Dinosaur world

One morning last week, in the hour we usually have between eating our porridge and walking Brendan to school, I offered the boys some TV time while I "got stuff done". I rarely do this these days because it always ends unpleasantly with Brendan getting very upset when it's switched off. But on this particular morning he said, "ummm, okay, how about that dinosaur one," pointing to the Walking With Dinosaurs video in the "give to charity shop" pile.

An hour later he was so engrossed in creating a dinosaur world that I just couldn't tear him away and take him to school. So we had a home day. We spent hours playing dinosaurs. Or at least Brendan did. I spent a little time playing dinosaurs and lots more time playing with Tadhg while trying not to make it obvious we were letting Brendan play alone. We have a sort of rule in our house: all toys belong to everyone and we have to play together. But sometimes Brendan loves a bit of time undisturbed by his pesky little brother. I try to let him have that time without making a big deal about it but it isn't always easy. Man, can they fight!

Brendan has totally taken to the chickens. He is such a good helper, making sure they don't fly out of the little box while I clean out the big box, refilling their food, breaking up their woodchip bedding, carrying them one by one (or two little ones) to their run outside and counting them about ten times a day to make sure they are all still there.
This whole chicken business is making me daydream a lot more about living on a farm. I look around and see Steve digging another veggie patch, Brendan watering the garden and Tadhg sitting in the chick pen with eight chickens running around and I think of the future... wondering what it holds for us :)

A day in the garden

We picked our first strawberries today. They were unbelievably delicious. The boys ate a couple but managed to resist one which they ran off with to give to daddy who was busy building a tree house suitable for little people.

They are wearing wellies because this tree is in the corner of what pretty much amounts to a nettle field out behind our back fence. We've cleared the area around the tree but the nettles are persistent to say the least. We're hoping that once the chickens are big enough they might help keep the little nettle seedlings at bay.

Tadhg "helped" of course.

They immediately took to jumping around this thing like monkeys, Tadhg copying everything Brendan did.
They came in for supper- spaghetti with yesterday's homemade burger leftovers cut into cube shaped meatballs- but they couldn't wait for me to make a quick dessert and rushed back out before the last mouthful had been swallowed. I whipped some cream and took out a big bowl of strawberry fool, alas not with our own berries but it was yummy and sweet nonetheless.

And here's our little knight off to fight a dragon.

Some recent goings on around here.

We saw this group of people outside our local bar as we headed to the market on our bikes last Sunday. The young ones were running about or dodging their mothers who fussed over them and sorted their outfits, while the adults were inside, presumably having a wee drink before they did whatever they were about to do. On the way home we heard a band playing a block or two away. As we started planting all the plants we brought home from the market we kept hearing the band in the distance until I couldn't take it any longer and had to take the boys out to find them. We walked slowly through the local brocante (car boot sale without the cars) until we found the band emerging from the bar at the local football club around the corner. The boys were each given an orange by a young person and then another two or three each by some very drunk men dancing about and having a wonderful time. The whole scene was hilarious. The band struck up but sounded terrible- they had all been drinking for a few hours by this point, although it was still only noon.
We found out later from our neighbour that this is the normal labour day celebration, although we still don't know what the costumes are all about.

Here's Steve and Tadhg buying some seedlings for the garden to add to the ones we've grown from seed ourselves. More on the garden later.

Brendan and I went to our first formal(ish) homeschool activity. One of the homeschool group parents organised an owl pellet investigation. Brendan was the youngest but he still got something out of it. We've been talking about owls for the last few days and the tricky topics of animals eating animals, death, raising farm animals etc. The major find in our owl pellet was a complete rat skull. So Brendan insists CouCou must not go outside so she isn't eaten by an owl.
And when it comes to our chickens, we are allowed to eat them all except JJ, the littlest one which Brendan has claimed as his very own.

So much for not really wanting a trampoline :) This one was in the garden when we arrived and the boys love it and are on it almost every day. And it does funky things to their hair. Lots of fun.

The chicks have moved to a bigger brooder box and are going outside for a while every day now. They love running about and fighting over every little bit of bare earth they come across for a quick dust bath. I'm amazed at how their instincts are so strong that they know just what to do without having a mama bird to show them. Incredible.

