Light and Shadow (by sarah)

The sun was disappearing over the hills and produced this fantastic golden light and deep dark shadows - Barabara came to tell me so that I could take phots - here they are!

Naughty Bobble! (by sarah)

Jean loves stones - really really loves them.

Unfortunatly this is cuasing a problem as the most readily avialible source of pebbles and stones is the gravelly stuff Barabara has around her door and in the turning area.

Jeany has so far thrown stones into the Mill through the front door, put pebbles into the flower beds though she did then help me pick them all out again, put stones in the green house and in plant pots. She has even managed to put a stone in a coffee mug!

She is determined to relocate ever stone here I think!

No Jeany-bow! (by sarah)

Well it's finially happened - Jean has taken it upon herself to start the interior decoration of the Bakery!

We have been doing drawing and colouring after breakfast each morning with much emthasis on 'only on the paper Jean,' however she got hold of a biro up in our bedroom and though Alaric saw her with it he noted that it was one with a retractable nib and the point was inside so he didnt worry. My policy is that reguardless she is given paper and told only to draw on that.

Poor Alaric didnt realise that the nib doesn't retract properlly and only discovered this fact when Jean drew on my lovely iridescent note book!

We then discovered that she had 'decorated' the sheet adn duvet cover 🙁 Oh well at least it wasnt the walls (yet!).

We showed her sheet and said, 'no bad bobble you only draw on paper,' then just to make me feel really guilty, her little smiling face disolved into tears :'(

Still she was really good with her drawing this morning and only got upset when a crayon broke - she gave it to me saying 'oh dea, oh dea,' and didnt belive me when I said I couldnt fix it!

Jean’s a Big Girl Now! (by sarah)

After the disastor with the highchair and the fact that Jean is now hapy to sit in chairs we decided to see wheather she could cope with eating at a table. So we dug out the little blue kiddies table and the two little chairs from various garages.

We sat her at the table gave her, her food and waited for the carnage - waited for her to wail or escape and walk about - but no - she just sat there happily munching!

The table is also useful for her drawings - this is good as when she was sitting next to me at the big table a)I was worried she'd fall off and b) there was a high chance that my paper would end up crayoned in a helpful Jean attempt!

These pics were taken three weekends or so ago - I lost the camera which is why its taken me so long to post about it - it might onlt be two weekend - hmmm not sure now!

The Lunderette (by sarah)

On Tuesday we decided to finially take the bedding to the lunderette as we had no power. So off we went - first off we had to walk down quiet a long road and as we had Jean and three dovets! this was quiet a challenge and one we managed to muck up!

Yep - we managed to walk past it - of course I was looking for it on the wronge side of the road for a start and then we managed to get into a deep conversation about how the universe works or the like.

Then it turned out that niether of us had change, well I did but I hadnt expected it to be that pricey to be honest. So after a quick trip for Al to the little corner shop for a bottle of coke we turned our attentions to the machines only to promptly discover that we did not have the right change for the soap powder machine. So after a quick trip to the corner shop for me to buy a bottle of diet coke with lime, we were ready to roll.

Ok fist off we were using the big big machines and we couldnt find the tray to put the powder in so I thought we just put it in the machine - WRONG - it goes in wholes on the top of the machine which even Al had trouble seeing though he at least could reach them - grrr to the hieghtest person who thought of that one!

Then Alaric managed to get the money jammed in the machine - there are two slots but niether of us realised until we had jamed it that one was for the pound coins and one for the twentys - the poor staff had to dismantle that section of the lunderette to fix it and they took our money so that they could put it one once fixed and told us we didnt have to wiat.

Now we had bumped into our publisher friend on route which might have been part of the reason we walked past the place as we were chatting - she wanted to meet up with me for coffee so I hurried out but managed to go the wrong way. I realised after a while that something was wrong and turned around - I met back up with Al who took me to the coffee shop but of course this had all taken so long that our friend and her duaghter where no longer there 🙁

I'm afriad that I got grumpy with slow dawning realisation discovered that I was very hungry as it was 3 o'clock and though Al and Jean had eaten I hadnt yet had breakfast what with having wanted toast when we had no electric!

One sandwitch and coffee later I was a civil human beign again and we went back to check on the washes - they had finished so we put them in the tumble dryers and headed off to explore the oriental and forieng supermarkets along the same street - these were excelletent and we were very happy picking up those odd ingredients that cost a bomb in the normal supermarkets but in these shops were pennys (as these are things that generally can not grow in this country unaided we do not fret that they are not local produce).

We went back to check and sure enough the tumble dryers were finished so we checked and the dovets were still really wet, puzzeled we put the machines on again but had to go and change a pound. We were still faffing with the third tumble dryer when the other two stopped - ah... thought 20p was cheap.

So surely we need to put more 20pees in yes? Yes but you can only put in one at a time for a whole 5 mins of tumble drying - GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

Anyway so off Al with a grumpy Jeany whilst I sat there with a pile of 20 pees fortunatly I had some work with me I could do. I still somehow managed to melt the out side of one of the dovets, even though the bleep bleep thing was still damp!

By the time we had finished this comedy of errors it was getting dark then when we got back we found that the power had come back on at 3 o'clock! So Al got grumpy about all the working time he had missed - sigh. Steep learning curve - thats my current mantra to deal with our lives lived in Interesting Times!