First dream

This morning Esther told me that she had dreamt of going on holiday to Auntie Kerri and Uncle Matt's house and that she went in their car! She knows we are going there for a holiday in a few weeks and is super excited but this is the first time she has ever told me she dreamt about something! She really must be even more excited than I thought.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

When we were leaving the house this morning the rubbish truck was here to collect our garden waste and the following conversation ensued:
Esther: They are nice taking our rubbish stuff away.
Me: Well, it's their job, just like Daddy has a job this is their job. What is my job?
Esther: Drive and clean up...and play with us. My job is to play and to help tidy up and help you but Eliza doesn't have a job because she is too little to sweep the floor.
It made me smile: sometimes it's nice to see your kid's perception of life!

By the way...

I think we really do get Monsoons here - yesterday I saw a man wade up to mid-calf through the pond that was Homebase's car park to get back to his car! It was crazy.

Fancy Face Painting!

At the church BBQ, the Young Women held a carnival to raise money for camp. The face painting was a real hit. Esther's butterfly looked much better than it looks in this picture but it's the only picture we have!

Zucchini Explosion

I always remember an article in The Friend (our church magazine for children) called Zucchini Explosion and I have not quite had an expolsion but I have grown a ginormous courgette! I suppose all the rain we've had helped it swell, I've chopped it off now and am looking forward to eatinv my first home grown vegetable!

Heat wave

A week or two ago when it was roasting hot (for England at least) it was too hot to play out in the back garden so we played out in the more shady front garden. Last year we had to throw away our old paddling pool as it was infested with flying ants so I ventured into the loft to dig out the baby bath!! The girls seemed to enjoy it and the afternoon turned into an attempt to kind of wash the car which mostly consisted with throwing cupfuls of water over it. Esther loved it! I should really get her out there with soapy water and a big old sponge to do the job properly. The Young Men at church washed and waxed out car today to raise money for their camp and it looks better than it ever has!

Holidays are coming

In a couple of weeks we are going on holiday to Ben's brother Matt and his wife Kerri's house in Yeovil. We have never been there before and have so many great thins planned! We are going to Longleat (www.longleat.co.uk) - they have a big old Stately home, safari park, safari boat, huge maze, train, butterfly park and what makes it even better is SPORTACUS will be there!!!! Esther is sooooooooooo excited about that! Incase you don't know Sportacus is the hero of Lazytown, a kids TV programme, saves everyone, promotes sport and being active and eating 'sports candy' aka fruit and veg! Esther ovbiously thinks she is going to meet THE Spotracus but really its the Official UK Sportacus (not that she will know the difference) she has been telling me all things she is going to do when she meets him, so funny!

We are planning a trip to Lyme Regis (the coastal town they go to in Jane Austen's Persuasion), Montacute House (film location for Sense and Sensibility) and lots of other wonderful things! If you can't tell by now, I'm pretty excited.

Yippee!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For Ben's mum's birthday Esther and I are taking her to see Beauty and the Beast! Tickets are booked, I'm so excited! I've seen it before actually when I was 16 I think but I'm hoping Esther will love it (she has to the amount of money the tickets cost!!!). Ben and his dad get to entertain Eliza for the afternoon so it works out all round!

Monsoon

Do we get Monsoons in England?? Maybe not but that's what it felt like 2 hours ago when I was walking back from picking up Esther at pre-school. It's not too far but when we were half way home the heavens opened and we had a LOT of rain! We could only laugh because it was soooo heavy -the water droplets were huge and we were soaked through all our clothes! Eliza got away pretty untouched thanks to being in the pushchair. It was pretty hilarious really, we couldn't stop laughing!

Some other things we've been up to

At the end of May we went to my school friend Kathryn's wedding. She married Chris who seems to be a really lovely guy but then Kathryn wouldn't have married him if he were not! It was great to see them, especially since I hadn't seen Kathryn since my wedding!! They were married in an Oak wedding Barn in the country - the location was gorgeous as was the weather. I got to meet up with my friend Caroline who lives in Denmark with Christian her Danish hubby and their 2 kiddiewinks Alfie and Molly and Caroline's dad came to the wedding too. Another friend Claire was there with her fiance so it was good to cath up! The girls were desperate to dance on the dance floor and spent a lot of time running around on it. Unfortunately we had to leave before the dancing began - Esther was devastated! Esther took some of these picture herself! We've been planting some vegtables. We have mega huge raspberries that were planted before we moved in and always produce massive berries which is good because they are my favourite and the girls love any type of berries. We were given a courgette seedling from my sister, a runner bean from Helen and a tomato plant curtesy of Tesco. We've got some strawberries too but they only give us tiny berries so I'm not sure we've eaten any from it yet....the birds get there first... I took these pictures about a month ago now so they are all huge in comparison - our courgette plant has 3 courgettes growing, the runner bean have tons and the tomato plant has some flowers so here's hoping some tomatoes grow!

At the beginning of June all my family were visiting for Adam's graduation - oh yes my brother is Dr Adam Beevers, PHD in some kind of Engineering! SO we took the opportunity to have a family holiday before Joel moves to Florida in 2 weeks time (aaaarrrghhhhh can't believe it is so soon!). One of the days we went to Belton House up by Grantham. It has a fab children's adventure playground, I shouldn't really say 'children's' since as you can see by the pictures the grown up's rather liked it too.... Everyone should go there - it's great! Esther even went down the big enclosed slide (I'm not sure if it's as exciting as the one at Harewood House which is painted like a snake - do you remember that Thiriot's??), well not just Esther...I think everyone except mum went down it! Bex took our family new header picture in the gardens there for us. Oh and who can resist a miniture train - unfortunately the seats were really designed for 2 adults to sit in so Bex and I were a bit squished.

