Home

Here we are, back in our own home again after just the busiest most lovely sunny week away.  I don't know where to start.  Northumberland is the place my heart calls to.  It's my other home.  To be quite honest, I feel more than the usual post-holiday-flat-feeling right now.  I feel homesick, already.

Where shall I begin with catching up?  I think I'll start with home base.  This is my little tour of the cottage we stayed in...

Living room:




Little kitchen where I made cupcakes without any weighing scales, and baked a whole rainbow trout gifted from the neighbours (really)!! :


Bedrooms:




Jenna unpacking her dollies on her little cabin bed up in the eaves:


Home.  My Ashleigh-made handspun birthday shawl on the back of a chair:


And here's a little preview of what we have been up to all week...  The beaches in this part of the country are truly the most beautiful peaceful places.  Windswept and perfect.





Here are three of my little daughters stomping down the gravel path I have such vivid childhood memories of walking down.

I remember my little brother's red wellies ahead of me.  The sound of the stones and the frost grinding underfoot.  It must have been November.  I was about six.  Birdsong and the smell of snow.

This picture used to hang above the bed my youngest brother slept in.  It's in the play room now.  Sharing my memories of such a special place with my children, well, it has just been awesome.


Village Farm has a pool.  The pool my brothers learned to swim in.  All week, Jenna has been getting stronger and stronger and braver, and can now tread water and swim lengths and surface dive so well.  She is like a little seal in the water.  Morgan swam her first unsupported strokes without arm bands.



And Talia just basked.  Sun, water, family, sun, water: baby bliss.

Can you blame us for not really wanting to come back to Derby after such a perfect week?