14 Oct
…are soon to begin! Yaya and his Mummy and sister are having a lovely time in Stralia. Of course they are. We knew they would. Look.
Daddy had stayed behind to tie up loose ends so we kind of still had hold of the children a bit. But yesterday finally came and Daddy got on the ellaflane and off he went.
(Goodbyes with Mia at the airport)
Here’s to their new life!
25 Aug
Dear children,
For years you have been ours. From little tiny babies to walking talking children, we have watched you grow.
You’ve tested our patience and taught us things we had forgotten in our adulthoods.
Things like the joy of a cool outfit.
The tastiness of plastic toys.
The fun of sitting in a suitcase.
The apprehension of learning to swim.
The excitement of being given a present and spending more time playing with the cardboard.
The uncontrollable laughter that bursts out when you do your hair up the same.
The simple honest love that children haven’t learned to hide yet.
The beauty of a small child’s face.
But you have started to grow now, children. You speak. You walk. You make pictures.
You make Lego.
You stick stickers.
You tell us about school and nursery and make up games for us to play for your amusement. You know our faces and you want us to read you bedtime stories. You come for dinner and look sad when you have to go home. You have likes (the colour green and snakes) and dislikes (having your photo taken).
But these years have been precious. These were our years.
Last night, you got on an ‘ellaflane’ and flew to ‘Stralia’ to begin your new life. And that’s that. England will be a distant memory. Yaya will remember it better as he is five. Your other family will become real people and we will become the Skype crowd. We will still love you and send you gifts in the post but you will be terribly, terribly far away.
These years have been ours.
Your next years will belong to someone else.
23 Aug
I have an announcement to make. Yaya is leaving for greener pastures… He’s off to Australia with his little sister on Sunday (and mother, of course) so yesterday, Danda and I headed over to spend the afternoon and evening with them, which looked like this….
Most important thing first. Let’s unpack the Lego set and get building.
Isla grabs the stickers and she’s happy.
Yaya and I with our serious faces on, trying to figure out the 43-stage instructions for the Batmobile.
In the meantime, Danda keeps Isla happy by drawing Winnie the Pooh.
After a good hour or so and a lot of intense concentration, Yaya completes the Batmobile! I didn’t help putting it together. I was more like on-hand Lego-peice-finder and instruction-book-page-turner.
Yaya playing with the Lego he made.
Close up of Isla watching a ‘nake’ on TV (snake)
Out for dinner and Isla is proudly wearing the Supergirl hat that Dad drew for her.
My warm goats cheese and roast veg salad with chicken. Those little bread thingies round the edge were so good.
Yaya’s version of a smile.
Isla mixing her babyccino and icecream together then spooning some of it into her icecream cone, which then drips out of the bottom.
Room On The Broom with Danda. They were told to lie in bed to listen to the story but there was too much to see in the book so they slowly crept over and were all huddled together listening.
When we had decided it was sleep time, Isla and Yaya and I had a little chat about how I wouldn’t see them again before they go on the ‘big ellaflane’ to ‘Stralia’ so I’ll see them in a little while when I come over for a holiday.
“Are you coming on the ellaflane with us?” Isla asked.
“No. You’re going on the aeroplane first, on Sunday,” I replied. “I’m coming later.”
“On Monday?” Yaya asked.
“I’ve got to go to work on Monday,” I said, doing a sad face. “It will have to be after Monday. Maybe in a few more weeks.”
“I know,” said Yaya, his eyes lighting up. “Come on Tuesday! You should come on Tuesday, Lauwa.”
“Ok, Yaya. Tuesday sounds good. I think I’ve got a day off so that will be fine.”
They both puckered up, ready for a kiss goodnight and Yaya assured me that they would telephone me on the computer from ‘Stralia’. After a brief chat with Isla about how she loves ‘nakes’ and that there are loads of massive ‘nakes’ in ‘Stralia’, it was goodnight time.
6 Jun
I haven’t got one solid post idea in my mind. I’ve kind of got a few little ones all competing for attention in my head. So today, readers, in no particular order, I would like to welcome you to…. My Ramblings.
1. My friend, Naomi, and I have concluded that the only way to travel the world as much as we’d like to and eat lovely food all the time and not have to think about rent or bills, is to have a huge cash injection all at once. (We’re geniuses, right? No-one has ever thought of this before.) To this end, we have bought two lottery tickets for tomorrow. (I’ve never bought a lottery ticket before.) The prize is £80 million. We’re pretty sure we’ll win. We’re splitting the money between us and buying a load of houses to start with. Watch this space.