Other than that the weather has been great so there has been lots of playing out and eating outside.

Visitor and visiting

So my brother Joel came for a week 2 weeks ago and my friend Jenny came from Arizona. It was so great to see her! I did give her her trainers back....thank goodness, need the room on the shoe rack... We went strawberry picking, made strawberry jam (http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/get_cooking/recipes/071.shtml), stayed up late just like our student days (unfortunately I still had to get up early with the kids so was pretty tired by the time they left), ate too much icecream, tried to hook Joel up with girls in Florida for when he moves in a few weeks and other random yet fun activities!
When Jenny left, my parents-in-law arrived. We went shopping for the day then out to dinner which was pretty good fun. We went to TGI Friday's which I haven't been to in years so it was heavenly! The next day was Father's Day and Ben's birthday. I bought Ben a fitness magazine! He had already bought some things that were going to be his presents but I felt bad that he wasn't getting anything from us on his birthday hence the token present of a magazine since we never buy them! Ben's parents left on the Sunday evening and Joel left on the Monday (he missed his train though....long story....moral of which is to just buy your lunch out instead of rushing to make some last minute....).
Last Thursday we travelled up to my parents in Middlesbrough because Ben's brother Daniel was getting married on the Saturday in Newcastle. Esther was a bridesmaid. The bridesmaid had to have their hair in a bun which Esther was completely opposed to. In the end I told her I was going to ring Uncle Daniel and tell him she wasn't going to be a bridesmaid because she didn't want her hair in a bun. That threat seemed to do the trick! She walked down the aisle with a little girl called Leah who was 7 and who Esther absolutely idolised! They kept saying 'we're family now' after the wedding and Esther was asking if Leah could come and play at our house! Shame we live 4 hours away... Ben was one of the best men with his other 3 brothers and did a great job of the best men's speech. I especially liked it because Ben got all emotional which he doesn't do very often yet I do all the time! My sister-in-law Kerri has taken some pictures so when I get them from her I'll post them!
After the wedding we dropped the kids off at my parent's house then drove the 2 hour trip to the Preston temple when Daniel and Natalie were sealed. It is the first time we have left the kids to be put to bed by anyone else and they were fine! It was strange to not just be with Ben and no kids but also to think I was 2 hours drive away from them! I can't believe that is the furthest and longest I've been away from them....maybe I need to get out a bit more????
It was a great weekend and for now we are back home until next week when Ben is off to the states for work and I'm off to my parents again with the kids for Joel's going away party before he moves to Florida. Then we'll have 3 weeks at home before we are away again!

Trampoline fun!

Everyone (apart from Ben's dad who didn't enjoy the experience) has been having a great time on the trampoline! Eliza is getting more confident on there but doesn't like to be on there if someone else is actually bouncing! It's a good job we have the safety net or else Esther would have been seeing more of the bushes than she would like. She has fallen off once but only because she was walking around the outside on the blue bit. It's been so hot here I have to try to disuade her from going on the trampoline all day long!! It's too hot to be bouncing when we really should be taking a siesta. Speaking of the heat I managed to pursuade Esther to go to bed 'snaked' (naked) as Eliza was also going to be snaked. Eliza has gotten over her fear of fan's, hopefully she realised they are our friends and just want to keep us cool!

Make way for the trampoline!

The people who owned our house before us had no kids. The liked to do gardening. We've got a decent sized garden and they had it full to the brim with flowers/plants most of which I didn't have a clue what they were let alone know how to look after them. There were plants all round the outside of the garden and the main bulk of the garden had been split in two. One side was grass with a semi-circle flower bed (we got rid of that the summer we moved in), the other side had 4 raised beds in a square with gravel paths between and a water fountain in the middle, and 2 long raised beds around the outside. For the last 4 years we have struggled to maintain the jungle that was our garden. So we decided enough was enough - lets make room to enjoy our garden!! So the missionaries came to help us kick start the mamoth task!

It took 4 of us 2 1/2 hours to empty 3 of the boxes - there was so much soil!!! It is currently forming a little hill at the bottom of the garden... why didn't we hire a skip?? The next week Ben emptied the last box and we dismantled them, laid membrane and spread the gravel that used to be inbetween the boxes to cover the whole space. The crowning glory came when we got rid of the water fountain which we had NEVER used - it was a health hazard!! It had little wormy things living in there and I was always paranoid about kids playing with it or somehow drinking the disguisting water. It is no more!!

We then moved the toys that had been living on the patio onto the nice gravel area! In this picture the 2 long boxes are still in tact along the left of the picture and the back behind the toy kitchen. Those boxes are gone now too. I'm so glad. The trampoline is on here now and we ditched some of the toys which were broken anyway. It is sooooo much more family friendly out there! It was hard work but we did think - why didn't we do this 4 years ago?????

Updates

I am finally sitting down to update my blog! Our internet has been playing up, we've been away again and I couldn't find the camera charger and lead to put photo's on the computer but our internet is ok now, we are at home and the camera is sorted out so be prepared for some updates!!