New chickens and new jungle gym!

We bought 2 more chickens today! So that brings us up to 5 with new Wolverine (Leo's choice of name - he would not compromise!)

and Princess Peach (it was a close call between that and Ms Marvel)

They are both lovely amber hybrids. The chicken lady also had some lovely bantams which Leigh was really keen on, but she advised that introducing bantams to an established flock of bigger birds would potentially be disasterous unless we had somewhere separate for the smaller birds to sleep (which we don't) - or we were building a flock from scratch and buying bantams and bigger birds at the same time. So big birds it was and lovely they are too. All the chucks are in for their first night together.

Leigh's dad also came round this afternoon to help build a new adventure area for the chickens to make the most of their new walk-in run. Here are some photos of the new arrangement and it's brilliant! The chickens love climbing up the big tree branch in the middle and Leigh's put some treats high up to encourage them to try to get to the higher levels. It looks great, they've not lost any floor space, just got some new climbing fun!

Om nom nom...

The breadmaker is going great guns - the onion bread came out the same second time around, despite the amendments I made, so that's how it's supposed to be! I've also made gingerbread cake (too salty but that was wholly user error!), apricot and almond bread, pesto and pine nut bread (yum!), banana and walnut teacake and tried a white 'sandwich' loaf rather than the straightforward white loaf. All lovely. Still lots more to try!

"If he'd had another life, he'd have rescored that bit"

Yep, first rehearsal for the next concert last night! It is good to be back at rehearsals, but it is the final sign that summer is over.

The next concert is in November - we're playing Strauss' Death and Transfiguration (which apparently Derek the conductor has "played a couple of times, but I've never conducted it. This is the first time I've looked at the score"), Schumann piano concerto and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique - about which Derek made the top comment - it was in relation to a particularly nasty passage of col legno (basically using the wood of the bow to make a tapping sound rather than the hair). He said that that passage is a mess, it always sounds a mess, whichever orchestra is playing it! And apparently Berlioz would have re-scored it if he could have!!!

Music is difficult but very atmospheric and will be ace.

Fun in the sun (or I am a child!)

We've just spent a couple of days with my sister and her family in Norfolk. Had a lovely afternoon at High Lodge in Thetford forest - the children all particularly enjoyed the wonderful music trail, and there were HUGE slides too.

Then back to Becks' house for a BBQ with my Mum, Chris and my Auntie Pat. All was going well until out of the blue my auntie says "Rebecca, do you trim your bush?" Cue momentous silence for a couple of beats until I realised she was talking about the decorative bay tree they have in the garden, with (and this is the honest truth) no idea about any other interpretation.

Seriously could not look at my sister or Leigh for fear of massive hysterical laughing and embarassing my auntie. Bless!

Two days down

School seems to be going remarkable well (touch wood!) - at least the first 2 days have been fine. Highlights appear to have been

discovering he's not the only Zachary in his class - he told this to me outside the classroom this morning behind his hand with a smirk as though he was telling me a naughty joke or something

being able to choose his lunch - this is a relief. We were wondering how the prospect of school dinners would go down - obviously our hope being that he will discover lots of new things he likes to eat. I think he's appreciating the difference between holiday club where there was no choice, and school where he feels like he can have anything he wants!

going out to play - not one, but two times (plus hand gesture)

being able to take a water bottle into nursery - he loves drinking it as we're walking along, must be the new status symbol...

and 2 stickers on his first day. Brilliant!

Keeping fingers crossed that we will get through this and next week with as good an attitude. Next week we start dropping him off at Breakfast club first thing in the morning and they will drop him off and pick him up from school - he seems remarkably matter of fact about it all at the moment. Now it's down to us not to make a big thing of it and just let him carry on as normal.

First day of school baby!

So here is my wonderful eldest son off to his first day of big school. We got him there and managed to leave without tears (from any of the parties involved!) but it will all be a bit different for him - especially the having lunch at school bit.

Collecting him just after 3 - hopefully all has gone well.

Onion bread - not so great!

Onion bread - interesting! Opened the breadmaker this morning and to be honest, the top looked uncooked - no risen at all and still in the shapes and patterns of dough rather than bread. But it was all cooked - tasty, but quite dense.

