As muddy as a duck puddle...

Some events today will be remembered by their level of muddiness....however it didn't start that way.

I heard BB rumbling around downstairs at about 6:45 am. He's been obsessed with the 'Optimus Prime' wee lego gift I brought back from Canada and can't wait to either a) get up in the morning or b) get home from school/friends/extra curricular activities to play with it. He's now using his initiative and parts from his other lego kits to expand OP's armour repertoire and play acting out scenarios in his head. He did crawl off to bed somewhat tired tonight and enlightened me with the information that 'if he did more sleeping than reading then he'd be less tired' Very insightful! He's definitely a chip off the old block though - I distinctly remember reading an entire Enid Blyton 187 page 'Five Find-Outers' books in one night with a torch under my duvet...

Once the older two were ceremoniously dumped at the school/nursery gates I returned with CC and set up a backdrop to take some passport pictures. I took about twenty, but think I may have just managed to get one which the good old IPS may accept. What a handsome loon my boy is turning out to be. Actually 'loon' being the operative word. It occurred to me the other day that I I left my baby when I went to Canada and came home to my little boy. He's growing up way too fast.

The plan for the afternoon consisted of scrambling together a picnic and whisking the boys off to the nearest NTS stately home (House of Dun), to hang out at the playpark, and have a picnic with pals. The rain started when we reached the car park, but quickly passed - thankfully as I was wearing my very open toed Birkenstocks. Unexpectedly a lot of the ground was very boggy and muddy much to the detriment of my pal Debbie who got her car most very definitely  stuck in it - precariously close to a bank edge which had a 60 foot drop! I didn't quite realise the extent of her 'stuckness' until I suggested we have a look at getting her shifted before everyone dispersed and headed homeward. It's a good thing I did as it took a load of bark and sticks (to gain purchase) and a heap of man(lady)power shoving from behind - trying to avoid the flying mud - to get the car shifting. There was a precarious moment where the back was sliding closer to the bank edge, but luckily it was freed safely. Not moments after we'd trudged back to the playpark and CC toddled his way up to me with his trousers Caked in mud. I didn't see what he did, but he was certainly out to challenge Persil over their 'clean in 30 mins' claims...maybe he should dump them in his water table like he did his brothers walking boot yesterday...ho hum!

After school we all played out in the garden. The boys were chopping between swinging on the rope swing and whizzing down the platform and across the lawn on their bikes. LL started doing it with his eyes closed. Not to be outdone BB copied him and promptly cycled into a bush and fell off! He then had the audacity to tell his little brother not to do it (because he couldn't). I laughed out loud.

I love Station House at this time of year - when the huge daisies (leucanthemums?) and blue thistles are in full bloom. It is in complete contrast to winter when the garden is so sparse, and since we lost the climbers (due to the damp) and the beautiful deep red leaved tree (due to the wind) the house itself seems so bare. It becomes so welcoming and homely. I can tell why it was put on the market at this time of the year - It certainly lulled us in! Who couldn't love this house when it comes to life in the summer?

Work trip

I'm feeling a bit like Carrie Bradshaw - I'm sitting at Regina Airport, Canada awaiting my first flight of a long trip home, and I got a sudden urge to pull out the laptop and write about my travels! I've quickly edited some pics which were on my phone and popped them on too to try and illustrate so please excuse any quality issues! So it's been a while! It's been a struggle settling into the new work-life balance routine. The return to work hasn't been without it's negatives. The travelling is a factor which didn't have to be accounted for before and the tiredness/lack of time with the family has been tough to deal with. It's not been fun for BFS as it's put more pressure on him too. We're both grown ups though so we've just been taking it in our stride. I think it was on my first day back that I was called into the bosses office and was asked if I could head to Canada for a fortnight in August. I wasn't sure if it was a test or not as I had assured him that I would be available to travel during my work time, so I told him 'of course' before I could make the call home just to confirm with BFS. It was 3 months away so I knew we could get something sorted out, and the job wasn't even a confirmed one! That three months have come around very quickly - and I have to admit in the run up I have been somewhat apprehensive as BFS took his first 4 week break with the boys pretty hard. He did inform me at one point that 'he wasn't finding it fun' but the one up side to me travelling 4000 miles away for 2 weeks is that I managed to take all of my TOIL prior to leaving so we could get some quality time together as a family before I jetted off and left him to it. We all drove up to ABZ on the saturday night and I was ceremoniously dumped at my mums house, given a big BFS squeeze, and left to blub away from little eyes which may be affected by seeing mum so sad about going away. The journey started in typical style for me when early the next morning I had to ask the taxi driver to do a u-turn right at the airport roundabout as I realised I had left my passport on the table at my mums! oops. Luckily enough the rest of the journey went by hassle free. We flew to Amsterdam, then had to bolt to our other gate, then we had 9 hours to Calgary (during which there were some pretty stunning views over Greenland)- a 4 hour wait there (whare I managed to catch Bolt breaking the Olympic 100m record) and then finally we caught our last flight to Regina (rhymes with vagina!), picked up our hire car and checked into our hotel after 21 hours of travelling. The hotel had an amazing pol complete with flumes and lots of screaming children - and my room lloked directly onto it! Luckily I was so shattered that I actually managed to sleep through the screams.... The next morning we jumped in our car and headed off for the 2 1/2 hour very straight drive to Estevan. Our final destination. We made a left turn at the end of town and our motel was 20 yards along on the right. Literally our only turn since leaving the hotel car park in Regina over 2 hours prior!