Weekending

We spent the weekend in Hull with friends, at their housewarming/Halloween party and generally enjoying a bit of a catch up. Oh how I missed this lovely lady.

Anyhow, Halloween-ing and Lorraine's delicious baking. The children helped with the icing. ;)

And three little Witchlings ready for a party. Rowan has *not* in fact got over her sheer blind terror at people in masks. Dave's wonderful work colleagues and friends were so sweet about it, and took off their masks for her. Well, she was hiding in the living room refusing to say hi to them at that point, a pitiful little quivering ball of frightened two year old hiding in my arms.

She warmed up to everyone after that, and was soon telling anyone who would listen, "Look, I has got a costume too! Look a- my pretty dress, has spots on it, has a bow on it!"

Jenna stayed up til the early hours, bossing the adults around and playing Rock Band (she sang Bohemian Rhapsody all by herself and knew all the words). *proud* The next day we cleaned up after the party, played a dance game for a bit, and then went off for a lovely walk on the beach.

The weather was surprisingly mild and the beach was beautiful.






Beach art Mermaid.





I love the sea. I need to breathe the salt air, and watch the waves.

I feel so much better, more centered and peaceful. I've been cared for by friends, chatted, been Sarah-myself not just Sarah-mama, had moments of alone beachcombing, related to the children somewhat more calmly now we're all feeling better, and generally had quite a holiday for saying it was barely two days. :)

Autumn Season Table

How quickly we are heading into Winter again!

Edited Highlights

The bits of our week that didn't involve tears...


Garden games, and den building. Trains... Really the majority of our time spent cuddled up watching endless cartoons (Jenna), nursing (Roo), eating (the bottomless pit of a four year old), and reading (me). But, you know, there were bits of the week I did want to document. Sometimes I feel like no matter how often, and how authentically, I blog - it just always ends up being the very narrowly edited highlights.


A normal amount of mess and chaos. Why do the wellies (and Rowan's shed PJ top) live on my living room floor? Shouty mama omitted from all these updates as ever lol: although I have been very tired and very fed up and not the nicest mama in the world, I *have* lost my voice... So, not shouty, much, but only because I can't. :S

Jenna's map of Ancient Greece. The only thing we've done on Story of the World in weeks and weeks, but who cares? I'm proud. :)

We made cakes too. And candles.


Just as they are getting back to normal I am at my most ill. So today, well, mostly colouring sheets again lol. Thanks, Pinterest, for leading me to Barb's Galaxy.

I don't know, sometimes I don't know how we got through the week, or how we'll get through the next one. I don't want things to be like this. I want the world in my photographs, the one where we did stuff and enjoyed the world and look like we actually want to spend time together. :(

Late Knitting and Reading again

Reading: Atlantis. Ack. It was cheap for a reason. One of those thrillers where the author is really passionate about a particular obscure area of expertise and so spends most of the novel trying to explain it to the reader by means of having the characters engage in those ridiculous stilted conversations (you know, the ones where a group of professional divers keep telling each other what all their techy-jargon acronyms stand for). Ah well, I wasn't expecting much from it, but I really did need something non-demanding to read!

Knitting: improvised rainbow star dishcloth. I'm a bit in love with this. I might have to make a lot more of them...

Babies, all getting better today but still coughing terribly. I have no voice and am more flu-y than ever though. Narnia DVD, toast for dinner, more honey and lemon, some encouragement to the children to play outside when they want to make noise, and a lot of activity sheets are in order I think!

With Daddy

A walk to the woods for two recovering bigger girls while me and Roo stay wrapped in our blankets.








Martin tells me Jenna is reading a note left from the fairies, here.


I'm feeling just a little bit stir crazy, myself, but their chests do sound so much worse in the cold and I'm still struggling to stay upright for very long. Short trips with Daddy are about our limit right now! *sigh* Well, he took some beautiful pictures of my precious daughters, anyhow. They cheered me up a bit. :)

Still poorly!

Ohhh yes indeedy.

Three coughing hot-to-the-touch sleepy beans *still*.

And I set the pattern for our week by passing out yesterday waiting for my lunch. :S The doctors said they could fit me in the same day, and I have a novel one to add to the list of reasons I'm crap at pregnancy; low blood volume, low blood pressure. Take it easy, drink lots of water, carry on my embarrassing pregnancy tradition of randomly sitting on the floor at regular intervals when out and about. Argh.

I'm going now, before I get really whiney. :(

Projects, Ordinary Life, Mayhem, Magic, and Other Stuff

Yeah, I know, another week of no news from me and then a big catch up all in one go. Partly I'm just not getting around to uploading pictures at the moment, and partly I'm hiding out (stressed, tired, ill, etc). Sorry, I miss you all, and I will try to visit your blogs soon and leave some love!

I don't want to wish away these last weeks of pregnancy. In some ways the baby coming very soon is the least stressful thing of all.

Other things get me down: like toddlers waking in the middle of the night and disturbing each others' sleep; siblings arguing over every little thing from sun up to sun down; children (and me) coming down with a cold and hiding under blankets for large portions of time; workmen coming and going inspecting the loft and finishing off in the boiler cupboard (don't ask); food not stretching as far as it ought; to-do lists just getting longer; friends ill and struggling and all kinds of other unfixable things...

Anyhow, the other stuff. I like to think the good bits are the "real" stuff, and everything else is just temporary distraction. Endlessly optimistic? Moi?

The castle was left behind after an entire crowd of small children visited to play with Jenna for an hour. They were a bit taken aback by the wooden toys for a few minutes! I love left-behind scenes like this, though, finding all the little characters and wondering what stories were created and lived by them (largely missed by me at the time, in the chaos).

Morgan has been playing a lot with the magnetic mosaics Emma bought us years ago in a charity shop. I couldn't believe it when I saw her carefully and accurately copying a design from the package insert. Gosh she really is growing up, isn't she?


The contents of a Waldorf swap from the other side of the world. <3
Rowan with the trains, another neglected toy getting a lot of play recently.

My bump again. Harder to forget there's a baby in there now! On that front, all is well. Baby is very very low, head down and behaving beautifully. Wiggling around, but not making me feel nearly so bruised as the others did by now!

Big girl, poorly, playing on Poisson Rouge.

Batch cooking egg muffins for lots of hungry people. (Thankyou, Pinterest!)

Morgie-sweetness, colouring Mandalas again.

And Jenna, very nearly beating me at Carcassone.

Letter writing station. I must credit Pinterest for the idea again! Nice to get behind my sewing machine for once though. :) Jenna, gratifyingly, is so so delighted with it.

Morgan tracing over her name with water on the chalkboard. She has recently been in a real development spurt, drawing people with bodies and incredible detail, starting to be able to balance more easily on play equipment, and to trace lines when she colours in or tries to copy Jenna.

Two very sweet little people, loving sisters (snarky comment omitted) and smiling in the sunshine.

Always good to remind myself that we are doing something, here, on days when I don't see any "result" I can point to to justify my existence, and my patience is close to zero, and I long to just sleep for a week and hand over responsibility to the nearest adult. *shifty*

No, it's not that bad. Look at those three little smiling faces...