As there's no piccie in the recipe book, it's difficult to know whether this is what the bread is supposed to turn out like or whether I've gone wrong. Talking about it with Leigh at lunchtime, we think 1 of 3 things may have happened, which may or may not have affected the bread - 1. my wholemeal flour has been in the cupboard a couple of months and may have lost its 'strongness,' 2. I didn't add any horseradish as we had none and maybe that gives the bread a bit of a lift - yeah, maybe! or 3. the liquid element of the mix may have met with the yeast before official mixing time, which is a no-no according to the book. I made the bread overnight, so clearly the mix was sitting around for a good 6/7 hours before the programme actually began and some of the water/oil may have seeped through.

Anyway, will rectify all these when I try this again and will just have to wait and see if I get a better result.

New bling, new gadgets!

Lots of things have happened over the last couple of weeks - we have been to Ibiza with the in-laws (which was in no way as bad as it might have been and actually quite relaxing, save for the 3.30am start and 2am finish!), during which it was our 10th wedding anniversary. We swapped gifts before the holiday so that we didn't have to take anything with us - mine was a wonderful eternity ring. Simply lovely.

My Mum gave us some money for our anniversary which was to be used for something we wanted, but didn't necessarily need (and not for chickens!). After some deliberation we went for... a breadmaker! In an ideal world I would be sufficiently motivated to get up at 5.30am and make my own bread for the day, but given that we all live in the real world (and I can't do kneading - see my previous stabs at chelsea and hot cross buns...), the only realistic way we are going to regularly eat freshly made bread is with a breadmaker.

It is swish, elegant and lovely

We tried the rapid loaf the day we brought it home just to try it out, and then a full-time loaf overnight. The rapid loaf was fine, although came out a little pale on top, but the second loaf was much better

Onion bread is in the maker for tomorrow!! 

Hello Miss Evelyn!

We've had a lovely day today at my aunt's house - my sister and her troups came along too so we met her new daughter Evelyn for the first time! She was born on 30th June at a massive 11 pounds 4 ounces! We've seen photos, but today was the first meeting and she is totally gorgeous...

Walk-In Run

We're having a bit of a change around with the chickens at the moment. We had got them living in an Egglu Cube, with the bottom third-ish of the garden fenced off for them to peck around in - having experimented with them having full run of the garden and watch it slowly turn into a grassless bog over the winter months, they have been confined to their own area for a while now!

But Leigh wants to get a bit of that garden back and has been thinking about a walk-in run for a while - we have finally gone for it! It's 3m x 2m on the ground but also 2m high, so although it feels as though they have lost some ground space, we can put large logs and things in so that they can climb and use the height of the new run as well. Leigh and I put the run together last night (which was reasonably straightforward if time-consuming - and we both have lots of insect bites to show for our efforts today!), then moved everything around today and the new one is in place - they still have the Egglu for night time and egg laying, but their daytime activities are all within the new run now. The bottom end of the garden doesn't need to be fenced off any longer and the whole area looks bigger just with the old fence gone.

The plan is to plant up some grass seed and also have a vegetable patch to reclaim the previously chickenified piece of garden.

Here's how it looked before...

Here's our handy helpers getting everything unpacked...

And how it looks now

Brilliant!

Revisits

I've recently visited a couple of local attractions with the boys recently - both places which I have been to before and liked, but this time really impressed me!

The first was Nottingham Castle. Now, to be fair, I don't think I've actually been inside since I was at university (which was *cough cough* years ago!) but I had to drop my Mum off at Nottingham station last week and I thought it might be a good place to go for the morning before that. The gardens are lovely and there's a big open space where they have open air theatre productions, but also has some climbing structures and slides with a castle theme. Nice. Inside there are several displays and exhibitions, some which the boys weren't really interested in but there was well enough for us to have a good hour in there. The first room we went in displayed interesting and fascinating objects - and had a huge Noah's Ark display on one wall with lots of sounds to listen to and animals to find under the flaps.

