New car, amazing lunch out and strawberry gateaux birthday cake!

What a wonderful day!

Firstly, as per the previous post, I met the first mini goal to be 13st something by my birthday!  Quite whether I will still be in the morning is somewhat doubtful after today though lol!!

Breakfast was scrambled eggs and toast:

Before lunch we went to collect my birthday present – and what a present it is!!

It’s a Land Rover Discovery 3 and it’s absolutely amazing! It’s beautiful to drive and is amazing inside!

After this we headed off to a restaurant for lunch that we’d not been too before.  It was part of an old naval base and was so beautiful!

We had a vege meze to share to start:

Main course was pulled pork foccacia with chips, salad and slaw

Desert came complete with candle! Warm beetroot Brownie with honeycomb icecream and chocolate sauce:

Feeling thoroughly full, it was now time to head back for the school run! When we got to nursery we were met by a thoroughly delighted keyworker who was beyond thrilled to tell me our 3yo had done a complete wee in her potty!! The whole of the nursery staff whooped and cheered and even the owner, who had been in the office, came out to see what momentous thing had happened and she cheered too! Our 3yo was really proud to tell me why she had her sticker, bless her! Progress – whoop whoop!! On returning home, our 4yo spent a lot of time with her new binoculars, she loves them!

Supper tonight was, as seems to be popular on birthdays, fajitas!

Pudding was, as one would expect, birthday cake – a strawberry gateaux:

Immunisations and a poorly boy..

This morning I fancied a change for breakfast:

Our 1yo was due some immunisations this morning, he was particularly unimpressed by this until he was handed a punnet of blueberries at which point the tears thankfully subsided. Our 3yo however was still really crying when we were walking through the waiting room – doesn’t bode well for her preschool booster when it’s due!

On the way back we went for a drive so that the youngest could go to sleep although they both fell asleep as it happened! We drove past a castle which is over 750 years old. It used to be a prison and you can go down in to the dungeon and also up in to one of the towers:

We then drove past a local church which is well known in the area for reasons which are understandable when you see a photo!

The trees are really coming out in to leaf now which made for a beautiful drive home!

Lunch was chicken salad:

After lunch I had a mountain of washing to put away so our au pair played with the children:

Supper was fishcake with wedges and veg.

Our 1yo has been really struggling since his imms, he’s settled now – very asleep,  breathing nice and normal and he’s less hot too!  Fingers crossed for a good night!

Upping the milage and time running

The days when I would think nothing of going out for a 10 mile run seem such a long time ago – it’s not in fact, it’s only 14 months.  Today I upped the anti though – ran more, ran up hills I’d normally run/walk up and the  extended the run at the halfway point with a huge hill that climbs 250-300ft in a quarter of a mile. The subsequent run back down again (and the time afterwards when I kept running) meant I ran for 11 minutes straight – definite improvement!! Unfortunately the gps on the app was playing up and it told me I did 2.5 miles in 17 minute miles which is very different to the 3.5 miles (ish, haven’t measured the extension yet but I think from when I measured it before it was that kind of distance extra) that I did in 49 minutes! Still averaging 14mm but there were some HUGE hills in there!!

Breakfast was poached eggs on toast:

After school/nursery drop off and the supermarket run I came home and had this for lunch – inspired by a blog post I read yesterday! The salmon is wild alaskan (and isn’t the colour amazing compared to farmed?!) and the eggs/spinach are both organic:

I was meant to go to a follow up appointment this afternoon following my op – I got over 30 minutes towards it (the hospital is 50 minutes away) and my husband rang to say the windscreen wipers on the car he was going to pick up the children in didn’t work anymore – in torrential rain. I needed to go to nursery to get the children and drove past him on the way picking up our 4 year old, au pair and our 3yo’s monkey that she’d left in the car ready waiting for her for when she got back in! He was tucked up in a handle waiting:

She was THRILLED when she spotted him!

Supper was courgettes and tomatoes topped with porcini ravioli.  The ravioli was really filling, I only ate 3..

When I came upstairs we saw what the tractor had been up to in the field,  eat your heart out Wimbledon!!

Running, friends, pizza and jigsaws

This morning our 4yo really wanted to come running with me – so off we went! She did really well, we went 1.1 miles which is a long way when you are 4! There was a lot of walking and the running was really slow (she has considerably shorter legs though so it was probably quite fast for her!) but she was thrilled with herself!

Breakfast was boiled eggs :

I was chatting to a friend on Facebook who said she happened to be off work – this lead to a wonderful impromptu lunch! She is Godmother to our youngest so it was nice for her to see him too!  It only dawned on me though when I finished chatting to her that it was the end of the week in terms of food shopping and the fridge wasn’t well stocked. The one thing we always have though is mozzarella so we made pizza – with help from our 3yo!

There’s only one thing you can do while waiting for dough to rise 😉

It’s a good job dough needs an hour to rise, they did it again and again and again!

Lunch was pizza – the garlic bread was snaffled in its entirety by our 1yo!

