First snow and Grandparents visit

Last Sunday morning we woke up to a small dusting of snow in the garden. Thankfully we weren't going to church in the morning as we were going at 4pm to our Advent Carol service. Which you can catch on www.clayton.tv and click on New Programmes and it's in there. A wonderful choir this year. Stuart unfortunately was really ill with a horrible cold. No, that isn't man flu, he was genuinely ill, he never gets ill and I haven't seen him look that bad in 10 years.


Then on Monday we had Nana and Grandpa (Stuart's parents) visiting. Stuart was ill for the first few days and spent a lot of it in bed, but he perked up towards the end of the week and we had another trip out to Plessey Woods and Alice had to hold Nana and Grandpa's hand the whole way round. It was the first time Alice really knew who they were. It took her about 10 minutes to warm up and then was showing them all her toys. Every time we went anywhere Alice kept saying "Nana, and" Which meant she wanted Nana to hold her hand (and).


This is just a funny photo of Alice wearing her hat with Iggle Piggle (from In the Night Garden, the only TV programme she will watch) in her pyjamas.

I was going to post a video, but will do it later, as we're now using Picasa 3 which means you can do something new fangled with video, but I'm not sure where they're saved and how to upload them. Waiting to see if there's a quick and helpful wee tip Stuart can impart. If you don't use Picasa it really is worthwhile, it's brilliant. It's free from Google.

Alice Baking

This is Alice's first foray into baking. We were making banana muffins. She loves them. No salt and very low sugar, made with wholemeal flour and bananas and seeds in them, very healthy. This is Alice mushing the bananas.


Once the butter was melted, Alice stirred the sugar and eggs together.

Then stir in the flour, round and round; only a little help from Daddy.


She was also very good at putting the muffin cases into the muffin tin. I showed her how to do the first one, the next one she pushed down too hard and squashed it quite a bit. Then after that she just gently placed them into the available spaces.

Mummy put them in the oven and when they were ready Alice took Mummy's hand and sat on my knee whilst we watched Daddy take them out of the very hot oven. She really enjoyed baking the muffins and she enjoyed eating one after dinner too. Then I just put them into freezer bags and freeze them. When she's having one I get it out of the freezer and defrost in the microwave. They are a firm favourite in our house. I think Daddy quite enjoyed it too.

Kelso 08

Hi all, never fear, we have just been away for a week in Kelso, in the Scottish Borders. The cottage was beautiful and we needed the holiday. We've been back nearly a week, now but it has been fairly hectic. There wasn't a great deal to do in November with a toddler, but the point was to get away and relax, which we certainly did. It was also our 8th wedding anniversary whilst we were away. A local caterer provides meals for people in their cottages. So we did that and had a cosy meal for two after Alice went to bed. This is the view from the back of the cottage.


We bought a new back pack for Alice, as she really enjoys walking around now when we're out, we rarely take the pram any more. However, in order to walk a bit further we bought this so that when she wants up she can be in this. However, she only really liked being in it for about 15 mins. It was really cold when this picture was taken and she cried the whole way because she wouldn't keep her gloves on and her hands were freezing.


The cottage was in a row of three. Ours was the furthest, but this was just a beautiful picture with the sun going down and glowing on the cottages.


Every time we got into the car Alice would say "ome", home. We would say "no, we're going ..." or, "we're going back to the cottage". She would always say home. Then when we were actually going home, we got to a round about fairly near our house and she said "ome" and then again when we got to the end of our street. So we think she was glad to be home. This is her trying to get into the cottage in her new wellie boots. There was a wee children's shoe shop in Kelso and so we were able to buy her these. They are green with leaves and snails on them. A walker commented on how gorgeous they were on one walk as she passed by.


Just a cute picture of Alice. Shortly after this she wanted out of the back pack and cried the whole way back!!!!