Spring in York

There's not much you can say about that!!

Boggle Hole

A plan had been made to go to the beach, and we were prepared, whatever the weather. But we were very impressed when after driving across the Moors, the clouds parted and we were greated by this:

There was excavating and climbing on rocks.

There was collecting of shells and very important sea-tossed pebbles. I found lots of stones with mysterious holes drilled through them (made by piddocks, I now know). I took pictures through them.

And, of course, we made Andy Goldsworth-inspired art that would change over time.

Then we were joined by the others and we set up camp with a beach shelter which was crazily warm inside. Sand castles were dug and decorated, more excavations were excavated and we cremated some sausages and beans.

The tide came in quickly and we moved camp. Thea got cold and had to be warmed by the fire and hot ribena and we played with kites as the sun set behind the cliffs.

I will never get used to the sun setting in the wrong direction here. How are you supposed to deal with the sun setting inland and not over the sea?!!!!

And for no reason at all, here is Nathaniel and Thea demonstrating how snuggly their almost matching jumpers are.

Why we live here

It wasn't a very promising day. Thea and F were tired and so was I. But it's hard to be uncheered when a little cycle ride into the library looks like this:

Makes me very glad that I live in picturesque York!

Then while we were looking at books, Ian texted to tell us that the Flying Scotsman was steaming from London to York and was due to arrive at lunchtime. So we hot footed it down to the station and joined  one million other people (mainly retired gentlemen) to await its arrival. We managed to talk ourselves to the front of the crowd (the children smiled and chatted nicely to the aforementioned gentlemen) and then waitied patiently while the Flying Scotsman was held up by trespassers on the line desperate to get the best photo of it in full steam. Ian, connected to the twitter and perched at the train watching space a little further down the line kept us (and our new-found grandfathers) updated as to its progress.

Eventually, an hour and a half late, it glided almost silently into the station in a total anticlimax.

But Thea was suitably impressed and was keen to rush to the Railway Museum immediately to see it more closely. Alas, we would have beaten it by several hours, and it was really time for lunch, but I was pretty pleased with our unpromising morning!

Half term

Last year, the spring half term was full of activity, partly because Ian was away in exciting places and we needed to be busy. And I enjoyed looking at all the photos of what we had got up to. So this half term, I intended to take a photo a day. But I failed. Not because we didn't do anything, I just forgot. And that's probably a good thing because one can get very stuck behind a lens these days.

So what did we do?

We did some chilled out cycling to Lidl in the sun to impulse buy tasty treats.

We considered car design. Nathaniel looked at lots of pictures of cars that he liked and drew pictures of aspects of them that he thought were interesting. Then he designed his own car putting together all of those aspects.

We enjoyed swinging:

We took a trip to Abingdon where Grandpa Beard was ill, and we went to the Ashmolean. This was not wonderfully received by the kids. They loved the Pitt Rivers, but somehow, they couldn't find a way into the carefully captioned, educationally thought out displays at the Ashmolean. We had some interest in the money section, but Ancient Egypt left them entirely non-plussed. Everyone enjoys shove ha'panny though:

Then we continued the tradition of a little something to keep us going during the bus ride home. It made more sense in the heat of July, but was still very much enjoyed.

We spent a happy afternoon with friends in Hagg Wood customising an existing tree house. Ian and I chased Martha the dog while the children prepared their materials, hammered in random screws (yes, that's what they did) with herrings (well, something entirely unsuited to the task), and made endless pulley systems.

And at last we made the Christmas gingerbread house. It started badly by me insisting on using melted sugar glue, spilling it on my finger and having to hold it under the tap for 5 minutes, and then burning the sugar. But this was all rectified with a short lesson in what happens when you twizzle molten sugar into tubs of cold water, and then chemical reactions 101 by adding bicarb. The house itself stood for about 5 minutes (it was already without chimney when these photos were taken), and then collapsed. Lesson learnt - don't use ready-made icing (ever), to glue together gingerbread.

And there was lots of un-photogenic playing. Lots of building random bird houses (?), you know, for bird and birdy. Lots of lego. And a surprising amount of both kids lying on the floor, picking fluff from between their toes, listening to music (they are on their annual Four Seasons kick) and chatting. Yep, they are 4 and 7 and they were just chatting. Wierd. But nice.

And I'm pretty sure Nathaniel spent less than 10% of the time out of his pyjamas. Very good.

Just stuff

January has continued, and now it's February and we are mainly bored of it being dark the whole time. The Dutsons came to stay and we had a lovely time seeing them, but failed to take any photos at all! F and Thea have been busy - making slime:

and making their own wipe-clean silly faces

Thea is very in to making paper snowflakes. If you leave her alone for five minutes, she will have taken herself into a corner with paper and scissors and surrounded herself with a light floor covering of tiny pieces of cut paper. And of course, made a beautiful snowflake. But it's the many tiny, tiny pieces of paper that seem to make the most impact on our household!