Supper was pasta bake – I forgot our 4yo really doesn’t like breadcrumbs on things and she has now mysteriously gone off peas. Supper was therefore a fail in her eyes! 😉

The gerbils had had fun though – the children all love watching them digging their tunnels! We have a very large aquarium that we weren’t using and a friend suggested a gerbilarium!  One small bale of peat later we were good to go!

They dig a different tunnel network each day which results in some very varied layouts for them – and some amusing ones too sometimes!

Play in the park

Breakfast was pancakes this morning. There is a downside to cooking everyone else’s pancakes first – sometimes mine are on the small side!

This morning the weather forecast assured me that it wouldn’t rain until 2. Assuming, to be safe, that meant 1 we headed out this morning to a local national trust that has a lovely play park in:

Unfortunately the weather forecast was not correct and there was a constant fine drizzle – not enough to bother you that it’s raining but enough to get you surprisingly wet! When we went in to the cafe the lady serving us had just finished decorating a chocolate fudge cake – this cheered up the small people enormously, along with my husband too!

Lunch was vege fingers and salad sandwiches – despite there being two on the plate only one of these was for me, the other was snaffled (as usual!) by our 1yo!

It’s my birthday this week and our 4yo wanted to make me something so I was asked to go! Judging from everyone’s hands afterwards I guess they all helped.. 😉

Supper tonight was sausages and Yorkshire puddings followed by homemade rice pudding.  I love homemade rice pud and haven’t made one for months but really fancied it yesterday!

Before going in the oven:

Ready to eat:

Book club – The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Breakfast this morning was scrambled eggs on toast:

This morning turned in to one of those mornings. Days actually. Driving to nursery the fuel light came on. I dropped off the children to nursery but didn’t have enough time to get fuel before dropping our 4yo off to school.  School drop off done I headed in to assembly (which was lovely as my 4yo’s class were showing pictures and singing a song they’d learnt!) and then got in to the car to go to the doctors – a 10 minute trip which I had 15 minutes to do. 10 of those were spent sat waiting outside the school while the biggest flatloader I have ever seen was trying to reverse in to the road. Now being 5 minutes late I, again, didn’t have time to get fuel. After the docs I had some jobs to do in town, all of which were unexpectedly complicated. I then went to our new school to give them a cheque to secure their places, hand in some forms and arrange settling in days. This had its’ advantage as the administrator had found an old blazer in her size to add to the uniform she had already given me which will be very useful for her settling in days! The school car park faced up hill. If I had had any sense I would have turned the car round but I was just in such a rush to get home that I just didn’t think. This meant all the fuel sat at the back of the tank while I was inside and it refused to start. I managed to coast it backwards and turn it round (and of course the breaks are heavy when the engine is off and the steering is too) and thankfully it started.  Going up a hill though in town it did a huge cough and lost power (so it seemed anyway) so I pulled in to a nearby doctors in case it ran out – not good with diesels and I didn’t have time to wait for a recovery truck to come and get me going! Walking to a garage and back to get fuel took just over 40 minutes but I was at least back on the road! I needed to call in to a garage to get an aerial for the radio but the person I needed to see had gone to lunch less than 10 minutes earlier and no one else there could help as the bill hadn’t been priced up yet. I headed on back home, had a quick catch up with my husband and then made lunch for my husband, our au pair and myself. I headed in to the sitting room to just sit and relax with a magazine while eating and checked my phone to see how long I had to eat before I left at 2.00 – the clock said 2.07.

Lunch, albeit now shoved in bags to eat at some point, was a sandwich and strawberries:

I managed to eat it sooner than expected simply because after driving just 2 miles down the road I came to some temporary roadworks with a stop sign in our direction. Likewise the stop sign was showing for the cars in the other direction. 20 minutes later the tree surgeon (who was in a tree over the road) had cut down all the bits of tree he needed to and it was safe to drive through so, while I had been able to eat my sandwich, I now couldn’t go to the supermarket to get something I’d forgotten earlier. Nursery pick up done I dashed back to school to collect our 4yo before going back to the garage again. When I went in there were now 4 people waiting – one of whom was a friend waiting to pick up their camper van. It was nice to catch up – especially to hear about their book which is being published! They run a company providing personalised name gifts and do all sorts of alphabet letters to make name pictures,  on the day of your birth pictures, Russian doll family pictures – she’s a very talented lady! All can be found at http://www.lucysworld.co.uk

By the time this was all sorted it was nearly 4:30 and my 3yo had fallen asleep. On getting home she was, understandably, tired, grumpy and fed up with the world. Frankly I understood exactly how she felt! I needed to get started on making dough for pizza though as we had lots of friends due to arrive at 8 for book club. Everyone else ate while I made pizza, wedges, salad, mozzarella and tomato with green pesto sticks and generally got things straight. To top off a bad day our au pair told us she wasn’t happy with us and wanted to leave – we found out the following morning the reason for this was she had decided that she did not want to drive because her confidence was very low and that she wanted to therefore be in a city where there was more of a social scene. I have some wonderful friends in book club who just stood and listened when they arrived – I don’t think I drew breath for 10 minutes. I am very grateful to them for it though, the advice they offered made a lot of sense and, subsequently, I was able to have a wonderful evening! The book we discussed was The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce and it was a super book, provoking a discussion that lasted over 2 hours!