2. I was asked to guest post for a blog yesterday. I’m pretty excited and will be starting on it this morning.
3. We’re having a friend over for dinner tonight. I’m planning on making some kind of Italian duck and olive stew thing.
4. Yaya and his little sister are on holiday at the moment. They went to an aquapark place and did loads of fun things. When getting photos as memoirs, Yaya was totally loving it.
Yaya’s little sister, on the other hand, will not be told what to do! She is not a performing monkey and will not smile on request. And don’t we know it.
Check out the handbag though. She is the picture of moody-cool.
5. I’ve eaten out a lot lately. I’m not sure why. It just keeps happening. Yesterday, I had a kind of mezze board thing with a friend and the babaganoush thing and the houmous were both fabulous.
6. At Ham House yesterday, I made some flavoured marzipan things, with ground ginger, rosewater and sherry in them. As it was a weekday and a bit quieter than usual, I kept eating the tasters and ended up having a massive sugar rush, from which I then crashed hardcore and was yawning away by 3pm!
7. I went to meet a friend at the airport last night. I hasn’t told him and was intending for it to be a surprise. By the time I had been waiting for about 45 minutes, I knew something was up so I called him and, sure enough, he’d come out, got the bus to the car park, picked up his car and was ready to start driving home. I don’t know how he got past me but I ended up stranded at the arrivals section as I’d only bought a one way train ticket to the airport and he had to drive back to the airport to get me! So that went well.
And that, readers, is today’s non-post. I am blaming the fact that I am lazy for this shoddiness.
16 May
Ok, I’m calling today’s post Cop Out Thursday, as I woke up late and am having a friend over for breakfast so haven’t really time to write the post about worms that I was planning to (don’t worry, I don’t mean tapeworm, I mean my actual worms that make compost for me).
So what’s going to happen is this. I’m going to show you a collection of photos which don’t really mean an awful lot to anyone and were picked in a hurry. Are you up for that? Ok, let’s do it.
First up, it’s a dinosaur drinking from a glass….
Second, we have a quote from a magazine that I’m sharing with you because I feel it is important.
I’ve always felt the same way about free standing cupboards actually.
Next is a really old recipe with the original spelling of the word ‘apricot’ which made me giggle. Rather like a small child.
Next up, a Christmas tree made of chocolate slabs. Obviously. (I did say it wouldn’t really mean anything, didn’t I?)
And now, some tomatoes in my garden.
And finally, to see off this fabulous, well-thought-out, life-changing, awesome post, a photo of me with some clingfilm stretched over my face.
O wait, one last one, Yaya with an egg box on his face.
24 Mar
We got a new TV. Actually, it’s not a new TV. It’s just a new programme thing. You know, where you can pause programmes or record them or get a whole series that’s been on before. Am I making sense here?
I had been sceptical about getting it because I thought that if we recorded everything we wanted to watch and kept it til later. We’d never move from in front of the TV. When there are no good programmes on, we just get out a book and read. Which is ok by me. So I wasn’t too keen.
But then Danda got a Kindle Fire for Christmas and the silly thing only has WiFi connection, not wireless. So to watch films, he needs to be connected to WiFi, which is usually when he’s in someone’s house and then why would you watch the Kindle instead of the full size TV?
One of the internet companies has a system where, if you have your internet with them at home, you can access these ‘hotspots’ with your internet code and use their WiFi when you’re out and about. Perfect! It just so happened that this company also do the On Demand TV thing I was talking about. So we took the plunge and decided to get it.
We got it installed a few days ago and a shortly after, Yaya and his little sister arrived for dinner and fun. Immediately they sensed the change and requested the childrens’ TV channels. So on when Mr Tumble and they were happy for ten minutes.
All seemed well. We found programmes we wanted to watch and so avoided the 8pm dip when nothing good is on and you end up watching nonsense. Danda had started to watch Spiral, a French police programme.
Last night, he decided to watch it again. When he got to episode number five, he clicked on it but the play button didn’t appear. He tried turning the TV off then on but it wouldn’t show the play button on the screen. We tried this and that and off and on and using a different channel and everything. He clicked and pressed and switched. Nothing worked.
He got more and more confused and annoyed. This went on for about half an hour until he decided to go to the ‘search’ feature and look it up. It appeared but still didn’t have the play option. We thought maybe if he cleared out the search then did it again, it might make something work. So he requested ‘clear search results’ and got rid of it…. And then we couldn’t find it again anywhere. He had deleted it off the whole TV! Incredulous, we looked around everywhere, sure that it must be somewhere. It wasn’t.
