Manic week

Last week was just been so busy. 

Hubby was down to Bristol 3 times in 1 week. This means he gets up at 4.30am and doesn't return until 8pm-12pm (depending on which flight he gets). 

Last Saturday we went down to my twin nieces' 3rd birthday party. I wasn't able to show you the presents I had made them but here they are 

The twins looked adorable in their butterfly dresses for the party

Nemo and Pebble enjoyed playing with the twins' birthday present more than they did. 

Here they are with their birthday cake- so sweet they love Thomas the tank engine!

The twins love Poppy and give her a lot of attention (not all wanted by Poppy but she is amazingly patient!)

Going to the party did mean almost 6 hours in the car but the kids did really well. 

On Sunday we didn't do much as we were pretty tired but did our usual Sunday evening trip to the lighthouse.

Nemo now attends pre school every weekday afternoon and I have got Pebble into the routine of having a nap whilst Nemo's there. This gives me some great time to catch up on errands in the house. This does however give limited time to going out. I definately enjoy having the time off every day but do miss having the flexibility to take the children out during the week for the day. 

Wednesday was rather crazy for me, Hubby was away, at 9:45am the children's bunk beds arrived flat packed. Now the delivery was supposed to be made when my husband was home and could help me but it got delayed so arrived when he was on the opposite of the country instead!

To give you some idea a full sized lorry made the delivery and put this pallet on our driveway. Both the kids were running around outside the front of our house excited by this lorry and I had to somehow get this massive package inside. 

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the delivery intact but here are the remenants of the packaging to give you an idea of what I was faced with!

I did that really weird British thing where the delivery man asked me if I needed some help, and I said "no I'll be fine! I know you've very busy". He asked if I was sure- I said yes and he got back into his lorry. I'd just started hacking into the package with some scissors when I saw he had got back out of his lorry saying that he couldn't leave me to deal with it! He kindly spent 10 minutes helping me which made life so much easier.

At 10am by friend arrived with her children- one is Pebble's age and I was taking care of her for the morning. I had 3 toddlers for the morning which was surprisingly less tricky then I had imagined then dropped Nemo off to preschool. In the afternoon my friend picked her child up and Pebble went to sleep so I decided that I would start making the bed, which, naturally, didn't have full instructions. 

Just a few of the bits and pieces.

And there's the rest, I took this photo when trying to work out which piece went where. 

Anyway between providing some basic care to my children I worked on this bunk bed until past 10pm. I won't go into the details but I finished the day with blistered hands and bruises on my shoulders (part of the construction involves squeezing yourself into the little chubby holes to screw things into multiple layers of wood.) 

Anyhow it was all worth of because voila here is the bed completed

It's amazing! Me and my husband thought about these bunk beds for months! I had a friend get her sons something similar years ago when Nemo was a small baby. We decided that we definately could not justify the cost, but there was something so fun about them that it was worth it! I think we are slightly living our own childhood dreams!

Pebble sleeps on the bottom. She has a mermaid quilt.

The beds have two little cubby holes under the stairs and slide.

Nemo is on top and of course has a pirate quilt. Nemo calls their beds a pirate ship!

They both love their new beds. 

I love how they're both clutching their precious things :) 

So that was Wednesday. Thursday and Friday evenings saw us out of the house doing some errands which meant that bake off had to be put off until Saturday. It's all over now though as my husband has 2 weeks off- yay! We celebrated on Saturday night by having our delayed bake off night. 

We made pancakes for batter week. 

This one wasn't very good but I thought it looked amazingly moon like!

Humm Nutella and banana!

Lemon juice and sugar

Well I'm off now until next time!!

New chapter

This week is a big week for my little Nemo. 

On Wednesday Nemo went for his first swimming lesson. He was the first one to go into the pool and had such a lovely time. Me and Pebble sat on the side watching him and he was very enthusiastically joining in the games and splashing around. We went to get him and he was moaning because he wanted to go back in! During the lesson the teacher poured water over the kids heads and at one point he let them pour water on him. Nemo spoke about getting the teacher wet on and off for the rest of the day!

Today Nemo started pre-school. He spent the entire morning asking to get into his uniform and asking to go to school (he's doing afternoons). Eventually the time came to get in his uniform and go 

Nemo and Daddy having a cuddle.

Unfortunately the weather turned and a bout of torrential rain came which meant this was Nemo's first walk to school 

Nemo was very happy being left at preschool- he didn't even look up when I said goodbye too distracted by the jigsaw puzzles. Pebble was very content having time being an only child at home and getting all the toys to herself. Here she is on the walk to pick up Nemo.

Pebble is so funny she is very girly in many ways and loves teddies but she also loves whatever Nemo loves and therefore is very much into the trucks and dinosaurs. Thats why in this photo (though it's hard to see) she's holding a bunny in one hand and a truck in the other.

Nemo had a great time at preschool and cried because he didn't want to go! 

