Trying out Geocaching

Last weekend my friend Nikki posted on Facebook what a great time she spent with her family geocaching. It's like a treasure hunt where you use your phone as a gps and find a certain point, often interesting or beautiful. When you find it you sign the log book and put in a little something that you brought with you, swapping it for something you take out of the box.
I'd seen it as an activity option at Center Parcs when we were there at the beginning of January but we weren't sure if our boys are too young to manage the maps and gps.
Today we tried it. We downloaded the free app and had a look- there are LOADS! More than 2 million, in 185 different counties. And they are everywhere! We picked one to find a 10 minute drive from our house, and we passed a few other areas on our way.
We found a castle we had never seen and had a great time, despite a grumpy baby (probably his second time ever being grumpy in his whole life so I couldn't really complain) and freezing rain. When the gps said we were pretty close we had to have a real search to find the cache but we found it! Really quite exciting, and I bet it could become quite addictive. We did another one on our way home!
So we have found a new favourite :) Outdoorsy, educational, fun and FREE to do with family. You can't beat that!!

TRY IT WHERE YOU ARE!

December is BUSY, and I haven't even done anything Christmassy yet!

Hello!

It has been months and months and I think I'd better stop filling up Facebook with photos, so I'm going back to blogging (I think!)

The past week has been a whirlwind of family, friends, parties, food and LOADS of children!! Oliver turned four, we crammed 12 kids plus three of our own, into our house, we made a foiled-covered rocket (it survived at least four children and three balloons in there at once) Jacob was blessed by Ben at our church, I singlehandedly looked after six children for more than three days (three of my friend's, three of my own- oldest was 7...) And the inlaws, outlaws, a couple of brothers and my Nanna came up all for a flyingvisit for the blessing. It has been wonderful, and now I feel like I need to sleep for a week!

Update + Christmas!

It has been a long time! It is mainly down to me not being very techy and having trouble making this blog app work on our tablet :s But everything is going well for us right now and we are feeling rather Christmassy! This year we have two trees, Ben had grown up with a fake tree and I always had a real tree so I am always a bit sad with our fake tree every year (Ben says a real tree is "inefficient!" Ha) but some friends told us where they had seen some Christmas trees for free (nothing inefficient about that!) so we had a little look through and found one I loved! Then our friend even brought it to our door on his car roof, lucky us! So we have a real one in the lounge decorated by me and a fake one in our kitchen/dining room decorated by Ben (still baubles to go on I think). Haha best of both worlds and even better that it was free :)

The boys: Oliver starts Playgroup in January and is now in a toddler bed having just turned three last week with a train party. He is definitely still a train boy, and particularly excited about the Santa Express we will be going on next week (a train ride where Father Christmas is on it too!!) Zachy is saying some words nowadays!! He says up, down, Dada, Mum, cheese, please, ta, hello, yes, no and amen and he makes a lot of animal noises and can chug like a train (of course!) This is a great breakthrough for him some he has always been the point-and-grunt type :) He loves running some giving us all cuddles and he loves to "bundle" Oliver (they say "bund-O!!!") The boys are often tackling each other (and us) to the floor, they just love it. I am looking forward to having lots of one-to-one time with Zach while Oliver is at Playgroup.

I am really looking forward to Christmas this year, and making it extra special to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and not getting totally carried away by presents (although there will be quite a few of those too!!) In between talking to the boys about Father Christmas and making reindeer paintings with their feet we have been talking and reading books about the true meaning of Christmas and we will be doing some acting out with them on Christmas Eve :) I think we will all play Wise men, Shepherds and everyone else all at once! We have also been watching some of these lovely, short Bible videos which are very simple and absolutely beautiful and made by our Church. http://www.lds.org/bible-videos/videos/the-nativity?lang=eng

Happy Christmas!

Oliver the Tank Engine

I began writing this post a month ago, time got away from me!

I used to keep a daily journal, then when I became a Mum I wrote a couple of times a week, and now I have fallen off altogether! I am determined to get back on track since I have a hopeless memory (really, I have next to no memories of my childhood) and such lovely things are passing me by and I refuse to forget them and not be grateful for them!

So I have started scribbling the odd funny quote from Oliver, or something I want to remember about Zach and thought that I'd share, since they do totally crack me up :) And there are times and seasons for everything, and that is better than nothing!