Supper was this:

My husband and I stayed up talking until gone 1 – not a lot of sleep was had!

Leaf painting and moving forwards

I didn’t get to sleep until gone 1:30 and our 3yo woke me at 5:50 by patting me on the face harder and harder until I opened my eyes – there are many beautiful things about co-sleeping but having a talking and wriggling alarm clock next to your head is not one of them. Especially when it kicks you in the eye with a foot.

I had arranged to go running with one of the other women from book club so pottered about for 40 minutes and then headed out of the door to meet her. The children had all been awake for some time and had particularly enjoyed watching three huge rabbits on the bottom lawn – they all scarpered when I headed out of the kitchen door! The run was wonderfully head clearing – the sound of footstep following footstep and the satisfaction of pushing through the “this is hard” thoughts!

Breakfast was eggs on toast:

The girls were happily sat on a window seat in the lounge for this time watching a Partridge:

Following a lot more talking with our au pair we then had quesadillas for lunch:

The weather has continued to be grotty this afternoon so we did some leaf painting with leaves collected at the National Trust we went to at the weekend:

They really enjoyed it!

Supper was stew, dumplings and mash:

Early night beckoning I feel…

Language school for our au pair sorted!

We were lucky enough to be given some eggs yesterday from a friend’s chickens – they were tiny!!

Breakfast was some porridge with apple/strawberry puree and then poached eggs on toast!

This morning we had to go to enrol our au pair at her language school.  She did really well and is starting next Monday! The assessor said that they have other students from her country at the language school which our au pair was really pleased about!

Lunch was a jacket potato. I asked for the cheese and coleslaw to be on the side and I’m glad I did having seen some of the other potatoes!

This was how much of the sides were left:

Supper tonight was couscous with salad and garlic bread. Our au pair hadn’t ever had garlic bread before but absolutely loved it!

After all the small people had gone to sleep I finally got out for a run! I regretted not drying my kit last night though as it was beautiful weather first thing this morning and sheeting rain with lots of headwinds this evening 😦 I hadn’t switched the app on for the first half a mile so it was 3 miles in the end, done in 41ish minutes – I was able to run much more tonight, as shown in the last picture,  I’ve taken off the altitude line to make the speed clearer!

It’s getting there!! 🙂

A beach in the kitchen!

Breakfast today was pancakes – our 4yo has decided that she needs to eat a good breakfast every day to train for sports day. This morning she requested (and ate!) Porridge, pancake and scrambled egg! I just stuck to pancakes 😉

I hadn’t been organised to do an online shop so I went up to waitrose instead this morning. With 1yo and 3yo in tow. I know people go to supermarkets all the time with their children but frankly it would have been easier to take 2 goats. On speed. Back to the online shop next week!!

When we got back, lunch was a ham salad baguette:

It’s been really raining here today so before school pick-up we had lots of fun with a picture of a fire engine I found on an online colouring pages website, some glue and red squares of paper:

They then turned the kitchen table in to a train with the help of a duvet cover over the table and our 3yo announced they were off to the beach! Buckets, spades and shapes were produced and they played for ages pretending to make sandcastles – even our 1yo was really getting in to it! Who knew slate floor could be so much fun!

Supper was chilli lasagne with wedges and green beans:

A friend now hates me after I took her running.. ;)

Breakfast this morning was boiled eggs:

This morning I needed to go to a supermarket with our au pair so she could show me the veg she liked and the ones she really doesn’t. There are lots she likes thankfully and the ones she doesn’t are easy to work with!

Lunch was a cheese sandwich with fruit:

Our 4yo came bouncing out of school really excited to tell me that she’s gone on to new reading books at school but that she’s doing so well she’s actually gone up two levels and has skipped one level entirely! She was so thrilled to tell me – and also to tell me there is a school trip to the aquarium next week also for her class. Both of these overwhelmingly exciting things were enough in her eyes to cancel out the fact that today she’d lost the another school jumper which is now 3 in 4 months. Despite them all being labelled the first two have never been found – annoying given one was lost on its first day and the other was only a week old. It would be nice if they were found but on the bright side it’s getting warmer now and we’re changing school in September to send them to a private school so hopefully she’ll hang on to enough to get through to the end of term!

It was not only our 4yo who had good news today – we found out the car we looked at over the weekend will be ours! It’s a Land Rover Discovery 3 and is absolutely beautiful!  With only 47, 000 miles on the clock it has a lot of life in it yet but it also has 7 seats in it which means we can all fit in the car when we go out! We’re picking it up at the weekend, very exciting!

Supper was fajitas tonight but I forgot to take a photo!

After the children had gone to bed I went out running with a friend, she hasn’t run before but did really well! I don’t quite know what was up with my gps though as we certainly didn’t do the return mile in 11 minutes and also my phone thought it was only half a mile back, oh well! Encouragingly, I found tonight really really easy with the extra walking which shows how much I have progressed and was a nice recovery run!