I love this photo because Nemo is counting all the boxes on the floor and Pebble in doing what she loves to do best- copying her brother! 

Pebble is at a stage where she's obsessed with Nemo. Whatever Nemo's doing she wants to do too. She finds him hilarious and follows him around! 

I took this photo because Nemo had got fed up of his car and offered it to Pebble, Pebble took the car and she offered her own to Nemo making a very cooperative exchange. I wish they were always that diplomatic with each other!

Last night Nemo gave us such a fright. Went to go and check on the children as we heard Pebble stirring and went in to see Nemo is not in his bed which is cold. Me and hubby frantically searched the house in a panic then found this scene 

Can you see him?

Look at him wedged in there! It reminded me of a photo my parents have of me when I was around 2/3. I went missing in the house one day and after a search I was asleep in the coal shed! 

Pebble is also a busy girl. She is now stringing 3 words together and adorably said "I love you" the other night. She says a lot of words now (though they tend to sounds pretty muffled). She loves being around people, she likes to 'help' me with the housework

She also loves making me cups of tea!

How natural does she look at that!?!?

I realised how big she's getting now when I sat down to do some puzzles with her and she instantly completely 2 without much thought or effort. Definately not a baby anymore!

Nemo's favourite game to play at the moment is hide and seek- although he cheats and hardly ever gets all the way to 10 he'll usually go "1...........2........3.....4...5.6 here I come ready or not" 

He always tends to hide in the came corner of the craft room but he recently learnt a new place. This had the problem that he gets stuck here!

Ok so I can't leave you without talking about this week's bake off. Being bread week I did focaccia bread with onion and balsamic vinegar topping (it's a Mary Berry recipe). 

Nemo wasn't as impressed with bread week as he was with cake and biscuit week but we enjoyed it with our spaghetti bolognaise

This bake off I learnt a lesson from last week....

I let the kids have a basket each!

Wool and food!

Over the weekend there was a wool festival and a food festival. 

So first we headed early on Saturday to a wool festival in Alnmouth. Festival may have been a slightly misleading word for it, it was a hall with about a dozen or so stalls related. It was worth the trip though there were some amazing wool crafts there 

I think felting must be popular at the moment as there was quite a bit of it there.

Amazing button stand, Nemo loved them (you can see his little hand in the photo!)

Nemo helped me pick these ones. 

Lots of lovely wool.

This is a stand for a local wool supplier who uses their own sheep and alpacas to make it. They live in a village 10 minutes from us. The lady said you can go and visit the animals so I think I will take the children one day.

I got this wool to make a fancy knitted scarf. I've started it but keep on getting stuck on one bit. Think I may save it until I see my Mum for help!

Couldn't get a good photo of this amazingly intricate piece of lace work. I can't imagine how long it took her. 

I loved this stand, she knitted shawls in a way which made them look like fish nets. It was very sea themed and impressive. 

We drove back home, picked up Poppy dog then walked to Berwick for the second half of the day. There was a food and beer festival being held. It was substantially bigger than the wool festival but I did have to pay £4 to get in. (I objected to this because there have been many many advertisements in Berwick for weeks about it and I have never seen any mention of paying for entry!) 

Anyway it had lots of lovely stalls and quite a lot of alcohol! One stand had a goat paddock next to it. We went to stroke the goat and it took a big liking to Nemo. The goat kept gently nudging his face against Nemo's face and licking him! Nemo was in hysterics I wish I had taken a video!

They had lots of amazing food stands with foods from all over the world. We had actually had lunch which was a bit of a shame! 

This was my favourite looking standing- what a lovely vehicle! 

We decided to get a crepe from a stand, me and my hubby had one each and we split one for the children. 

As you can see the children were pretty happy with the choice of Nutella and bananas crepe! 

We took the crepes to the middle of the stands where some ladies were dancing. 

What we didn't anticipate is that the children with their faces covered in chocolate became one of the main attractions at the festival. Nemo gobbled the crepe down at lightening speed and was quickly cleaned up but People found the sight of Pebble (who spent ages tucking into hers) adorable and kept looking at her and laughing. (The man to the very right of the photo above spent longing watching and laughing at Pebble's crepe eating then he did watching the dancing!) 

I think we must have had at least 10 different people smile and comment to us about it! 

On the way home whilst walking over the bridge we stumbled across this

We'd realise at the food festival that Pebble's shoes were missing but had decided she must have taken them off in the car because surely one of us would have noticed two shoes coming off? 

Evidently not- lucky for us someone hand kindly put them to one side!

Nemo at this point, still not sufficiently stimulated enough said that he wanted to go to the lighthouse. Feeling that the extra walk after the chocolate crepes might be a good idea we headed there. 

Bit much for Pebble who fell asleep- with crepe still clutched in her hand! 

How adorable! 

She woke up in time for the pier though.

Well anyway I will leave you with Saturday's happenings as there's quite a lot happening this week to blog about!