Oliver the Tank Engine

Oliver has been obsessed with trains as long as I can remember. Definitely for 6 months, plus some probably. He can link trains to any conversion, and he chugs (moves his arms like pistons as though he is a train) from room to room and outside... anywhere! He doesn't walk, he doesn't run- he chugs. When Ben gets home from work Oliver greets him with,  "Hello Daddy! Let's chug around!" and so they do- around and around the sofas. It is very difficult to get him to stop, the most effective way my Dad found was to yell "red light!" and then "turntable!" and my lovely train/boy obediently stops and turns around.

It is hard work getting him away from his train set at mealtimes ("No! I want to chug away!") but once he is up to the table the train love continues. He suddenly gives a big sigh and says, "let's talk about steam trains!" And off he goes, chatting about funnels and how many wheels James has. We had cheese toasties for lunch today. When his came out of the grill Oliver said, "Ooh! There's STEAM- Woo-ooh!" Then he had a sip of his orange juice, which had just come out of the fridge:"ooh! It's cold! Like Percy! He says, "I want a scarf, I want a scarf!" (A favourite episode..)

He bumped his head the other day, I offered to rub and kiss it better. He bowed his head to me and said, "kiss my funnel"!! Sometimes he chugs in slow motion, really puffing and showing the strain, "ooh, it's rea-lly har-d, up Gor-dons's hi-ll..." and when I tell him he is a good boy he answers, "My not a boy, my a tank engine!" Our new favourite game is to turn on Classic FM and to use it as our chugging soundtrack. Dvorjak symphony number 9 was a big hit this week: "There's a cow on the track!" "The fat controller is going past on his bike!" Any piece will do, slow and beautiful ("It's a nice day for a chug around the Island of Sodor") or fast and frantic ("Hurry, hurry, hurry, sing the coaches")

The boy is hilarious, and every day brings a new train-related adventure.

Pants

On Sunday afternoon I began potty training Oliver. He doesn't quite get it yet,  and has ZERO desire to sit in the potty or to give any notice at all... or even tell me when he's done something in his pants. I suppose I have got to laugh. The only reason I decided the time was right was because he keeps fishing around in his nappy and poking it out, or to the side, etc,  so we were having lots of accidents even with the nappy on!! What a game.  I just hung the washing out.  There were eight pairs of pants on the line- the work of two afternoons! The tally stands at 11 accidents, 1 (flukey!) success, plus 1 time where I caught him happily in action and we managed to get the tail end on the potty.

The only way is up!

Fergus Connor, Aberdeenshire photographer

On Friday 10th May our friend and brilliant photographer, Fergus Connor, spent some time with us doing a photoshoot. He was absolutely amazing: everything was so natural and fun- nothing was stressful or forced which was even more impressive when you consider our fairly uncooperative small boys! Even the fact that Oliver jumped and then fell in a big puddle didn't stop him! It was just a lot of fun. I am so pleased with what Fergus got. Now to choose one for the wall...!

Christmas!

This year we are spending Christmas up here in Aberdeen, just the four of us. We feel very grown-up, and so far we haven't forgotten anything important like the cranberry sauce, yorkshire puds or cheese and crackers. Phew!

So far the family fun has consisted of:

- a visit to THE best Grotto in the world, at BA Country Stores. It was decked out in a huge, moving winter wonderland and Santa's workshop, with bits of trucks being assembled travelling over our heads and on conveyor belts... oh wow. Then Father Christmas spent so long with us, and reeled Oliver nicely in with a haribo sweet. Brilliant!!

- a cinema trip to see 'Brave' (great!!) which only costed £2.70, AND the boys were very good throughout- followed by a trip to McDonalds!! We both hadn't been for sooo long and we bought Oliver his first Happy Meal...! The chips went down a storm.

- lots of Christmassy baking

- Ben being poorly so we all snuggled in bed to cheer him up

- we made a gingerbread ruin!!! (the 'roof' is made of strawberry laces... we ran out of icing sugar to stick the real roof on!)

- more Christmassy baking- this is Ben and Oliver making mince pies together. So lovely

- before bed on Christmas Eve, the boys acting out all the parts in the Nativity

- leaving out a home-made mince pie for Santa and a carrot for the Reindeer. Oliver didn't think S.C. would need a drink, instead he was adamant for us to leave the mince pie in the cup

- Christmas day lunch!

- My husband looking especially handsome in his new jumper

... and it's only Boxing day!! More excitement when Ben's brother and sister come to visit at the weekend, yippee!