today was an interesting day.
One sort of trendy thing to do (especially out in the country where we are) is to make Elderflower Cordial or Elderflower Champagne. I tolerate but do not love the smell or taste of Elderflower anything, but since they grow on Elder trees (and there are several around here) and are free to harvest, I figured I would try making something. I decided on the champagne version because...well, I like champagne and so even if this has a low alcoholic content and tastes of elderflowers, I figure it is worth a shot! So I harvested some elderflowers the other day and followed this recipe...
But then I got to the bit where you need to filter all the flowers and lemons (and dead ants) out and pour the substance into large plastic bottles - the kind that soda, Coca-Cola, sparkling water are sold in. The thing is that we don't buy that stuff so we don't have any such bottles. Fortunately for us, though, the village hall recycling depot is only a few hundred meters down the road so I reckoned I would go dig through the plastic bottle dumpster. Needless to say, Rhodri was absolutely horrified that I would be 'dumpster diving' in our own neighborhood in broad daylight! But I figured if I put a baseball cap on and sunglasses, nobody would recognize me. Bentley and I walked up there and I had a reusable bag folded discreetly in my pocket to carry home the goods. Everything was going well and I found my bottles, but then a car pulled into the parking lot and saw me! Whoever was driving quickly turned around and left, but as I was walking back home I saw the same car looking very suspicious and parked outside the village bus shelter.
The man driving the car was wearing a football (soccer) team uniform and had a brightly colored plastic bag which he quickly put in the trunk of his car when he saw me approaching. I walked past, said hello (with my black bags of rescued plastic bottles from the dumpster), and kept walking. As I turned around I could see him putting the brightly colored plastic bag suspiciously into the bus shelter! Then the car sped away with his hazards still flashing (clearly distracted or paranoid).
I got home, told Rhodri about the episode, and he immediately persuaded me to go back to see what was in the bag! Soooo, I did this and that is when I met Roy, a Welshman (from south Wales) who has been walking around the world collecting statistics on "Spontaneous Hospitality". Here is Roy and his "push/pull" contraption:
Well, you can imagine the surprise on Rhodri's face when I brought home my new friend who had accepted my spontaneous offer of a cup of tea! Bentley was definitely not so sure about this wild-looking stranger wearing just a reflective vest, shorts, red socks and shoes with the toes cut out (for ventilation, he later explained - not because they didn't fit).
So, Roy spent an hour or so (more, I think) chatting about his findings which he has compiled over the past 10 years and keeps neatly written on the back of a cut out cereal box (durability, i suppose) inside a laminated map case. At the moment Roy is making his way from Cardiff to Israel, by way of Belgium and Turkey and whatever else is in between. Definitely an interesting fellow. Here he is getting ready to walk to Crowborough (about 9 miles away), photo taken around 2pm.
After we all said goodbye and good luck to Roy, Rhiannon and I went on to the next stage of the Elderflower Champagne recipe, which is when you pour the liquid gold into the sterilized (or at least mostly sterilized) plastic bottles.
Will keep you posted on the next chapter of the Elderflower champagne saga, but I don't think we'll hear any more from Roy.... It didn't sound like he has made it into the internet age yet....

First sleepover

Since it is a holiday weekend and also the start of the half-term holiday, we agreed to finally let Rhiannon have a sleepover at her friend Sophie's house. Not just any sleepover, but her First Sleepover. She has been asking us for months now and so when the invitation was extended this time, Rhiannon happily accepted!
Of course the first thing she wanted to do (at 10am this morning) was pack her suitcase. It took us awhile to locate the Piglet suitcase, but eventually we did and she packed her stuff in there: 2 sets of jammies (in case she wet the bed), a pair of knickers (panties), change of clothes for the morning, 2 coloring books (1 for Sophie to borrow), lots of pens and colored pencils, her toothbrush, toothpaste, and 2 stuffed animals! Here she is just about to get into Sophie's mum's car and go to their house for supper, bath and a sleepover.

Pox in da house

Tryfan came down with the chicken pox last night.
Hopefully it will just be a matter of hours before Rhiannon does the same! Rhodri and I are glad - let's get it over with.. Plus it is half term holiday right now (as of yesterday) so the troops won't be missing any school or other fun things. It's just us at home in slightly cooler and less summery conditions - perfect for laying low and just being our little family at home.
** Update: as of Monday afternoon, Rhiannon still doesn't have any signs of chicken pox but poor Tryfs is really miserable :-( **

Foresty days

I am really starting to enjoy living here in the Ashdown Forest.. we all are! One recent development which is making life more enjoyable is the Forest School Program that I started with Rhiannon's school. Every Thursday (starting 5 May), I get to spend a few hours with half of Rhiannon's class in the morning and then after lunch I spend another couple of hours with the other half. We got permission to use some private woodland which is quite close to the school, and this is what our "Circle Spot" looks like (without kids!).
Actually that photo was taken about a month ago now before we started using it... I can tell because the bracken hasn't even poked up from the forest floor yet and now some of the bracken stands nearly 4 feet tall in some places! And also during our first weeks, we were treated to gorgeous thickets of bluebells (some of which unfortunately got trampled on). Now most of the bluebells have gone and we have budding fox gloves instead! Springtime is so exciting.