In the long gallery with the painting exhibition (again in itself would not have captivated the boys),  they had added a sensory/musical element which had been designed by a local organisation for the disabled. There were huge square units which you could carry round a specified part of the gallery - when they came in range they would play different musical instruments, and holding 2 of them close together made a duet play. The boys very much enjoyed this, although the blocks were almost too heavy for them to carry!

There was a lovely room which had been decorated around a boat theme, with a boat reading corner (complete with sail overhead and clouds hanging from the ceiling), a unit with lots of different toys in drawers, some dressing up and some paintings to look at. It was really well done and we could have spent much longer in there exploring everything.

Finally in the basement (below the Story of Nottingham exhibition) they have a room called "Hood's in the Wood." The whole room is decorated as though it is a house in a forest, there's lots of snippets of information about Robin Hood, some TV bits (didn't really see what they were), a kitchen area to explore, lots of dressing up, some colouring and other things. Again it was extremely well put together, interested the boys and both Mum and I really enjoyed it too!

There was lots in the museum we didn't really look at, or only in passing, but it was still well worth the entrance fee and we could have spent much longer there. Definitely going back!

We've also been to Gulliver's Kingdom this week - it's a theme park set into a hillside at Matlock Bath. I have been there before - we took Zachary when he was about one and a half, so he was still relying on the pushchair a lot, and I was about 3/4 months away from giving birth to Leo. So my memories of that visit are that it was very hot, very steep, hard work and Zachary didn't go on very much.

However this visit was totally different - Leo and Zachary are both able to get themselves around now (with just a small amount of carrying for Leo!), and as they are both over 90cm tall, they can go on nearly everything (there were only 1 or 2 really big rides you had to be 120cm to go on) and did! I think the log flume was their favourite and as we started at the top entrance, we were able to work through the park going downhill most of the time, and then used the chair lift to go back up to the top and work down again to the entrance we needed! It worked brilliantly and was a great day.

Okay, so where else can we go and revisit now??!

Milky Fun

The other day we drove past a local park where a Fun Fair was advertised. Zachary read the signs and started asking if we could go - just as we passed the park however, we saw a milk float and both the boys were very excited - oddly!

Anyway, we planned to go to Gulliver's Kingdom yesterday, and to try and explain what it was like I said it was like a fun fair - Leo asks "with a milk man?" And now, everytime a fun fair is mentioned, Leo asks if there's going to be a milk man there! He's connected the 2 random events and now they are forever intertwined. He is lovely!

2 days down

It has been an interesting and good start to working again.

I had been very apprehensive about starting - mostly because I wasn't sure how Zachary would take to the change in routine. In the past he has sometimes found it a little difficult to adjust to big changes - or at least it has taken some time for things to settle down, but fortunately he seems to really enjoy the holiday club at the private nursery we use and even got to touch a snake and a frog this afternoon (under carefully controlled conditions at 'Zoo Lab' of course!). There's also a pool table in the games room there so I think he's almost in heaven having 'snooking' on tap!

And that's not to say I wasn't nervous for Leo as well - it's just that he generally seems to be a lot more easy-going about changes and dealt with the transition to nursery about 6 months ago much more smoothly than Zachary did when he started at 2. But these are long days now - they're at the nursery 8 til 5, yet based on the 2 days they've had there, both of the boys seem to have settled well - and fingers crossed it continues. There's only 1 day left this week for me at work and then Thursday and Friday I'm with the boys. I do find I am missing them when I'm at work - but it's more that I want them there with me, than wanting to be back at home!

Otherwise, I am really enjoying being back at work although I had forgotten how dull inductions are! At least I haven't spent the first 2 days thinking I've made a huge mistake. I spent most of yesterday being shown systems and procedures, and finally managed to get stuck into some files today. It seems to be coming back to me and it almost (although not quite!) feels as though I haven't been away! It's refreshing to interact with people who don't know me as a mum and work with them on a wholly different basis, and I'm actually in charge of someone! It certainly seems at the moment that the firm had some problems with my predecessor, and I've got a lot of sorting out to do, but providing I'm well organised and proactive about the work, I should be okay. Hopefully things will continue as smoothly as the last couple of days - I've got 3 weeks at work now, then 2 weeks off. One of those weeks is a family holiday in Ibiza with the in-laws and the second week Zachary starts school - another new beginning.

