52/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

Week 52, I've done it! 

Christmas Day...

 Cracker jokes...

 Funny game...

 Not so funny floods...

Looking forward to the New Year, 2016 here we come...

51/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

Ro helping with the Christmas post

  This sums up my girl...she kept falling over but still had to be in front...

50/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

Me and my boy: toasty toes in front of the fire...

My girl brought an accordian home from school to play - wow it's loud!

49/52

"a portrait of our children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

On Sunday, we drove for about an hour to Ingleton. To visit the big jolly fella in the show cave. The kids moaned all the way there, they hate car journeys.  We oohed and ahhed over a waterfall on the walk up, we get to the entrance to the trail...shut due to bad weather. NOOOOO!!

Ok let's go to the pub for Sunday lunch...Yeah! Happy children at last...and they were really well behaved. Then on to choose our tree. I love decorating the tree, christmas music on, while I put the lights on, they were busy unpacking the decorations...Oh I remember this one, this is my favourite, do you remember making this one? Oh no this one is my favourite, look there's the star for the top.

48/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

It is our school's Christmas Fair next weekend.  All the children were asked to bring in an item for the stalls: chocolate, tombola item, a filled jar.

We decided to make some lemon curd for a filled jar item. Ro and I made it last weekend, the mixture filled 2 jars, so we kept one (thought we better test the goods before gifting any).

It's yummy x

47/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

Aaaargh I don't have a photo for week 47...

The only photo I have is a verrrrry blurry selfie I took on my phone one night...so that will have to be the one...Daddy was working away so the kids slept with me one night.

46/52

"a portrait of our children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

Among other things...this weekend we baked our annual Christmas cake.

The fruit got an overnight soaking of booze...

 The children weighed and poured and spilled and spooned and stirred...

and then we went for a short walk to see how high the water really was, as we'd spotted sandbagging going on down the road...you can normally walk under this bridge and still have dry feet! 

45/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

Bonfire night: We had our own little bonfire last night, with pie and peas, toasted marshmallows and a few sparklers and fireworks.

I found this little ladybird book yesterday in a charity shop: times tables. I thought it may help Miss M with her school work. It seems our little Ro is more keen on maths.

44/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

Half term week, with plans that didn't go to plan. We were in Blackpool to see the illuminations. M caught R's bug and completely lost her voice :-( we stayed over in the hotel as planned and then drove home the next morning. She spent the whole day curled up on the sofa watching films, sipping honey and lemon...whispering her every need.

J decided to paint the hallway...he can't sit still. M was feeling much better so I took the kids to see a movie (Hotel Transylvania 2) to try and get into the Halloween spirit. We had a couple of lovely walks, with Autumn leaves and a pumpkin trail. I found a few different recipes to try and tempt R to eat more...he's so fussy. Then pumpkin carving, dressing the house and children dressing up, trick or treat...that's our week.

Inside Wycoller's Panopticon atom

It's not often I like a photo of myself, but I like this one J took on his phone. I don't remember him taking it, I was watching the kids in the atom.

Nice hat

Autumn posy

Waiting for the film to start

Our pumpkins this year

Spotted feather on a post

Spellbound - checking his witches spell

43/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

A Saturday afternoon wander...little one is not feeling very well...fresh air required.

 Biggest one can usually be found ankle deep in water...our very own river fairy...

Still loving Autumn x

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"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

Leaf Angel

After school play in the park...loving Autumn

41/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project"

An overnight stay in Scarborough

North Yorkshire seaside resort

We stayed at the old Grand Hotel

in room number 448

All you can eat for a tenner

line up in a queue and you wait

Seagulls awake you at 5.45

But you can't get your breakfast 'til 8

We had a lovely time at the seaside, the sun was shining. We ate hot donuts and drank tea. Watched some runners doing a 10k race. The kids took off their shoes and played on the sand, while we sat and watched the world go by.

This photo was taken in the morning, in our hotel room. I liked the silhouette...

39/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

Slim pickings for photos this week. We managed a girly shopping trip to Leeds this weekend. I found these on my phone later in the evening. I'm glad she found something to entertain her on the train journey home!