I am so grateful to be able to spend part of one day a week with Tryfan and his Nursery out in the Forest (though not this particular site) and part of another day in the week with Rhiannon and her classmates (and teachers). I feel so very lucky to be able to do this while still working full time for SLB - the only thing which makes it possible is me having an understanding and supportive manager who has young children of his own. Thanks, Boss!

Bentley's other family

Hurray! Bentley's foster family is here staying for the weekend.
Its been so great having them here. I am pretty sure that this is the highlight of Bentley's life so far - getting cuddles nearly every waking second of the day and going for long walks in the forest.
We've done a lot of our normal weekend routine - just generally hanging around the back garden... kids playing with Bentley and with each other, adults sitting around talking and just enjoying the company.
Yesterday we went on an expotition to the North Pole, a place in the Ashdown Forest which we had actually not been yet. First we visited the Heffalump Trap and the memorial to AA Milne, which R&T then climbed all over.
Then we set out to find the North Pole, which is just near the stream in the bottom of this valley. As the story goes, Roo fell in and then Pooh found the North Pole which he used to rescue Roo. So in this photo below, the Hundred Acre Woods is actually on the other side of the valley on top of the hill and the North Pole is in the trees below.
At the top of the hill on the far side, we stopped to rest a bit.
Then we made it to the ice cream van just as it started to rain.
And afterwards we went to Gallipot Inn & Pub near Hartfield for a delicious Sunday dinner, which our guests treated us to.
Great!

Bentley reunited

Here is the happy scene when Bentley got to reunite with his other family from Norway!

Finally out of the cot (crib)

This weekend we finally got Tryfan a new bed. Well, its not a NEW bed because we bought it second-hand for 50 pounds on eBay, but its new to us!
Its a full size single bed - none of this child sized or toddler stuff! He went straight to work decorating the railings with Star Wars stickers. Yay!

Bentley's self-help tapes

Our sweet dog Bentley has been suffering from separation anxiety over the past few months and we didn't realize it until both sets of neighbors (either side of us) complained about his constant barking while we are away. Poor Bents! We were advised to talk to the vet and see what solutions they could prescribe, but Rhodri came up with an even better idea.

I came into the house one afternoon when Rhodri and the kids were out and only Bentley was left at home, and there he was listening to a recording on endless repeat of Rhodri talking in a soothing voice..."Alright then, Bents, what's going on....[5 sec pause]... Bentley, lay down on your bed ... [5 sec pause]... Good boy, Bentley.... [10 sec pause]... It's okay Bents, that's a good boy, thaaaat's it. Good boy..."
And now he is cured! No more barking while we are away! He just listens to the same 47 seconds of Rhodri talking and lays on his bed. He will probably start having nightmares or some other affliction, but I guess we'll deal with that when the time comes.

Anyway, to celebrate his newfound calmness, we treated him to a grooming session at our neighbor's new dog grooming salon. Apparently it took her about 5 hours to deal with the dreadlocks and toe hair, but he came back to us a well-trimmed, shiny and clean-smelling dog. Hard to believe that he is 8 years old already - he still has such a puppy face and a lot of energy to chase squirrels in the forest! And he doesn't have any way of knowing that his beloved foster family is coming all the way from Norway next weekend just to visit him for the weekend! We are so looking forward to that next Saturday...

The creek

We live across the road from the forest, and as the spring has been springing I have grown particularly fond of a certain section which just has a lovely feel about it. So on Saturday, the kids and I walked over there just to see what we could see. We brought Bentley too, of course, so that he could scamper and wander freely.
We haven't had a lot of rain this spring so the creek (stream in these parts of the world) is slow and small - just perfect for getting familiar with. Once we got down here, I intentionally ignored Rhiannon and Tryfan so that they could just play.
Unfortunately after about an hour of totally wonderful free play for them, Rhiannon scraped her back on a rusty nail that was hanging below the bridge. They had been playing "3 Billy Goats Gruff" and she was the troll...
There was no panic, but we did start making our way back home. Luckily we found a rope swing which went pretty high over the creek bed. I helped Rhiannon up and she was sooo happy to be swinging way up high.
Tryfan had a go on it too but it was a little scary for him so he only went for a few minutes before we continued home.
The next day Tryfan went to a birthday party and got some crazy balloons. He always wears his Superman outfit to birthday parties. The mother of the birthday boys (3 yr old twins) was so kind that she even sent home a party bag for Tryfan's big sister!
I've decided that I really, really like doing nearly nothing on the weekends except just being at home.