Another new addition

Meet Cou Cou, our new rat. We went to the agricultural/animal shop for chick food and came home with this lovely wee rat. I have had rats before but this is a first for the boys and Steve. Brendan decided that her name should be Cou Cou, or Koo Koo or Cuckoo- however it is spelled it must be said with an over exaggerated french accent. (He corrects you if you pronounce it wrong!) I've gone with the spelling Cou Cou just because we brought her home just a few days after our Cou Cou de Malines chicks and that was how the Belgian lady spelled and pronounced it. I know, the name is silly, but it has stuck and we seem to be used to it already.

I'm sure she will be good friends with the boys and will be out to play a lot. She has been very patient with Tadhg already, who is still learning how to hold an animal gently :)

She is curled up asleep on my lap as I write this. Very sweet. It is lovely to have animals in the house again. We haven't been blogging much recently so I haven't recorded here how we lost our lovely cat Bill. He stayed out one night, which wasn't unusual, but this time he didn't come home in the morning and hasn't been seen since.

When we left Canada we re-homed our other little cat Alma and we talked about her with Brendan saying that she wanted to live on a farm so we found a nice big farm with lots of mice and a family with a little girl to look after and love her. So the other day Brendan was looking very pensive and suddenly said, out of the blue, "Mummy, maybe Bill has found a farm and is living with a little girl and is very happy like Alma." Lovely thought.

Chicks

An exciting day today as we welcomed our first chicks!

One of my colleagues gave me the phone number of a little farm where she buys her chicks. I went to pick up 6 black Marans today at their lovely little farm about 10 minutes from our house. I actually came home with three 8-day-old black Marans, three 13-day-old Coucou de Malines (related to Marans) and two 13-day-old Light Sussex. That, you will notice if you were paying attention, adds up to 8 birds. Oops.
I did ask for only two of each but he added two extras for free and I was too soft to reject them :)

This is one of the three "coucou de malines". Which I think is a type of Maran. They are beautiful grey speckled hens which are really bred as table birds but are so beautiful I couldn't resist.

The boys have been so gentle!

Here's one of the younger black Marans. They are a lot smaller and fluffier- I think we are going to be surprised by how quickly they grow. These lay dark chocolate brown eggs. They seem much more fragile than the others but I'm hoping it's just because of the age difference and they aren't actually weaker in any way. Brendan is particularly besotted by these wee ones, I think because the bigger ones can already flap their wing feathers a bit and these littlies are bit more timid.

And here's Tadhg with one Sussex and a Maran.

So maybe we'll have a regular chicken diary entry on here. I'm off to sit with them for a bit before going to bed. They're not the cutest little things but they really are funny and totally tug on your heart strings.

Corsica

Corsica. Some of the best bits...

Beaches
Boats
Picnics
Corsican cheese and charcuterie

Adventure in trees, on horseback, on boats and in the buggy.

Flowers and insects and snails and lizards

Exploring ancient ruins, cities and villages, clifftops, waterfalls, long beautiful river valleys.

Beach campsite, remote farm campsite, city campsite, riverside campsite...
Eating out(side)

Fancy b&b with heated swimming pool and perfect 6 course meals. Little chalets.

Scenery. Huge, stunning, awesome views round every bend.

Walking in the early morning, at sunset, in beautiful spots, anytime, anywhere lovely.

And there was so much more.

Blogging break

With that little blogging hiatus so much has been missed out and not recorded. Paddy's visit, Steve's gliding, Bouillon Castle, Waterloo, various day trips, including one to the UK, meeting new people, visitors from Canada, a couple of parties, long hikes, lunches with friends, cooking and baking... and lots more I can't think of off the top of my head.

Not that this pretends to be a complete record of what we get up to anyway- that would be impossible of course. There is so much that goes on, all the little things... Life is just full of little moments, many of them so special.

I'm vowing to get back on top of the blogging. We just received our 2010 book blog in the post and it was a timely reminder to get back up to date. So here's to more regular posts. Watch this space.

We're off to Corsica - Day 1

Our road trip to Corsica was fast approaching but we still hadn’t managed to sit down and decide anything other than the overall destination, let alone make any reservations. The day before departure I dropped in on a friend whose last posting was to Corsica and borrowed a few maps and a French guidebook. She strongly recommended booking the ferry at least and also talked me round the island listing a few “must sees”. So on Friday night we booked a ferry from Nice leaving on Monday at 12.30pm.