40/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

There was a puppet festival in Skipton this weekend. Lots of street entertainment and puppet shows to visit.

I had been watching a show with M, while Ro had a wander with J. When I asked him what he'd seen..."there's a woolly van". Come see...

It was a very stroke-able ice-cream van covered in crochet/knitting. Selling finger puppets rather than ice cream...

38/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

A family walk in the summer sunshine...just what we needed.

We decided to do the Railway Children walk...love that film.

Their home in the film (Three Chimneys)

I spotted this weathervane at a water treatment plant

Cross the tracks? What do you think?

Doc leaf

We must be near the station

Signs of Autumn

Steam

Loving his work

Day tripper

37/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

I'm sat in my little office, watching the rain pour down the window and thinking about the week that's just passed, the first week of the Autumn term.  

The children are enjoying school, I'm getting back into the swing of work, we celebrated Daddy's birthday.

As we really need to re-oil the floor, Friday afternoon I completely cleared the dining room, then went to collect the children from school. The wide open space was just too tempting for my little Miss...

36/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

We went to a music festival this weekend. Bingley Music Live...

Super Hero Sunday...Miss M went as Wonderwoman. Here she is hanging around on the train!

and here I am having fun in the children's area...

What a lovely sunny weekend, with great live music.

35/52

"a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2015"

Joining Jodi for the 52 Project

We went on our holidays last week, to bonny Scotland. Tried a different type of holiday, staying in a caravan on a holiday park.  We had a stopover hotel booked for the first night, not far from Glasgow, partly to break up the 5 hour drive.

We definitely had a room with a view...

The next morning, we carried on with our journey...we stopped a couple of times along the way. Once to see if we could find the spot where J proposed 10 years ago and another stop was here at these rather majestic mountains, named rest and be thankful...oh the irony!

Arriving at Loch Goilhead around lunchtime, we were still very early for our 4pm check in. We carried on towards Carrick Castle...a beautiful setting for our picnic lunch...

...all locked up...no admittance. We got caught in a rain shower and ended up eating our sandwiches in a bus shelter.  Carrick Castle: It looks like they are building a new building inside the old one to me...

A little further along the path we find an interesting driveway, with a notice board at the end reading...International Institute for Peace...

The boys turned around..M and I went for a nosey up the driveway and found this gorgeous building...

There was a car outside and we felt a bit like intruders so turned back and made our way to the boys...I took a couple of snaps along the driveway...

Fairy door

A mossy sausage dog among the undergrowth

Eventually we arrive at our site...Over the week to follow, we found lots of things to do on-site: indoor crown green bowling, J and M brought their in-line skates with them, swimming, I took my hooks and yarn, an indoor fun-house for the children with a soft play area.  But as we prefer days out adventuring, mostly we were off site and coming back for an evening swim.

  

A day trip to the Oban games, we had to go, whatever the weather, typically it was the wettest day of the week...still made the most of it...

Tartan Tales (for the children)

Practicing Piper

Bagpipe contest

Wet weather judges

Hammer throwing men taking a break

Scottish Highland Dancers

A day out to the beautiful town of Inverary...we went to an old disused jail and a castle. Both really interesting for all of us...the children decided it probably wouldn't have been much fun in jail...

 Testing out some of the punishments...

But living in the castle would be a different story... 

 The view to the bridge out of Inverary and the view from the bridge towards the castle.

We also walked a Gruffalo trail...

the book was written with a Scottish twang

there's no such thing as a Gruffalo you say

We found the tallest tree in Europe at over 600 metres tall (this wasn't it, though still made us feel small)

We took our bikes with us and spent time exploring the local area...

Crabbing is a must, as we were on a sea Loch it had to be. We also caught a couple of fish and a shrimp in our crab nets. This was far too easy, every haul had at least 3 crabs in. Beaches and shells feature in most of our favourite holidays and days out.

Local pirate

Beach combing

Sunny Jetty

A grey seal came to say hello a few times...how cool

Testing the water

Found a live one

Scottishness...

Scotland was good, we enjoyed our time there.  Where shall we go and explore next?