All change!

I have a job! Some brave firm has decided to employ me and although some of the details still need to be worked out, I'll be starting pretty soon, 3 days a week!

I'm very excited but very nervous too. I'm worried about having to put the boys in more childcare (especially Zachary - he is not good with changes to his routine, but he's familiar with the nursery we'd be using so hopefully that'll help), whether I've forgotten everything I knew, and also that there'll be an expectation on me to be coming in at a certain level of experience. The last 'new' job I had was as a trainee solicitor, so I wasn't expected to know or be able to do much at all, so this now makes me nervous, but hopefully it will all settle down. Also, a large part of this job will be working to expand the department and undertaking a lot of business development. This is not something that I've led before and although I have some ideas, I'm pretty new at the whole schmoozing game!

I found I was strangely emotional after I had the job offer but having had a bit of a cry and talked through some of my worries, I feel better about things now. But I must still be a bit anxious - had my anxiety dream last night. This is the only dream I have ever had which has recurred and it usually happens when I'm worried about something. In it, basically normal things happen until my teeth start getting wobbly and then fall out. It wasn't as bad as sometimes though, only 4 of my teeth this time!

Dinosaur birthday cake mark II

It's my friend's little girl's birthday party tomorrow and I've made her birthday cake today - quite pleased with the result, although the icing looks a little crumby in some places... But I'm happy with it and I hope the birthday girl is too!

I also made some of Mary Anne's melting moments today. This is my second attempt at them and I used margarine instead of butter to try and keep the mix to be piped a little softer. It worked for that but I forgot the vanilla essence and also I think they ended up slightly undercooked. The tops were golden brown, but they're a little stodgy in the middle which I think is just that my biscuits were too thick - need to use a smaller nozzle.

And yes, I used left-over dinosaur icing to fill them with!

Mud pies anyone??

The boys had some fun in the garden this afternoon whilst Leigh and I fulfilled our stereotypes - I was in the kitchen making a birthday and he was in the garden drilling and being manly!

Bubble painting

Aha, I knew it was about time for another example of my ineptitude as a mother! I thought it would be good to do some bubble painting with the boys the other day - you know, the kind where you blow through a straw into a paint and washing up liquid mixture and then rest some paper on top of the bubbles you produce. It's a really great effect and lots of fun. Mostly.

So I had prepared the first container of paint/water/washing up liquid. I (foolishly) put this in front of Leo and asked him to stir it. Zachary asked a question, I looked at him, looked back at Leo who was then pulling a face of complete disgust and had paint dribbling down his chin!

Aaaargh! He'd swallowed, so I made him drink some water and checked the back of the washing up liquid bottle. "If swallowed, seek medical advice immediately." Hmmm. Leo not vomiting or looking particularly ill so I decided against rushing him to ED, and phoned NHS Direct instead. Spoke to a very pleasant young man (look at me all grown up, describing people as 'young men!') who (while trying not to laugh at me, I think) confirmed that poster paint and washing up liquid are on their low toxicity register - phew! He gave me a bit more advice on what to do if Leo started to feel ill but all has been fine. Lesson learned!

Cutie pie chickens

It feels a little odd putting this directly after the last post, but Leigh took some photos of Rogue and Henrietta peck in the doorway to their house a few evenings ago - cutie pies!

Bye bye Bubbles

Sadly, the other of our original chickens, Bubbles, died over the weekend. She had been ill for a while and despite visits to the vets and some antibiotics, she simply deteriorated slowly and there wasn't anything else we could do. As we have now had 3 chickens die over a fairly short period, the vet offered to make some further investigations for us, so hopefully we can find out what was wrong - and if it's something to do with the living quarters then we can make any changes we need to.

Hello new chickens!

We have 2 new chickens! In fact we've had them for a week and a bit now, but our camera was out being repaired so I've only just caught up with photos.

Here are our new additions - Rogue

and Henrietta Peck.

Hex is still doing really well,

but Bubbles has been poorly for a while now. We're not really sure what it is, antibiotics haven't worked, and although she's eating some, it's not really enough. So we're waiting and seeing...