My birthday cake

I made a cake and let the kids loose with the decorations - a collaborative affair!

Longer Days

Having endured a week of absurdly storng winds and rain - we lost a couple of fence panels, today was gloriously sunny and calm. Raff had finaly made it to the final square of his star chart (slightly engineered by us obviously!), in which is a picture of a castle. So we headed off to Bodiam Castle which I feel sure I must have visited as a child as it is so close to Battle and not far from Wally Hall, but I don't remember it at all. It is however the perfect castle to take a knight obsessed boy to as it just looks so text book- moat, square plan with a tower on each corner, portcullis etc etc.


We had great fun climbing up and down the vertiginous spiral staircases and popped out of the tops of a few. I suddenly realised why Mum hated taking us up the Chateaux near Soulatge and it dawned on me that I am not sure I ever want to take the kids to Peyrepetreuse, my heart was in my mouth all the time and Bodiam has probably been thouroughly risk assessed and poses none whatsoever!

Flowers on December 23rd

nasturtium rose
calendula candytuft

winter viola sunflower! and canterbury bells
cornflowerrambling rose
periwinkle

This will be out of synch dates wise unless I can change it around, but I captured these pics of things flowering in the garden on the 23rd of December - most of them shouldn't be!

Festivities

Here I am at the end of the festive fortnight. There's too much to write about everything but the highlights .

We left here on the 24th for lunch with Katy and Kev which was delicious, the big kids had their own private table with fabulous choc mousses for pudding!

Then on to Nick and Geo for a couple of nights and lots of wonderful food. It was the first time we had seen we had seen their great new kitchen which is such a great family space. Nick cooked a wonderful Christmas lunch helped by his beautiful assistant - we need the secret recipe for that amazing mash please!

All 7 of the Gibson cousins were together on Christmas Day for the first time in years,

with a very proud Grannie Annie!

Memorable moments included Stanley's appreciation of the wonderful Gingerbread house Mum had made - he particularly liked the roof tiles whilst Raff went for the walls!!

Boxing Day and a trip to Kew Gardens where they had an outdoor ice rink in a beautiful setting, All of us except Stan could go on the ice - although Raff wasn't convinced and came off fairly quickly! Skating with him was a bit like holding a very slippery piece of elastic! Georgia was really beginning to get the hang of it by the end and would love to go again.

Suitably worn out we then loaded them into the car to drive down to Devon and this time even Georgia managed to sleep (on her brother!) so it wasn't too arduous.

Our days in Devon were mostly spent doing nothing much but eat and sleep which was fabuously idle, we caught up with David who had fun with Raff and met Lucie, David's girlfriend, who he proposed to the next day; so now we have to see if we can make it to the States later in the year?

We also had a big Somerville gathering with a huge feast and much jollity, the boys discovered they go in a loop around the house as it has two staircases!

Georgia and Penny had some time in the studio which was lovely, making a wooden dragon - only 78 more pieces to go girls!

Then back home for New Years Eve which this year we spent at Polly and Simon's with Rutty and Anna, great fun and pretty late! Only to be capped off by our annual New Years Day open house which started at 12 and ended at 8.30 pm when the last guests left. I was absolutely shattered which has rather undone all the good resting in Devon. Hey ho! Back to work tomorrow and I hope to really begin to get my teeth into the job. There's still so much to sort out not least a desk/computer/phone etc etc. Watch this space because I am going to give it another month or so and then start looking for somewhere that might appreciate me!

I think I may have failed to mention the single most exciting thing that happened at Christmas and that was my new Digital SLR camera. Hooray for Michael I can now get back into some proper photography!

Looking back over these few pics all I can say is what a smiley time we had!