Day 1

We set off at 2.30 in the afternoon on Saturday. A couple of hours later than we hoped but given that we hadn’t had a lot of time to put much thought into the trip let alone actually pack, we needed all morning just to get sorted. Steve has been working very long days recently and sometimes we’ve gone a few days without really speaking to each other, leaving for work before dawn and coming home around 9.30. The car was finally packed with the essentials plus a whole lot more. Tent, bedding, clothing, big buggy, maps, guides, snacks, beach “stuff”, camera… The plan is to camp if we feel like it, find a B&B if we feel like it, go walking if we feel like it. Basically to just fly by the seat of our pants and do whatever we feel like.

So we headed south. I checked the maps for potential places to stop the night but we pushed on all the way to St-Martin de l’Ardeche. I have wanted to go to the Ardeche since I first thought about doing a canoe camping survival course there when I was about 17.

We arrived at midnight, rattled the gates on a couple of campsites to no avail and then finally fell into a hotel room in the centre of the village.

Costume making

What a perfect day! Every Wednesday Brendan finishes school at noon and recently we've been leaving Tadhg with his babysitter for the afternoon so that we can have a special me-and-mama-only afternoon. Plans for today started on Monday when Brendan asked for help to become Robin Hood right at a time when I was trying to do a hundred things at once. On Tuesday he drew "a picture" of Robin Hood and we talked about what he would need. So after school today we had a quick lunch and then headed up to the room with all the crafty bits and pieces and put together a costume.
He loved choosing the fabric, measuring his waist, trying it on and looking in the mirror. He played with his wooden sewing machine as I sewed and "helped" by unravelling some thread as I hand sewed.
It was so much fun!
We made a quiver from an old poster tube. He drew around that himself- I'm flabbergasted by how his skills are developing. He has started drawing people and naming "things" he draws rather than just abstract scribbling and shapes.

Then we went outside to find sticks for a bow and arrow. He practiced for about an hour and was doing well until he fell off the tricycle while trying to shoot while riding. The "special afternoon" still tires out my wee boy- he can still have a two hour nap some days!
So the tears have dried up and he's now sitting on the sofa watching robin hood and holding onto his bow and arrow. He has just told me "mama, if you pay taxes you have to go to jail." I tried to clarify the misunderstanding but he insists that I must not pay taxes or I WILL go to jail.
Ha- he now says it's okay, I can pay taxes if I want to because he will rescue me from jail.
We really don't watch much TV and are quite picky but I still wonder about what this stuff does to their heads:)

And one final picture. Here's Fireman Brendan out for a walk the other day. He stopped at EVERY manhole cover to check if anyone was trapped and needed rescued.

Musical birthday

The Birthday Boy

4 years old

The 4 cake

Made by mummy with love

Cupcakes for school

The table ready for a birthday supper

Sorry Brendan, missed you off the side there :)

Bonne Anniversaire Brendan

Uncle Phil played his guitar a couple of times each day and we all broke out the percussion and joined in in our own way. Brendan is especially interested in music. We recently put a CD player in his room and are working on expanding his collection of "proper" music so he can listen whenever he likes. Favourites at the moment include Great Big Sea, Jack Johnson and Ziggy Marley and we still regularly listen to/watch Michael Franti and Spearhead and Elizabeth Mitchell on you tube (must get an Elizabeth Mitchell album ordered soon!)
We're hoping to get on Skype with Phil a lot more often from now on. It's just so lovely to see the boys listen intently and really enjoy the music, just as I did when I was young (and still do!)

Another smiley if out of focus Brendan.

Running around in the train station

We went on the train to Brussels to have a look around on Saturday. We wandered along the little streets around the Grande Place, bought chocolate in the touristy shops and had a yummy lunch- the standard Belgian moules frites (or mussels and fries) for Caitlin and I.

Phil doing his morning dance exercises to reggae.

It was lovely having Caitlin and Phil to stay. The boys are missing them! Great to be able to share our home with family and hope they can come lots of times over the next couple of years. Thanks guys, love you xx