We’ve just returned from a really lovely break away in the Lake District.

We stayed in Heaning in this lovely little cottage, one of three made from a converted barn.

We wandered up to Stockghyll force in Ambleside to admire all the lovely waterfalls there.

Careful there Rich!

Sam all togged up for his tree trekking adventure – he loved it and was racing ahead of me on the course.

Emily looks pretty happy here, unfortunately she turned out not to be a big fan of the tree top obstacle course though she managed to make it all the way round and loved the aerial slide at the end.

After so much climbing ice creams were needed.

During a wander around Grasmere lots of sheep were spotted.

Having a well earned rest from wandering.

We spent a really lovely day at Allan Bank – a lovely National Trust property with a really relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

While out looking for pumpkins around Allan Bank Rich wanted to point out yet another lovely view.

After much pumpkin spotting there was enough time for a bit of rope swinging.

Next day we made another trip to a National Trust property – this time it was Wray Castle.

We joined in with a shadow puppet performance which was great fun.

The latest local royalty enjoying their new realm.

On our way to find the Cathedral cavern we were quite amused by this road sign…

We managed to find our way up to the disused quarry – should have known it was not going to be an easy trek with having to climb up a tricky stone stile just to get on the path up to this sign.

The main cavern was very impressive.

Here is Rich and the kids waving down to me in the cavern  after a very impressive climb.

And after a bit of a struggle I managed to join my family of intrepid climbers 🙂

On our final day we visited an original 17th century farmhouse called Townend.

It was heavily wood carved by an earlier owner, I loved the room containing the library there.

Before heading home we drove over to Blackpool.

Sam said hello to the sea.

And we stayed late enough to admire the illuminations.

A very Happy Christmas from all of us at Tea Towers!

Watch the video below and see if you can guess which song Emily is singing.

We are pretty sure it’s Emily’s rendition of “Let it go” from Frozen. I’m not sure why this has lodged itself in her head as she has only seen the film once…

We had a really lovely day for our Tea Towers summer BBQ – can’t quite believe just how sunny it has been here over the last week.

The gazebo (once we managed to get it up) did a great job of keeping the sun off those enjoying the garden. We also had the paddling pool out which was very, very popular with all the kids who spend hours splashing and jumping in and out of it. Rich did a great job with cooking up burgers, sausages and tasty kebabs on the BBQ while various friends helped out with the washing up in the kitchen.

Thanks to all the friend who came and made the day so much fun.

We’ve got some lovely photos of the kids all jumping about in the pool – so if you want to have copies of any photos we have of your little ones just let me know and I’ll email them out to you.

Spring finally seems to have sprung here in sunny Manchester – and crazed with all the excitement about finally seeing the sun we decided to have a go at growing some of our own vegetables.

The first step towards accomplishing this aim was to mark out where we wanted to put in our exciting new ‘raised beds’ and then dig up the turf in those spots.
While we had been busy doing this Sam had been occupied with watering the flowers so hadn’t really been paying attention to what was going on. When he saw that his daddy had dug a big hole out of the grass he dropped his watering can in shock.

After much digging and turf removing both Rich and myself were worn out. Time to call in the professionals we thought.

Very kindly Eric had already put together some simple frames for our raised bed and brought them round to hopefully fit our recently dug holes.

Phase II involves us visiting a gardening centre and doing a bit of shopping for hardy vegetables so hopefully we’ll have some exciting ‘veg growing’ photos to show you all soon…

Little Emily is very almost 5 months old now – the time has flown past, I’ve never know my life to move so quickly before. So before she goes and gets any bigger I thought I should post a quick photo of her here and let you know how she is doing.

Emily is really good at flashing her huge smile at people. She is still wearing her 0-3 month clothing but is growing fine – today she weighed in at 11 lb 11 oz. Emily has just started grabbing objects and shaking rattles, and also likes to squeal  in a very high pitch. She is also just starting to get ticklish and will chuckle when you nibble her ribs 🙂

Sam is also doing really well. He goes to pre-school 4 times a week and loves his time playing there. All the staff at the pre-school think he is wonderful and I regularly get told how polite and well behaved he is. Sam is really into making puzzles at the moment as well as spending quite a bit of time playing with his kitchen and providing us all with ‘tea’ (both the drink and the evening meal) regularly. Sam also seems to be a bit more interested in painting and drawing so hopefully I’ll be able to convince him to start making pictures and cards for you all.

Thanks for checking in on us – I will try and be much better about posting here this year, now we are pretty settled in to our new Northern home I want to be able to share our family photos with you all more regularly.

Sorry for the lack of posting recently – life has been surprisingly busy without anything much to report about. Because the house is pretty much looking how we want it now I thought it high time I took you on a tour of it… however Sam got hold of the camera so this has now become a tour from Sam’s perspective.

 

Now I’m off to recharge the camera battery, perhaps when it has some more power I’ll let Sam take you on another tour upstairs 🙂

 

It has been almost 3 weeks since our little Emily joined us and even though both Rich and I are pretty tired most of the time (Sam never seems to be tired – I wish I had his energy!) things seem to be going surprisingly well. Little Emily is a very placid baby and so far likes chewing fingers and blankets, surprise headbutting, sleeping and having her milk. Sam seems fond of Emily too – he loves to pat her head and give her kisses and will occasionally put one of his toys in her moses basket for her to play with.

Because Sam is such a ball of energy we’ve had to start getting out and about again. This is a bit of a mission for us at the moment as although Sam walks well we usually have at least a mile walk to get to any of the things we do in the week. So when Rich is about we all head off together each pushing one of the buggies and can travel a little further afield like we did this weekend when we went to a lovely little local park.

Most of you will know of Sam’s recent obsession with all things Thomas the Tank Engine. He was very lucky to receive plenty of Thomas related Birthday presents this year (including a Thomas cake) so it was hardly a surprise that he was very excited to be going on a miniature railway at the park. The miniature railway was everything we could have hoped for. I’m not sure what I was expecting – some sort of simple little train thing going round with a few carriages attached perhaps? The miniature railway was just that – proper small scale engines that really burnt coal and could pull a surprising amount for their tiny size.

Sam had a great time and ended up having 3 rides on both an electric train and a steam train. The little engines go surprisingly fast and were quite tricky to photograph but hopefully you can get an idea of just how wonderful they were from this photo. I’ve now decided that I too love all things trains and I’m tempted to try and become a member of the Sale Area Model Engineering Society just so that I can have a go at driving one!