Pentreaths in "Abbydeen"!

Last week was halfterm so we had my Mum and Dad and three of my brothers come to stay! We had a super time sealwatching, sand dune climbing, Planet Earth series watching, Pizza eating, Halloween party going, Mountain climbing and freezing cold picnicing.

I only brought my camera on a couple of the days, but here are the boys at the beach esplanade in Aberdeen:

One day we met up with a church friend from Ipswich who is a seasoned mountain climber and was staying in Cairngorm National Park (the HUGE National Park in Scotland) He took us on an outrageously rugged and beautiful hike up to a waterfall and by crags and corries and sheep and just the most spectacular scenery ever. The photos don't do any of it justice, but they do prove that we went!

Oliver: on Dada, Ducks and Raspberries

Apparently he looks like me, but with Ben's "serious expressions." Ha! :)

Teaching little children!

Hello!

It would seem that I have ended up in the "family business" after all- teaching. Last month I was asked to be a Primary teacher at church. Primary is the name we give to children's 'Sunday School'. I usually have a group of five children aged 6-8 and I teach them for about 35 minutes each Sunday morning. They come out with the funniest comments. I was trying to explain the word "sober" (as another word for serious, not to do with drinking!) and a clever little girl, Julia, put her hand up and asked, "Err, do you mean sofa??" Another funny moment was when the children were aked what they thought "poor in heart" could mean (to be pure and humble, not literally lacking in money) and there were ideas from "Ooh, I think that means they're dying!" to "That's what you get when you eat too much"! It's a laugh a minute.

Oliver has a sad but new trait... he gets very angry when sees that we have food that is different from his. He squeals and screams until I realise that he just wants a bit of my toast (instead of his cereal), and once I give him a bit he is blissfully happy and gobbles it down.This morning I came up with the cunning plan to make a barrier with the milk carton and a box of cereal so he couldn't see the toast I was eating (he had banana). It worked! :)

Oliver also gets frustrated if we don't feed him quickly enough. If there is as much as a second gap between Ben feeding him a spoonful of yoghurt, him swallowing it and the next spoonful he grunts and flails his arms wildly!! Agh, I can't believe our 10-month old has a temper already!!

Apart from that, he continues to delight and amaze us, although I'm convinced he will NEVER say anything apart from "Dada". We repeat "Mama", "Duck" and "Dog" to him alllll the time, but he just smiles in acknowledgement, and launches back into how much he just lurrrrves Dada! But it is lovely hearing him croon himself to sleep telling the world about his Dada, and then wakes doing just the same thing! What a silly sausage.

BP

I am officially a BP fan. Of course, I'm not the one working there, but from my unique wife-y perspective, the working hours are GREAT. Ben works 8am- 5pm 9 days in every two weeks... because he gets every other Friday off! Very nice. In fact, I've always said that BP feels a bit like 'The Firm' (John Grisham) cos they treat you so well, surely something has to be wrong?!! I love that film.

I digress... It turns out we really do get a discount on petrol! That made us laugh.

Another thing was that on Friday Ben amazingly got us tickets to the last BP Dinner Dance- basically a free, BP party! There were over 300 people there, sat a big round tables, so it was a pretty grand affair. It was outrageously glitzy- in a big hotel, with arty food, and LOTS of cutlery and glasses, and a really amazing, but slightly crazy live band. Shiny lights and everything!

After three scrummy courses and lots of wine (or water for us! - apparently they'd have to charge me for orange juice... even when I reminded the waitress that it was probably cheaper than wine, but no luck...) we boogied on down, and Ben cracked out all his crazy moves. He is GOOD! I always feel completely rubbish dancing next to him, but I feel cool to be with him!

Here we are-

Ben was quite sad to leave around 11pm since the dancing was in full force, but we had left Oliver with a new babysitter, and he's getting into the habit of waking for his first feed before midnight!! What made everything totally wonderful was our babysitter, Christine, was having the best time ever watching the first two Star Wars films, and Oliver had just started to stir as we got back around 11.30pm! Superb. Christine was brilliant and we got on well too! Ahh, it's also a major relief of motherhood when your baby behaves exactly like you told someone they will, and didn't scare her away!

Hurrah, I love BP. Ben has also had his first paycheck now, so that helps! :)