Plans, plans!

We'd quite like to go back to Thetford Forest for another long walk through the woods - that is a lovely day out! Really depends on the housework and gardening and the weather!

Planning to make more use of the Remoska and use the big oven less.

Very keen to make another trip to Ely Cathedral - we love it and haven't been for a couple of years now. The FH isn't up to the walking but he would happily sit down by the river and watch the world go by....

Some of these arrived from Cornwall, well packaged, so they went in to the incubator last night with some of our own eggs - fully loaded now with 25 eggs.

And the hens are laying well now, so we are planning to get the older polystyrene box incubators out and hatch a few more of our own eggs - we are figuring that two hatches close together may be easier to manage than spreading them through out the season as we did last year....and I have my eye on some bantam Chocolate Orpington eggs on ebay - they are going "Cheep!" if you can pardon the pun - auction finishes at 8pm tonight so will I bid or won't I?!?

Edited to add - I bid - but will I win??

Back again - I won! Six bantam Chocolate Orpington eggs for just £1.04 and postage.

Bother the weather

The sunshine has gone, and is replaced with gusty winds and overcast skies.  The chooks are not enjoying the wind, and I am sad about the lack of sun and warmth.  I really hope that that was not our summer!!  The YFG and her friend want to go to Wicksteed Park in Kettering next week, so I have ordered vouchers for their entry fee from the Tesco Clubcard site - hoping that they arrive by a week on Thursday, and that the weather behaves.  They can wear sweaters if it is chilly, but it must not rain!

A gorgeous day in the Fens

Apart from me nipping off to church on my own this morning, I have spent the day at home with the family - and it has been blissful!  The weather has been gorgeous - bright, warm and sunny.  I have had washing blowing dry on all the lines in the garden, I have pottered around, watching chooks, cleaning the incubator, looking through the seed boxes, putting weed'n'feed on the front lawn, cooking a roast dinner, and then a microwave sponge pud for tea which the FH and I ate down the garden, sitting in deck chairs, watching the chooks some more, with a cuppa.  Tonight I have watched Lewis, so that has been a good end to a lovely day.

I hope you have had similarly sunny days today, wherever you are.

End of term relief!

Yes, I finally feel like we have made it to the end of a long term!  Gymnastics classes are all finished now until after the Royal Wedding, and so we have almost three weeks of school holidays, apart from a pesky two days where the kids have to go to school on the Wednesday and Thursday between Easter and the Wedding - hardly worth the effort, but I know that there is a legal minimum number of days that the children have to be in school so they have to fit them all in somewhere!

I managed an extra hour in bed this morning, and then ended up doing the headless chicken dance, trying to get it all done before we had to go out.  I got to the shed to let the chooks out and found one a bit sorry for herself - her legs are not working terribly well and she was being trodden on by the others - chooks don't do sympathy or empathy at all.  I separated her and gave her some food and water; by the time I got home again at 3pm she was able to walk if she had to, but she preferred not to, so she had made a little progress towards recovery.  She is in a box with some straw in the shed, apart from her mates, tonight, and we will assess her tomorrow.  Hopefully she will be looking better.

Gym was busy this morning with 30 children and lots to do as it was the last training session before a lot of them have a competition next Sunday.   We came back to the village and dropped another child off and then stopped to have a chat with his parents for a while, enjoying a nice cold drink in their garden.

Later I took the YFG and went off to Huntingdon - I bought the laptop I want to save up for!  I know that sounds rather backwards, but I just took the money out of savings and committed to replacing it by the end of the month, which I know I can do.  We needed some new crockery and I wanted to buy a set I had seen in our local Tesco but when I went to buy it last night, they were out of stock, so I rang round and found out that  the big store had 15 sets in stock.  I was rather mystified as I thought wherever you bought something from a Tesco, it would be the same price - but not so - it was £20 in our local store, £19 in another, and when I bought it today, it was only £18.  I know that isn't a huge difference, but it is nevertheless a difference.  And so this doesn't fit with having a super-frugal month, does it?  No, it doesn't but sometimes you just have to do these things - the crockery has chooks on it and I just loved it!!  It hasn't broken the bank....

