Together

Joining in, as part of my post-every-day April theme, with The Gallery at Sticky Fingers, Tara’s blog for the first time in aaaaages. It’s a sign of how long we’ve all been blogging that I remember week six and she’s now on week 136.

The theme this week is Together. My four children fight like demons, but they love each other fiercely, too.

Gathering these photos made me feel quite proud. They’re a lovely bunch of horrorchops – and time passes SO fast.

christmas traditions

When I started quizzing Ross about his Christmas traditions and he looked bemused, I realised perhaps our family is a bit deranged. My mum has been known to call me in September and discuss Christmas table colour themes and a couple of years ago I managed to completely Christmas myself out by buying and wrapping all the presents before October half term. We have all sorts of mad rituals and I love them all, especially the new pjs under the tree on Christmas Eve as a special early present.

So it was with huge glee (me and the six year olds), slight suspicion (the eight year old) and varying levels of reluctance (Ross and the 12 and ten year olds) that we visited Santa’s Grotto this weekend. But when we peeked into the magical room and saw THIS everyone was amazed, even they cynical big ones.

Actual Santa. The real Father Christmas. With a REAL beard and actual white hair and everything. And pretty impressive jewellery.

Anyway I couldn’t help noticing that there seems to be a letter from a certain ten year old tucked into the little bag on the mantlepiece, so I think visiting Santa is one tradition we’ll be keeping up for a while to come.

This is our first Christmas as a family of eight, so we’re making things up as we go along. If you have a family tradition you’d like to share in the comments, I’d love to hear!

hallowe’en in the seaside house

Before we moved to the seaside house I promised the children a Hallowe’en party as a settling-in present. I happen to love Hallowe’en, so it wasn’t really a hardship for me.

(me being a witch last year)

So R and I went slightly mad in Southport’s shops and filled the house with cobwebs and children and chocolate and cake.

And yes, that glass of wine in the bath was bliss. Next stop Christmas! (You’ll hate me if I say I’ve already been planning – and shopping – won’t you?)

sixteen hands between my legs

God I miss horses. It’s a bloody evil addiction which sneaks up on you when you’re not looking. I’ve been delivering no1 daughter to riding school for four weeks now and I can tell there’s no point in fighting this.

Off she went this morning and the urge to grab the (perfectly suitable for me, 15 hands cob) horse from her and jump on was overwhelming. Then she was pootling round the indoor school and I (ex-riding instructor) was hissing ‘heels DOWN’ every time she came past and willing her to tighten her reins.

Fortunately logic gave me a poke in the ribs (well, Rory started yelling loudly that THIS PLACE SMELLS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE POO) and I realised this is her time, not mine, and I made a silent exit from the viewing gallery to daydream over the following.

If you didn’t get bitten with the pony bug as a child, the sight of a wheelbarrow and a muck heap is unlikely to do it for you. But for those of you who remember weekends spent doing anything, anything to help and feel important at riding school, and for those of you blessed with a horse filled childhood, you’ll get this.

I’m booking myself on a beach ride next week. Photos to follow. (Yippee)

I love this new life

Created with flickr slideshow.

I was going to make this a blog post and edit photos and do all that stuff. But d’you know what? This says it all. Watch it and see, instead. I am gloriously happy. I love this seaside life and these people.

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I’ve discovered that for some reason the photo slideshow doesn’t work on iPad or iPhone. So if you click here you can see the whole set on my Flickr account. R x