After 45 minutes of button clicking and brain effort, we malfunctioned, like robots with too much information on their memory cards, and headed for bed.
Technology 1-0 Man
30 Dec
It’s been pretty nice really. Christmas morning was present opening time and I got, among other things, Michel Roux Sr’s latest cookbook, The Collection. It is one of the most beautiful cookbooks I have ever seen.
The other life-changing present I got was a hairdryer! These things re amazing! I can go from wet hair to dry hair in a matter of minutes! I had heard good things about hairdryers and I think, once upon a time, I have owned one. But now I have one again and it is very exciting.
Christmas lunch was eaten here…
…and was great because we just sat around blowing up balloons….
…while the staff brought us our dinner. It was lovely and fuss free.
There was mass present opening with Yaya and the other children for a while and then we all went to a sofa filled room on the grounds of the hotel with a big TV showing Christmas films and sat around feeling full. It was lovely.
Breakfast the next morning consisted of my favourite 5 year old putting on her best make-up artist face and rubbing bubble bath into everyone’s necks and faces, telling us it was perfume.
After we had all left and gone back home, Danda and I found an amaretti panettone in the kitchen and spent approximately twelve hours sitting on the sofa eating it, drinking cups of tea, reading books and watching TV. We didn’t even have lunch or dinner. We just picked at this panettone until we had finished it….!
All in all, a fabulous few days. How was yours?
22 Dec
A few days ago, I went to see Yaya and his little sister. Yaya was very eager to show everyone something.
“I’m going to do magich,” he said, as that’s what he says instead of ‘magic.’
“Ok,” we said. He brought us all into the front room; Danda, his parents and myself. We sat down and he brought out two small chairs and put four cuddly toys on the chairs.
“Close your eyes,” he told us. We heard some noises and the curtains being moved.
“Open them!” he said and we all opened them and gasped in amazement when the toys were no longer there.
“Now, who wants to go first?”
He hadn’t explained what we would be doing when we ‘went first’ but I put my hand up anyway.
“Ok. Everyone close your eyes. Lauwa, come here.”
I stood up and he pointed behind the curtains to the pile of toys which had once been on the chairs.
“Bring one,” he whispered. So I did. He put it on the chair and told everyone to open their eyes. There were exclamations and shocked expressions of wonderment at this David-Blaine-esque magich trick. How could it possibly have been done?!
A different person was picked each time and everybody else told to close their eyes while that person was instructed to bring a toy from behind the curtains.
Until, eventually, all the toys were out and we were all sitting down feigning surprise.
The finale was Yaya spreading his arms out, hands facing upward, a mysterious smile on his face, saying, ominously…. “How did I do it? You’ll never know.”
And that was Yaya’s magic trick.
7 Dec
Yesterday, the Christmas fun continued with a little bit of ice skating, which was tons of fun. It was at Hampton Court Palace, which might be the most beautiful place to ice skate ever. It’s next to the Thames and was built in the 1500s. It’s just amazing to think how long it’s been there and who’s lived there.
About the ice skating itself, I have just this to say – I was brilliant, Danda fell three times. (Danda would like it to be known that he resents this remark.)
I obviously wore my cool penguin jumper, purchased the day before, and was the envy of all the other skaters.
We then went for dinner at a nice restaurant with Yaya and his little sister, who’s at an age where she wants to get involved with conversations but can’t quite talk properly. There is a constant stream of noises, which go something like this:
“Lalala, haha, Yaya my frah, watchin tee bee, an wizzy wizz, an the big, waaaah! Daddy yikes boo, Mummy yikes wed, haha! And the wawa, raaaaah! Bearbear, poohbear! Poohbear home, sad. Me see, me see! Loklat for Isla? Laulau, laulau! Book, reeree me?”
That last bit was her asking me to read her a book so we read a hide-and-seek lift the flap book, which she LOVED.
She then discovered the salt and pepper shakers and decided it was time to expand her culinary horizons by shaking pepper onto her fingers and licking them. She had about three goes before she started to look for her apple juice and gulped it hungrily! When her kids meal of chicken and chips arrived, she then proceeded to dip each of her chips into her apple juice before eating them. Always talking though, always talking.
O, to be two and so easily pleased for dinner. Pepper on the fingers and apple juice drenched chips.
lazylauramaisey 