This week Tea Towers was deep in snow and so most of our local schools were closed.
Time to get on warm coats and pokemon hats and get out in the snow.
Extra socks were needed to cope with cold toes.
Though short of carrots Sam still managed to complete his snowman’s features with a handy apple.
After warming up from snowman building we popped over to a friend’s house for a quick snow battle in their garden.
Sam taking revenge for a vicious snowball head shot.
Emily ready to take on everyone.
The last month has flown by here in Tea Towers (to be honest so has all of 2018…) but I thought I would quickly share some of our festive photos from the last month…
Emily took part in her last school Christmas performance – “Christmas with the Aliens”, we’ve enjoyed hearing her singing all the songs leading up to it and in this photo she is standing along side another girl next to the Christmas tree on stage.
Sam joined his school choir in performing at our local Walkden gardens as well as at a local Residential home – “feliz navidad!”
We really enjoyed decorating the tree (and Emily) when Nanny & Granddad came to visit.
Much building of Christmas Lego also took place.
We managed to get our Gingerbread house baked and assembled without any collapsing walls this year
Many lovely presents were opened on Christmas day – thanks to everyone & Christmas thank yous to come soon!
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.
Sam & Emily tried their first Karate sparring competition today and I’m so proud of how they both did. Emily took on a much more confident fighter and even though she got a little more bashed than she is used to she kept going, even managing a beautiful head kick.
Sam sparred with the older section and got a Bronze medal in his small group of 3 fighters. He tried really hard to keep up using plenty of techniques and trying to follow all the instructions being fired at him.
I loved seeing them both give it a go – was great fun and a great way to support our fantastic Karate club.
Much Lego planning and technical wizardry has been in action in Tea Towers recently. Rich had decided Emily needed her own night light for her room and so decided to build it for her himself.
This being Rich involved an Arduino board with some (not his most elegant) code to make the 3 neo pixels (lights to the rest of us) flicker in slightly different ways to try to simulate the glow from inside the house, the water flowing on one side and the lava glimmering on the other.
Ta dah! Possibly the coolest night light around if you are a huge fan of Minecraft like Emily and Sam both are. In fact they are both so delighted about this new night light that they have agreed to a weekly rota to take turns with it.
I’m slightly worried about putting Emily/Sam to bed with a night light that has a zombie wielding an spade on top, however at least the Enderman round the side of the house is holding out a block with a flower on top.
We are coming up fast to the end of the holidays so I thought I would quickly share a few photos of what we have been up to here in Tea Towers.
Junk modelling in the garden (homes for ‘Higgledies’)
Hama beading with friends.
Water bomb making before an epic garden water fight.
Face painting with Emily’s new favourite game character ‘Higgledy’
Building Lego castles for their ninjas.
Eating sensible lunches.
Only healthy food to see here, honest!
Improving our crown green bowling skills.
And lastly decorating cakes for a hungry daddy.
We are all delighted that the Summer holidays are finally here and our days have been pretty packed so far with meeting up with local friends, fish sitting for friends on holiday, working on the local library Summer reading challenge and a few other busy things.
We joined the Sale Wombles helping to litter pick in our local play park with lots of other enthusiastic helpers. Sam and Emily were really excited by the chance to help clear up by using the litter pickers and did a fantastic job.
Sam & Emily had a good explore around the National Coal Mining Museum with Emily getting to go underground 140 metres to find out more about what mining was like.
We’ve also spent a day exploring the lovely Beeston Castle with friends.
Sam and Emily got to have a try learning some basic sword fighting moves to become apprentice knights. We then had a trek up to the top and into the main keep and when we had recovered (we’re not used to going up hills in lovely flat Sale) we blew bubbles from the top.
Things have been busy as always here at Tea Towers so I thought it high time I shared a few recent photos of what we’ve been up to…
Our furry friends have come back outside from their garage home winter home and have been getting plenty of cuddles.
Sam has been learning how to fly his new drone at the park and seems to be doing pretty well at it, though occasionally has to discourage curious dogs.
We took our Rainbows group out on parade with a large number of other guiding and scouting groups from the district.
Sam also joined his Cub group in the parade around the park.
Emily had an important lady come to visit who had two policemen with her and she informs me also runs the country… though she isn’t too sure of her name.
Lastly we’ve also been busy in the kitchen making healthy snacks like these dark chocolate and peanut butter brownies 🙂
A very Happy Christmas from all of us at Tea Towers!
Sam and Emily have been super excited about World book day this year, over the past week I’ve been putting together their costumes and they couldn’t wait to put them on this morning.
Sam and I have recently started reading the first Harry Potter book together which he is loving and so it was unsurprising that he wanted to dress as Harry. His costume was quite easy to put together with the help of the lovely internet…
Felt tie – http://onesweetappetite.com/2016/03/felt-harry-potter-ties-house-flags/
School robes – https://www.fairfieldworld.com/2015/07/easy-olyfun-harry-potter-costume/
Gryffindor badge – http://zitzmanfam.blogspot.com/2012/02/10-points-to-gryffindor.html
Wizard’s wand – https://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/easy-ways-to-throw-an-epic-harry-potter-hallowe?utm_term=.qunbeMYy2
Now Emily had other ideas when it came to how to choose her World book day costume… she decided to choose the outfit she liked best and say that the book containing that character was her favourite. So she asked to be Lettice the rabbit from the well known title “Lettice – the Birthday party”.
Unfortunately no online help avaliable for this one so I had to come up with a sparkly petal skirt, sequined top (though first attempt to simply glue glitter to the first top using watered down white glue ended up with a unbendable top that would no longer stretch over Emily’s head…), tiara attached to bunny ears and then a pom pom tail at the back.
She loved it and has been in character all evening 🙂