On the way home from Huntingdon, I called in to see my Dad and MB.  They have had someone out to sort them out with a Freeview box and new remote control, but they can't quite get the hang of it, so the YFG soon set-to and gave them a quick lesson.  It was nice to see them, and they would like us to go over in the holidays for lunch one day, so I must bear that in mind.

And so tonight - the EFG and FH are laughing at Michael Macintyre on the tv and the YFG is setting up the new laptop which she and I will share.  It is red.  She is very pleased that it is red!

My incubator is still sitting in the verandah covered in a thick layer of dust, but little Leah has gone broody, so the question now is what to do with the eggs I bought from Cornwall this week - put them in the incubator or trust them to Leah?  I think Leah might get a go - they arrived from Cornwall yesterday so I could sort Leah out with somewhere safe and cosy to sit and then put them under her tomorrow.....and I must get some other eggs in the incubator this week as otherwise time is ticking on and I am getting nowhere fast - nary a seed set this year yet either........

Heading for another milestone

I am heading for my 700th post here, so I am thinking about a giveaway again.  Chances are it might be a cookbook, as I have lots and lots.......but then again, it might be something a bit more inspired - I'll think about it as I have 8 posts to go, I think.

Today has been a gloriously sunny day like yesterday and it has been a joy to be outside, and to have washing on the line.  It all smells gorgeous.  We had a trip to the town this morning, the FH and I.  He wanted some screws and nails, and I needed to put a key through a friend's door and go to the Co-op, where I bought a lot of fresh fruit and veg and some reduced-price meat.  We haven't been out together like that for several weeks, so that was lovely.  The FH pottered in his shed for a while this afternoon whilst I was at school (again!) and prepared some veg for tea for me, as I had put a casserole in the oven before I went out.

This evening, I took the girls back to school to watch the Drama club's production of The Crucible.  It wasn't bad, but me being so tired, I was ready to come home by the interval.  Since one of the EFG's friends was one of the main characters, we weren't allowed to leave by the EFG, so we stayed, but I am heading off to bed now.

Stats and recipes

I love to check the stats page on the Dashboard of Blogger here on the blog - and it never ceases to amaze me that people are reading this! But I have noticed that day in, day out, someone looks at the sausage plait recipe, back in the posts a couple of years, and that frequently the posts for courgette cakes are also looked at - why is that? People find them through Google, it seems - so perhaps they are searching for specific recipes - interesting! Perhaps I should include more recipes and food ideas on here - what do you think?

My Mum

Mothering Sunday just having passed, my thoughts are now turning to tomorrow. If she'd still been with us, it would have been Mum's 70th birthday tomorrow.

She died back in 1998, so my memories of her are as a 56 year old, but because of her illnesses, she was old before her time, and certainly died too young. She knew the EFG, and loved her totally. We lived in Scotland then, so she liked to travel up to see us quite often. She came up with my dad the week before she died so we had fresh memories of a week spent with the EFG when she died.

The call came at lunchtime to tell me that she had collapsed and been taken into the hospital, but it took us until nearly 3pm to make the travel arrangements and get the responsibilities at home taken care of, so it was 11pm before we made it to the hospital. She was unconscious, but I remember kissing her and telling her that I had brought the EFG to see her, and that I would bring the EFG back in the morning to the hospital. We went home to my parents' house and went to bed. The phone rang just after 1am to say that she had died.

She had been battling against cancer for several years; leiomyosarcoma, I believe her particular battle was called. It started in her uterus, spread to her back, her head, and eventually she had lumps and bumps all over the place, even after enduring several long operations.

And so she never met the YFG, didn't see us move back to England, missed out on all the big milestones in the girls' lives, missed out on her own life so much. And we miss her terribly and still wonder occasionally what life would be like if she was still here.

But she lives on, particularly as I see her every day in the mirror as I am getting older! The EFG shows a lot of signs of being in the same mould as my mum and I. My sister also has a lot of her traits, some we share and some are different but no one could doubt that we are her daughters.