Nathaniel has discovered coding. Last night he made a race for two arrows entirely unaided by me. You can play it here:
Here are the instructions:
Pres flag, pres space and riet-aroa and keep presing riet-R.
And for those of you who don't speak government-mandated phonics, the translation is:
Press the flag, press the space bar and the right arrow. Keep pressing the right arrow.

Think that just about covers us for now!

Snow

It's at this time of year that I start thinking wistfully about Banff, and Grenoble, and Bellingham and pretty much any other pleasant place from which you can see the mountains. So it was important to leave York and find the relevant Yorkshire view. Which turned out to be this:
And there was much more snow than we expected. Our plan had been to have a bimble up to the Wainstones, do a bit of climbing, a bit of finding pre-historic carvings, a bit of searchig of geocaches, and to keep the kids interested and warm. But as we climbed up Carlton Edge, to everyone's delight, it looked like this:
You have to remember that Thea hasn't really ever seen snow. There was a good amount the year she was one, and we got in some reasonable sledging (and lost our beloved Olympus camera), but she doesn't remember it. Since then we've only had little flurries that have barely settled. Not enough to stomp in, let alone build a snowman. So she was pretty excited. It became apparent pretty quickly that even if we got to the Wainstones, we weren't going to be able to see them a foot under the snow, and we'd probably have lost Thea in a drift by then, so we just romped!
We played until the kids were properly cold and then retired to the car for hot chocolate. We drove back across the Moors, realising that it was shear chance that we had had such an amazing amount of snow. Carleton Bank is on the north-west edge, which had got all the weather. Once we had got onto the high moor, the snow was much more moderate. Once eveyone was warm again, we pulled into Newby Wood for some more romping in only a couple of inches deepness. We played and slid on our bottoms (it had never even crossed our minds to bring the sledge!), and managed to find a geocache without GPS, coordinates or clues. But we had been there before, so it was a bit of a cheat.

And we had lots of fun in the snowy car park, because Ian and I wanted to do doughnuts in our new toy:
Much fun!

Thea three-cakes

Thea has had a lovely birthday. Thank you for all her wonderful gifts and cards. We started the day with pancakes filled with bananas and honey:

Then we had fun opening presents:

And then the day turned into a Tuesday and we ran around getting to school and kindergarten and work and things. But Thea was a happy person.

That afternoon we had cake. The first of three. Thea had asked for a pink cake, a lemon cake and a chocolate cake with jelly beans on. So we celebrated with F and co with a raspberry and white chocolate cake. And it was tasty. Very tasty.

Next day it was Thea's celebration at kindergarten. I got to come along to hear her story and see the candles being lit. She chose throne material and her cape and was jolly. And she took lemon cake to share.

Next week we have the party, well, gathering. And the last cake.......

Suzuki madness

So, clearly I am not doing a great job of updating the blog. And I'm not going to remedy that right now. So here are some photos of the Suzuki get together that the kids played at in Huddersfield yesterday. 120 kids, four instruments, quite a bit of chaos. And it was all organised with enthusiasm (do you hear the subtext?!). But the kids handled it all brilliantly (even if Thea did get a little bored by the start of the third hour!!!!!), and report that they had fun.

The recorders played beautifully:

And the cellos did great, especially considering the fact that most of them had only been playing for 6 weeks.

And everyone was fascinated by the workings of flutes:

But the playtogether was pretty amazing. Expecially for the recorders, because even a room-full of recorders only makes so much noise, but 60 violins behind you make a lot of noise!

Though my highlight has got to be Nathaniel's face when he heard the violins start to play the second Seitz (he was so excited!), and Thea delightedly and totally unselfconsciously playing air-cello to Hunter's Chorus. So much fun!

Roseberry Topping

Its a good time of year for tramping up hills, so we joined some friends to climb Roseberry Topping. In an effort to make it a winge-free exercise, we went for the quick, steep route, which was lots of fun.

The first bit was up very steep woodland steps which the kids bounded up like rabbits.

And then up the side of the hill along dry stone steps. I love walking along stone paths - something about not wading in mud makes them so much more enjoyable. This is definitely the result of childhood walks always involving paths with 3 inches of mud at the bottom of them.

There were lots of opportunities to stop and admire the view, but on the whole the kids pressed on at a most gratifying speed. Something about being able to see the top I think....

And then we were there. And the sun came out! (And Nathaniel took off his Inuit costume)

We took a different way down and played in the woods and then dragged out the stove and a massive cauldron of sausage stew - very tasty.

And that was that - a most acceptable day.