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?????

Spring has sprung

It is lovely weather in England right now!! I am absolutely loving that spring feeling! I have a actually been out of the house without a coat on, hung some washing on the line and given our grass its first cut of the year. Still a chill in the air but gorgeous all the same. I'm really looking forward to being out and about in the great outdoors.

I took some pictures of our wild back garden about a month ago thinking that since this was the year we would actually improve the garden they would be the 'before' pictures but since then we have decided to move or extend our house. If we move I'm just going to tidy it up before the house goes on the market. If we extend the house then the garden will get trashed in the process anyway so again no point giving it a major overhaul! Here are the pictures anyway, as you can tell it needs some work!

These are the raised beds the previous owners put in with a little fountain in the middle:

You see our 2 crazy rosemary bushes? I think they are planning on taking over the garden...


The view from the doors in the living room:



Esther enjoying being in the garden for the first time in months!

Eliza guzzling her banana milkshake in the sun:

Yummy, Yummy, Raspberries in my Tummy!

We have a bumper crop of raspberries in our garden! I wish I could say it is because I am a fantastically green fingered gardener but its just pure luck really - I randomly chopped them down last year so I surprised they even grew so well again. Esther luuuuuurves raspberries (any kind of berries really!) which makes it even better. We must have had 10 x the amount in that bowl - deeeeeelicious!